Sack Slot! FSGOut! Sell ALL These Players – It’s Time For Change!
Alternatively: Reasons To Be Cheerful – A Readable Roundup of Facts/Stats on Liverpool’s Season (FREE READ)
True headline:
Reasons To Be Cheerful – A Readable Roundup of Facts/Stats on Liverpool’s Season
I’ve written a few in-depth pieces this past week that I wanted to draw some key points from, and present in bullet-point form, for those who struggle with detail, or who want something easy to digest and share.
I hear people like bullet-points. (People also like hysterical headlines, so you can have that too. And an exploding-head thumbnail.)
Some are simple facts of football life, others more specific, others facts of general life. A lot are topics I often return to, and use in my toolkit of rational thinking (when I’m not hysterically accusing referees of being secret lizard people, albeit it seems I was pretty close on David Coote).
So …
• New teams take time to gel (more often than not).
• Players take time to adjust (more often than not).
• The two above feed into one another. “Building proper relationships on the pitch always takes time too, whether it be between the right-back and Salah or Florian Wirtz and Isak,” said Danny Murphy on the BBC, talking a lot of sense.
• ‘Expectations are the thief of joy’. The more you expect, the less room it leaves to be happy, or even contented. Expect to win 5-0, and a 4-0 win is ‘meh’.
• Passion clouds judgement. We want to be passionate as fans, but it’s not helpful if it’s at the expense of our judgement.
• Transitional seasons are just that: erratic, new, different, unfamiliar, clunky; individual brilliance may be more important as systems take time.
• The people who demand tons of new expensive signings are likely the kind who then have no patience for the team to gel, as they live in a world of instant rewards and zero personal effort; as if it’s all just click and play.
• Even the very best players struggle more often than not when moving club.
See:
• Arne Slot plays league-winning football. But for the pandemic, he would likely have won the title with three different clubs since 2020, all unfancied. He’s positive, and rarely has his team in a defensive shell (maybe Man City away last season). That leaves some openness, just as Liverpool had eight years of “Trent Alexander-Arnold can be got at/he’s out of position/he can’t defend!”, and mostly, for all his defensive struggles or the space in behind him, the Reds won a hell of a lot of games. This is risk-reward.
• The more positive Slot gets in chasing a win, the more it leaves a chance to be countered by the many fast attackers in this league. This is risk-reward. Liverpool got equalisers against Palace and Chelsea with ‘too many’ attackers on the pitch to be balanced, which caused problems after the equaliser (but the equaliser was the primary aim, as without that, you stand no chance). Chelsea were only ahead due to a great shot from distance, and Liverpool missed some big chances.
• Research that I’ve quoted many times shows that teams tend to improve with time together, up to five years before a plateau or decline. My own analysis from a dozen years ago showed that the season after the season of a big spend is when the big uptick generally occurs. (Ergo: transitional season, then season of fruition.)
• Liverpool’s underlying defensive numbers from the last seven games (excluding the League Cup) are excellent, given standard of opposition – bar Palace away.
• Teams are scoring more from lower value chances/lower xG against Liverpool right now, which isn’t sustainable; it’s ‘hot’ finishing that is above the law of averages. Sometimes they will be below the law of averages (as was the case in 2019/20, in the winter, when all opponents kept missing Big Chances).
• The Reds have played seven (of the other 24) of the top 25 European teams, six of the top 17, and five of the other top 13. (Six of the top 12 right now are English sides, and 12 of the top 25. The league has never been stronger.)
• In the next six games Liverpool play Man United, Aston Villa, Real Madrid and Man City from the top 25, plus Palace in the cup (what we all need is more games against Crystal Palace; there haven’t been enough since May). Even Frankfurt away is not an easy game.
• In the league, Liverpool have played the teams in 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th, and Newcastle in 11th.
• Liverpool have played no one below 11th, apart from Burnley (which was away, where all four of Burnley’s points have come from their other two home games, and where they went unbeaten last season).
• [Addition]: Liverpool’s record is better than in the same seven fixtures last season, conceding almost 50% less xG Against, and winning one extra point. Contexts are different (some better, some worse), but just as a barometer, these were games Liverpool where were not going to rack up big wins. (The difference is that Liverpool’s defence has been tighter in this season’s games in terms of chances conceded.) Palace and Bournemouth are miles ahead of where they were a year ago.
• I’ve written in the past about Density and Intensity, and how the less time there is between big games, and the more big games come one after another, the harder each gets, in cumulative fashion. So, Palace away, Galatasaray away and Chelsea away in a week has multiplications of difficulty, leaving you shattered by the end of the third game.
