Liverpool FC’s Disastrous News. NO! It’s All Going Wrong!

Painful reading the headlines on a grim Monday

You must have seen the news?

So many headlines in the last 24 hours.

Hell, it looks bad.

The very worst thing could happen. The worst!

And the news comes with Liverpool languishing in mid-table, after various new players were signed in the summer of 2024 for £250m; and sit 23rd in the new 36-team Champions League format.

We need to give Arne Slot time, of course, as it’s not easy replacing Jürgen Klopp. Everyone said so, so it had to be true; just as everyone said “sign lots of new players”.

These people are proved right, time and again. I doff my cap, with my record of only ever getting things wrong.

But in truth, Slot is gonna be another Dutch bust, after a start like this.

“We will suffer for a long period,” Slot tells us.

“I know it is frustrating for the fans but we are changing so much in this moment with a lot of games,” Slot said, albeit sounding a bit Portuguese. “We are going to suffer for a long period. We will try to win games but this will take time.

“We have to risk it a little bit [now] and in the next year we will be better [otherwise] next year at the same stage we will be here with the same problems.”

Presumably the owners need to be blamed for all this, for things like bringing back Michael Edwards (a bust!), and him bringing in Richard Hughes (big mistake – from Bournemouth!*), and bringing back Julian Ward, as the Reds go back for men now in their sixties, possibly, or even seventies, in Edwards’ case, as he’s been around for ever. He once worked with Harry Redknapp.

(*What have they ever won?!)

Had Edwards not returned to Liverpool and with a role with FSG, Hughes wouldn’t have appointed Slot. So they’re all to blame for this mess.

Yet again, FSG have totally missed the point, and rather than make everything about one player, to make Liverpool the equivalent of whoever the lesser Ronaldo plays for, they’ve focused on the bigger picture.

Idiots!

It’s now 34 years since Liverpool won the league in front of fans and had a bus parade.

What will happen in 2025?

Five years ago some kind of new plague escaped – from a bat, a lab, or possibly even Elon Musk’s arse. As with where babies come from, we just don’t know.

We didn’t get to fully enjoy 2019/20.

If you learn one thing, it’s that people, it seems, learn nothing.

Aside from whether or not to replace Slot with Ruben Amorim (too late, suckers!), the main thing we must focus on, therefore – the ONLY thing – are new contracts for three important players, even if two are quite old now, but enjoying Indian summers.

After all, it’s now time to think only about next season, with this season a write-off, with nothing to be enjoyed in this hellish mediocrity.

It’s also important that we work out if Slot can handle the job. It seems not.

Also, he looks a bit too much like Erik ten Hag. We should be talking about that, and how worried we should be that Liverpool’s season is so mediocre. And how him being so bad may cost us three stalwarts leaving.

With Amorim jobbing away at United, maybe we can get Thomas Tuchel? (Too late, suckers!)

Ah, if only we’d got Xabi Alonso, mind. The way Leverkusen dismantled Slot’s Liverpool 4-0 at Anfield last month was incredible. If only a Liverpool team could do something like that!

If they did, imagine how much we’d enjoy it? Imagine how long we’d be talking about it for?

And imagine if Liverpool were miles top in the league? And in the Champions League?

Oh my word, these things just aren’t possible.

Especially with a bald bloke who managed AZ-DZ or someone, and a DoF from a club that got relegated at the very moment Liverpool were being crowned champions post-lockdown.

And with no major signings, and Alisson injured, and Jota injured, and relying on Ryan Gravenberch to hold the team together.

But what if it were possible?

We’d give an arm and a leg for that.

We’ve waited years for that.

Decades, even.

There’s no way we’d be focusing on who has or hasn’t signed a contract that they may or may not have been offered, as it would all be immaterial. We’d see it for what it is. We wouldn’t be so stupid as to be distracted by sideshows, right?

Because we’re here for the football, right?

Right?

No, maybe we’re just here for all the new transfer signings as we froth ourselves into insanity, and the worry about 2025/26 while 2024/25 is very much underway and unfolding spectacularly.

There’s no way Liverpool fans would be stupid enough to lose sight of what they’ve waited for? Is there?

Go out at the top, they say. But people can’t even enjoying being at the top.

Given how “must-win” modern fans and media make everything – to the point of febrile hysteria that almost drains all the joy away to the point where you can only experience relief when you do actually win – you’d think the actual winning would be cherished.

When actually, winning every week, it seems everything will be done to ruin your enjoyment.

Players come and go. Even the legends. We love the best and the most dedicated, but they stay for different reasons, and they go for different reasons.