• Yes, Liverpool spent a lot of money, but raised a lot of money too. It wasn’t just adding, adding, adding.
• Much of the churn of the summer was unavoidable, necessitated by a key player walking away (almost for free), another agitating for a move to Barcelona or Bayern (he got the latter), and one of the most beloved and ‘uniting’ players dying.
• Others were restless for more game-time (Darwin Núñez, Harvey Elliott, Caoimhín Kelleher Ben Doak, et al), while Andy Robertson, possibly carrying an injury and now into his 30s, was a shadow of his former self, and so a new left-back was needed.
• Indeed, Jürgen Klopp rarely even included new signing Robertson in his squad for the first few months of 2017/18, selecting Alberto Moreno (Alberto Moreno!), and saying that Robertson could only play left-back, and the bench had to have more versatile players, until Robertson was deemed good enough to start.
• So Robertson started just two games (excluding the League Cup) before December 2nd in his first season. From what I can tell, he was only in seven of the first 22 squads (two starts, five on the bench, 15 in the stands). This was Robbo, aged 23, with years of English football experience; then, for a good half-dozen years, as effective a left-back as you’ll see. Keep that in mind when assessing Milos Kerkez and others.
• Fabinho was similar a year later, not making his away league debut until November 2018, at Arsenal, where he had a torrid time. He was the earliest summer arrival. Like many before him, he took a bit of time to adjust.
• Mo Salah normally starts seasons in unstoppable form. But he had a tough summer, and clearly felt a lot of pain over the loss of Saint Diogo. He’s got new teammates. He may be melting, but I thought that in 2023 – and in 2024/25 he was better than ever. Is he easing off after a new deal? Could the Reds do with more defending from him? All could be possible. Or, he could just be having a difficult time, with only one penalty goal too. (He is always, without fail, haunted at Stamford Bridge, with his head scrambled, but it was good that he was more involved, even if he had several poor shots.)
• Defending the title is harder.
• Arsenal lost no one of note, and spent pretty big too. Everyone has said they have the best squad, but with Chelsea they clearly have the biggest. They have a really nice age profile. They are proper contenders this season, albeit while they’ve had some tough games, they’ve also had promoted Leeds and struggling Notts Forest and West Ham at home, from four home games (Liverpool have only had three, with four away). I have no problem if people think Arsenal are favourites. But they should be.
• Leading from the front is harder. Loss aversion means you feel more pressure to not lose what you feel you already have. Arsenal have yet to prove they can stay the course, but this could be the season. In terms of games played, the Relative Performance Index has Arsenal and Liverpool miles ahead of the pack. But it’s just one way to assess things, for the first third of a season.
(In Ange Postecoglou’s first season when Spurs were top after eight games, I noted that the RPI had them well off top spot, and duly they fell away, despite Gary Neville saying they’d finish above Liverpool. Once again, Spurs’ opponents have the lowest points won, which was the red flag in 2023; even if things can always change.)
• To have played, in the first nine meaningful games, Arsenal, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace (away), Atletico Madrid, Newcastle (away), Galatasaray (away) and Chelsea (away), plus a Mersey derby against a buoyant Everton, is a far tougher set of games than the norm, with more away than at home (and Burnley’s home form is excellent). Include the cup, and Arne Slot has won 70% of his games this season. Imagine calling that a crisis!
• It was clear that Liverpool needed a transition as long ago as early 2023. Jürgen Klopp rebuilt the midfield, which Arne Slot has taken further (and they’ve all aged-in and adapted). A year for Slot to assess things turned in Premier League glory.
• When would you have preferred this transition? Last season, or this season? Or do you think it could have been delayed?
• Preseason is vital, to build stamina loads and team understandings, and many teams struggle after delayed, interrupted or impaired preseasons.
• *No one* at Liverpool had a normal preseason. The weeks after the Jota tragedy would have been far from the usual intensity. Danny Murphy rightly said on the BBC: “The physical aspect they are missing will come because the players who did not have a proper pre-season, like Alexander Isak, Mac Allister, Bradley and Hugo Ekitiké, will reach peak fitness soon.” But it’s more than that. As I said, no one at Liverpool had a proper preseason.
• Grief is exhausting. Grief and shock means bad sleep, and all kinds of issues. “Grief is exhausting because the body releases stress hormones and experiences physical and emotional strain from the loss, and associated responsibilities. This can manifest as fatigue, headaches, and body aches, in addition to the emotional pain of sorrow and anxiety.”
• Since the spring I’ve lost my mother to old age, and my neighbour and friend, aged 47, to cancer. In between, I felt the ‘parasocial’ grief of Saint Diogo’s death. It takes a long time to rebound to your normal levels. It wears you down. Players are not robots or computer characters. They cannot just override these things because they are “professionals” or well-paid.