“Throughout my career, I always thought when I left football and looked back years later, I’d remember the trophies,” the legend says. “I didn’t realise how wrong I was.”

So speaks a World Cup winner, and a double-Euro Championships winner, a Champions League winner, a Europa League winner, an FA Cup winner; a man who left Liverpool and seemingly lost his soul, while going on to win it all.

Three and a half years at Liverpool, Fernando Torres.

Just three and a half years.

He won a load at Chelsea, and hated it.

Mo Salah hated his time at Chelsea too, one imagines, albeit their greatness was reversed, chronologically.

Liverpool were great for Torres’ first two years, and while nothing of silver was won, a lot of games were won. A lot of fun was had. And winning the major honours with Liverpool, as with Steven Gerrard, would have meant more.

For certain players, it simply does mean more. They were adored, the football was high-end (Champions League runs, a title challenge).

After all, does winning anything with PSG, as one example, really mean that much? It gets managers sacked. Players leave, feeling underwhelmed. No one seems to care if you just buy the success.

It’s not Liverpool, is it?

And while there are lots of clubs where winning feels special, Liverpool is reasonably unique as the recent success is not built on dishonest money, and as fans we haven’t had enough (yet) to get fully sated in the way that winning something every season dulls the senses.

Being eight points clear is maybe a twice in a lifetime thing for anyone aged 35 and under, as far as I can recall.

Being eight points clear whilst in the most dominant position in the main European competition is not even something the Reds enjoyed in most of the seasons when winning the European Cup/Champions League.

It wasn’t the case in 2019, or 2005, and in 1981 the Reds finished 5th in the league.

Liverpool did hit the top in November 1984, but only won the league by three points, so I’ve no idea what the gap might have grown to (but they coasted in the run-in, drawing five and losing one of the last nine, so it may have been eight points, in an early season for three for a win, after always being on two points for a win before 1981.)

In 1977 the Reds flitted between first and second until as late as mid-April. In 1978, the Reds flitted between 2nd and 6th, being 5th in April before rising to second.

Even when winning the league in 2019/20, the Reds had lost away at Napoli by this stage, and drew at home to them five years ago this week. This situation, 17 wins in 19 games including some gigantic clubs and dominant teams beaten, is pretty unique.

Liverpool may still win nothing this season, as there are about 40 more games to play. So much can happen.

Headlines like “is the league title already won?” are as dumb as some of the others that drive me mad, as if all we have now is to be told “Ha, Liverpool bottled it!” if it all goes wrong. Nothing is won by November, but to be eight points clear is an ideal situation to build from; but you can also drop nine league points in a week in December.

I don’t want to keep talking about it, and have mostly banned all talk of the Contract Trio on the site as it’s so tedious. It’s every day: players do well, and rather than celebrate the win and their contribution, it’s about “ooh, they haven’t signed a new contract” and “ooh, give them all the dough! Give them all they ask for!”.

It’s pathetic. (But not embarrassing, as I’ve banned the phrase “embarrassing”, as it’s as overused as “negligent”.)

It would be negligent not to give Salah a new contract, just as it would be negligent to sell Philippe Coutinho, who has since gone on to win the Ballon D'or three times, and negligent to not sign anyone bar a very young kid in the summer of 2019 and a “rubbish” backup keeper, and not sign anyone bar an Italian in 2024 who hadn’t had a preseason.

So much negligence. Without it, Liverpool may have had some title challenges in the last decade, and maybe some Champions League finals.

It was negligent to spend £29m on Roberto “Who?” Firmino, and it was negligent to spend up to £43m on a Chelsea reject from Egypt who was a total dud in his time in the Premier League.

Virgil van Dijk was overpriced (it was negligent not to sign someone else when the move initially fell through for five months), and quite why Liverpool signed players from relegated teams was also beyond anyone with any common sense, realising that Andy Robertson and Gini Wijnaldum were rubbish.

Negligent! All of it! And embarrassing! So embarrassing! Excruciatingly embarrassing. It’s so embarrassing I can’t even bring myself to look at the league tables.

But what would life be like without Salah, who has without doubt been one of the greats?

I presume someone else would play, lest Slot only pick ten players. I think the analytics gurus would suggest sticking with eleven players.

And certainly the 16% of Salah’s goals that are penalties could go to someone else, as the most replicable skill.

You’d lose his beautiful passing and game intelligence and tight control (and his smile, and those abs), but you might gain someone who goes past players as he’s as quick as Salah used to be, and who can win the ball back high up with pressing (Salah’s defensive numbers are basically him just blocking passing lanes these days).