• Conor Bradley is still young, and was one of the ‘McJota’ clan, with Andy Robertson and Caoimhín Kelleher, who socialised with Saint Diogo at the horse-racing and darts; and now has the pressure of replacing Trent Alexander-Arnold, after he also had a minor preseason injury at a vital time that put his fitness back a bit. Imagine being 21, as he was at the time, and seeing a close friend and literal mentor (Jota helped him a lot early on), and you’re at that friend’s funeral when preseason should be underway? (He also lost his father in 2024.)
• Even those new guys who arrived in time for preseason and didn’t know Diogo Jota, like Wirtz – is it normal to walk into a new club, a new environment, pretty much on the day a beloved teammate dies in horrific circumstances? When half the teammates are the off to his funeral? And the mood is one of utter shock and bereavement? Others then arrived after no preseason at all.
• Physiologically, on average, pace starts to peak from 23-27, while strength and stamina peak later, from mid-to-late 20s, into the early 30s. (Men also tend to get less impulsive after the age of 25, with later-maturing brains.) You get outliers, but that’s the norm.
• In any season, a younger player can improve in each area; and added greater experience, maturity and composure, and a player can almost square or cube their physical and mental capacity. You’ll often see players start to go stellar in their mid-20s; even ones like Antoine Semenyo (signed by Richard Hughes) and Eberechi Eze, who just grow physically, mentally and experientially into top-class players from lower league ‘nobodies’ in their early 20s.
• The Premier League is brutal. “When I joined Liverpool back in the day, I lost six kilos in weight because of the intensity of the league”. Dirk Kuyt, who was already famously super-fit. And the Premier League is even further ahead in those terms now, with Opta defining it as a league apart from all others.
• Younger players are suffering far more injuries, due to the insane intensity of the top-level games. If you’re old enough you may be good enough, but you’re at risk of ACLs, growth-related issues and injuries, and stress fractures, as I’ve been noting for a couple of years. Almost all of Liverpool’s best teenagers in the past five years have suffered really serious injuries. (Hopefully the brilliant Stefan Bajčetić will be back soon, and Giovanni Leoni will likewise fulfil his potential after the horrors of his knee injury on debut; whereas Kaide Gordon just lost too many years, like so many others.)
• From what I can tell, the age 22/23 seems to be when the full ‘adult’ body is in place (finished growing, and adjusting to a new body), but then further developments are made in those regards, and others. So you’re past the highest injury risks, but players generally peak in their late 20s, on average, due to multiple factors.
• Florian Wirtz could have had 1-2 goals by now, but hasn’t due to missing chances, or great saves. However, he should have two assists, from creating for others, who missed those chances. He nearly had assist of the season at Chelsea; instead, Alexander Isak has that crown. Wirtz is doing lots of great things in games, but not yet the defining things. That will come, and as he’s a quiet lad, he’ll grow in terms of personality and stature.
• New players often pass to their elders, in deferential ways. A few times, Wirtz has looked for Salah, instead of going it alone. Feeling at home and able to take those chances on is part of the adaptation to a new club; of belonging. Hugo Ekitiké, meanwhile, is older, more confident, less burdened by price tag, and has experienced difficulties of a move that failed (to PSG), that are helping him now. Wirtz needs time, but he is so clever, as well as talented.
• This season, Liverpool have had 10-20 attacks that blew my mind. Mostly, moves have broken down, but a few times each game it all clicks. That frequency should increase with time.
• The next batch of six main games is also tough (including Man United, Man City and Real Madrid, plus Aston Villa). But after November, it really is much easier on paper, possibly for the rest of the season; in terms of far more ‘easier’ games in amongst the hard.
• Palace away has become noisy. But Galatasaray away felt like a hatred for the West was built in, as a geopolitical undertone; while the hate for Liverpool at St James’ Park was palpable. Even Burnley, with promoted teams away, early in the season, always the worst time to face them (and their still-jubilant fans). These have been cauldrons, and it’s good experience. But home fans and teams will bring their A-game when Liverpool are in town.
• Bad pitches (Galatasaray especially) are levellers. It’s the same for both sides, but the home side is used to it, and if the away side wants to play it on the deck, it will suit the home side. Galatasaray played over the cabbage patch from their deep block, and Liverpool didn’t have the personnel (or space) to go over the top all game after the early weird penalty. Premier League pitches are thankfully much better than that absolute shithole.
• When Liverpool got a stonewall penalty for a crazy handball at Burnley, their fans sang “Premier League, corrupt as fuck”. When Anthony Gordon took Virgil van Dijk out at the knee and raked studs all the way down to his achilles, the Newcastle fans sang “Premier League, corrupt as fuck”. How are Liverpool going to get fair decisions when the refs are facing absolutely unhinged conspiracy thinking, which the data, as I’ve shown, generally does not back up and even contradicts? (and Liverpool suffer most in various refereeing and VARring metrics).
• Belief in a ‘Red Cartel’ has seen fans of other clubs acting like Q-Anon. Often the clubs saying it the most are those run by corrupt regimes and possibly charged with financial cheating, in a weird inversion of reality.
• Liverpool have only had one league penalty this season, which is down per-game on what, for once, wasn’t a bad season last year for penalties (Liverpool generally got fewer when Jürgen Klopp was boss).
• If Liverpool had received even just the two that Arsenal have, then in a season of lower-scoring, tight games, one extra penalty could have made a difference. (Even if Alexander Isak didn’t get a penalty for being elbowed in the face on Sunday, it was far more contact than the one that cost Liverpool the game in Turkey. Andy Robertson also looked fouled at Chelsea, but they never showed a replay. VAR also ignored a clear early-game red-card handball on the first day, to make that match much harder. Since fans started singing about the Premier League being corrupt, Liverpool have had even worse refereeing.)
• Sky lost 10% of their viewers last year as Liverpool ran away with the Premier League title. My rational guess is that, as views and clicks are everything in the attention economy, and Sky and TNT need subscribers, they really, really don’t want Liverpool to win it this season (or at least, run away with it). I think Jamie Carragher, Kelly Cates and other Red-hearted people do, even if they may have to try hard to look unbiased, but mostly football is heading towards ratings and entertainment and narratives, over sport and integrity.
• The media want an exciting title race. They don’t want Liverpool doing what they did in 2019/20 and 2024/25. They really don’t. Some, if also Evertonians or Man United fans, will want it even less. They’ll be kind to Liverpool when they have no choice, then put the boot in first chance they get.
• Liverpool and Man United struggling is great for the general media, as these are the two most-hated clubs by ‘neutrals’. These drive schadenfreude-rubbernecking clicks. I increasingly feel “live by the schadenfreude, die by the schadenfreude”. It’s best to limit your schadenfreude, and avoid it in return. I don’t feel that as much, as I deleted my Twitter account and rarely use any social media (mostly commenting only on here behind the paywall), but it seeps through in television commentaries, and various other ways. It gets under your skin.
• Refs also seem to have big problems with Liverpool and Man United, perhaps not helped by how many officials are from Manchester or Merseyside. It makes it really complicated for them, and some aren’t always ‘honest’ with it.
• But mainly, I sense that all refs feel a pressure to rule against the two Red Giants in matches, especially when the two are away from home, where the paranoia is greatest from rabid home supporters. In terms of fouls received, it’s certainly true since 2022 (which is as far back as I looked).
• This, below, is from an in-depth piece I’ll publish (and thus explain) at some point, looking at three years of foul free-kicks won in the Premier League. The right side of the graph is where you want to be, and the middle is where a logical ‘fairness’ resides
Simple explanation: home, and away, foul free-kicks won, compared with possession, where usually – on average overall – more possession means winning more fouls. Conclusion: WTF?!
• “Crises” sell. The algorithms love outrage and catastrophe, which is why I’ll never get the attention some outrage merchant does. I may do the occasional ironic headline (okay, after writing this, I decided to have some fun). Sack Slot! #FSGout!
• Three narrow defeats, two clearly underserved, in three tough away games in a week is not a crisis or even close. Russell Martin at Rangers was a crisis, but even then, I feel really uneasy at the campaigns of true hatred against managers and owners, and even players; online, but now spreading to IRL (as with more extreme political movements), to attack, and confront, and intimidate. Once fans are looking to attack their own players/managers or stop the team coach or raid the training ground, it’s all gone far too far. Once you reach that level it’s time to take up needlecraft.
The Libero podcast had an excellent episode on how football has gone mental and become too online, and how the internet is driving football discourse to insane extremes:
(I just hope they weren’t talking about me …)
• Outcome bias. Liverpool had all the best chances against Chelsea, and on the balance of play, merited a 2:1 xG win. Chelsea created nothing until a tiring Liverpool, with two midfielders in the back four (and their own centre-back injuries that the commentary ignored), were undone in the 95th minute, with only a minute of the wasted time from the goal added. Chelsea “deserved” to win, apparently. But had Liverpool taken their earlier chances, then people would have said Liverpool deserved to win. Chelsea, at home, with billions spent, attacked late on. They hadn’t just travelled to Istanbul midweek, and weren’t giving a debut to the keeper. Gary Neville listed all of Chelsea’s caveats, but none of Liverpool’s. (He really wants a title race, ideally one not involving Liverpool.)