Maybe someone two-footed? Good in the air? Someone the refs give free-kicks and penalties to when fouled?

Good in different ways, and maybe like Salah in 2017, not yet valued as even top-class, let alone world-class.

Someone who’ll be better in 2026, not melting. Someone who can give you seven years, at least.

Maybe bring Ben Doak through if he’s physically okay after a year tearing it up with Boro and Scotland.

(To be clear: I’m not saying don’t re-sign Salah, or the other two; just that it’s mentally destabilising to focus about it all the time, especially if you, as a fan, can’t control the process. It’s a negotiation that’s delicate, and the club’s wage structure needs protecting, as part of the foundations of the success, while it should be happening in private but there may be the tactic of messages leaked cryptically by social media managers. Players will be seeking what’s best for them, not for Liverpool FC, and the same is true in reverse. I’d be happy if all three stay, but if they go, they go. The main thing, for this season, is that their standards remain high, and they have – and this is also a classic sign of a final-year contract.)

Last season Salah missed a run of eight league games with injury (his first real absence), including Chelsea, Arsenal, Man City, and the increasingly tricky Bournemouth away. The Reds scored 22, at 2.75 goals per game, winning 2.38ppg.

The team was rebalanced, and it worked.

When finally fit, after a couple of cup games, Liverpool played 10 more league matches with Salah starting, that were easier on paper overall.

But the Reds only scored 19, at 2.00 per game, winning 1.80ppg; and Salah scored six, albeit two were penalties. So only four open-play goals.

That wasn’t all Salah’s fault, clearly; but the sample size said: better without Salah.

Samples of 8-10 games can mislead. But equally, this wasn’t some Rodri-like collapse when he was (rarely) missing. City have gone from amazing to awful since Rodri got injured, in terms of results as well as underlying numbers. They’ve utterly collapsed without him in seven league games and one in the Champions League. Liverpool did not miss Salah for those eight games.

Just as, the club didn’t fall apart when Coutinho was sold, negligently, for £142m that funded Virgil van Dijk and Alisson.

Salah has a slightly above average penalty conversion rate of 81.8%, which makes him very reliable; but below Alexis Mac Allister’s 92.3% from 13 so far in his career. Dominik Szoboszlai’s is even better, with 18 from 19 scored, 94.7%. One of those two will almost always play, if fit.

We’d lose a lot if Salah goes, clearly. We’d lose a player who will go down in history.

We may even lose a lot if he stays, and time finally catches up with him. He’s not going to be this good at 35 based on the law of sporting reality; even Mo Salah will melt, at some point.

But as fans we’re losing the whole point of everything if we’re focusing on anything other than 17 wins from 19 games, and knowing that even losing to Real Madrid and Man City would leave the Reds in an incredible position that seemed unthinkable not so long ago.

To draw with, or beat them, would be insane. Imagine this in the summer: eight points clear, and having won all four against AC Milan, Bologna, RB Leipzig and Leverkusen in the Champions League, with some key players injured.

(Again, Liverpool were great last season with Caoimhín Kelleher in place of Alisson, and it’s not luck that Liverpool signed, developed, blooded and retained, against a lot of pressure and talk, a young lad signed from Ringmahon Rangers in 2015. As if, y’know, the club has consistent, joined-up thinking.)

Once this season provides nothing important to talk about in terms of winning games and winning trophies, then by all means fixate on who might leave and who might stay.

As the 14th Century monk and poet Bono said, “You can hold on to something so tight, you’ve already lost it.”

Let’s enjoy them while we can, and stop feeding the shitshow sideshows and clickbait hell-holes. Let’s enjoy the main event.

Madrid are in town this week. Man City at the weekend. This season, Liverpool are better than both. Mo Salah is only part of that, with Gravenberch the star of the season, Kelleher inspired, Ibrahima Konaté better than ever alongside the evergreen Virgil, and so on.

Luis Díaz has nine non-penalty goals despite being rotated. Cody Gakpo, who rotates with Díaz, has gone up a level, as has Curtis Jones. Conor Bradley will be a world-class right-back fairly soon, but right now is doing a great job, as he did last season. Harvey Elliott, the best lock-picking passer, is fit again but hasn’t played this season. Maybe Federico Chiesa will excite, once he gets the preseason training belatedly into his legs. More kids may emerge.

But so far, so historically good.

This is the season. Now. Right now. Here. Right here.

I keep saying it, but the aim is to enjoy the football, not obsess over transfers in or out, or contracts. Certainly not when things are going this well.

If you can’t enjoy it now, when the fuck can you?