• Moises Caicedo, £115m man who struggled for 1-2 years after moving to Chelsea, despite being Premier League-adapted, was truly superb. I talk about him in this article below, but also Ryan Gravenberch, Luka Modrić, Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez, Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Ousmane Dembélé, Robert Lewandowski, and various other elite players who had at least one horrible or massively diminished ‘new season’ at a club:
• The piece includes this table (below), showing the worst ‘new’ seasons (compared to their previous seasons). See piece for details/caveats.
• Panic is contagious; it’s not legal to shout fire in a public theatre because panic will ensue, even if there’s no fire (indeed, it’s perfectly legal to do so if there is a fire, naturally, and even advisable). Social media is so unhelpful as it spreads panic, and a sense of dread. It’s a constant scream of “fire!”, but we know not where the fire is, just that we see glimpses of something bad, and extrapolate. This then leads to confirmation bias, and various other distortions.
• Misery loves company.
• Cynicism is sexy. Realism is not. Positivity is seen as really uncool, but mindless positivity is as worthless as mindless negativity. “It’s so easy to hate/It takes strength to be gentle and kind”, sang Morrissey, before he grew less gentle and kind.
• Negativity bias, due to evolutionary hard-wiring, means we often experience negative things five times as strongly as positive things; positive things are good, and we need them; but negative things can kill us in an instant. (If sex or good food can kill you in an instant, you’re doing it wrong.)
• So remember, you’re often feeling a lot more negative than the true picture. (Liverpool not winning the league will not kill you, it will not be unbearable. You can bear it … unless Everton win the title and you live with an Evertonian, perhaps.)
• People catastrophise. The reality is barely as bad as we paint it. (Unless Everton win the title and you live with an Evertonian, etc, etc….)
• Football is awash with black-and-white thinking. “The world is like that: ‘Oh my God, you are great!’ Then it is, ‘Oh no! You’re shit.’ There’s no grey area anymore. And very often life is grey.” (Jürgen Norbert Klopp, September 2025, essentially describing black-and-white thinking.)
• The Hedonic Treadmill means that with raised expectations and acclimatisation to new highs, more is required just to keep us on an even keel; just like a drug addict needing a bigger fix just to get to normal. Fifteen months ago, being 2nd, by just one point, after seven tough games would have been a massive positive.
• Liverpool are 2nd, and have deserved to win most games by my reckoning, but have loads of areas where things will improve with time, training, ageing, growing and having a bit more luck.
• Set-pieces are increasingly important, and this season has seen the aerial long-throw bombardment back too.
• Liverpool haven’t made the most of their attacking set-pieces yet (and fluffed a few headers when defending). This is an area where Slot was refused a work permit for his Feyenoord coach, and now Aaron Briggs has moved to the role full-time. I feel that in recent games, the bounces in both boxes have fallen perfectly to the opposition. In other periods, they will fall Liverpool’s way. I prefer inswinging corners, but sometimes whenever Liverpool have an attacking set-piece, the ref then blows for a foul.
• Personally, I’m set for an exciting 5-7 years with the bulk of this team, to gel together and grow into greatness, with kids like Rio Ngumoha ageing in, and a buy or two each year.
• I would not sack Slot or offload any of the new players this season, regardless of what happens. When Klopp arrived he said ‘five years’, and he was right. I spent a lot of time in years 1-2 defending his record. Liverpool are ahead of that level now, but it’s still not about instant fixes.
• But this shit doesn’t sell. I make almost no money (gain no new paying subscribers) unless Liverpool win big, or buy an exciting players. Free pieces, like this, tend to drive zero new subscribers, yet I want people who may have an open mind to consider the points I raise, and to counter the bad takes. It would be nice if people paid to subscribe to TTT, to help me keep doing this, as I have since 2009, as my only form of income (bar a few sporadic book sales, that also tank with results!). If it’s not for you, or you’re too impatient, that’s perfect too.
• If you find football stressful, imagine if your entire income depended on Liverpool succeeding? I have nothing to gain by Liverpool failing. I’ve also been doing this for 25 years, and I’m learning all the time; but basic truisms endure.
• But apart from ironic headlines, I won’t be pandering to the algorithm and the hysteria. I hope I can survive in this new, increasingly insane attention/outrage economy – yet if you appreciate TTT, help to make sure it’s still here, at least for the next five years before AI turns us all into paperclips.
Otherwise, buy my most recent book on Liverpool winning the league, via all global Amazon online outlets:
