{"id":203537,"date":"2025-12-25T17:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T17:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/203537\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T17:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T17:02:10","slug":"liverpool-praying-for-a-golden-sky-after-seven-months-of-storms-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/203537\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool praying for a golden sky after seven months of storms | Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Virgil van Dijk raised the Premier League trophy on a cool May afternoon at Anfield, the cap was sealed on a serenely glorious season for Liverpool<\/a>. For sure there had been challenges en route to a 20th league title, but not many, and those that did arise were dealt with in a calm, orderly fashion. The ultimate prize had been captured with minimum sweat.<\/p>\n

Cue the celebrations after a final\u2011day 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace<\/a>: players and staff dancing on the pitch, supporters doing the same in the stands, and no sense this was as good as it was going to get for the just-crowned champions. It took less than 24 hours for everything to change and set in motion an astonishing seven\u2011month period in the history of a club where it was probably thought they had seen and done it all.<\/p>\n

Chaos, fear, tragedy, excitement, joy, despair, farce, fallout and setback after setback \u2013 it\u2019s been there in one form or other for Liverpool since the Palace game, starting on the afternoon of Monday 26 May with a trophy parade that drew thousands of people to a 10-mile route through the city. Heavy rain lashed down but that was stopping nobody from rejoicing, including those at the top of an open-top bus where Van Dijk had the Premier League trophy in his hands for a second day in a row but this time with shades on and Calvin Harris at his side. It was a party all right and looked set to continue into the night, but then came the incident for which the parade is remembered<\/a> \u2013 a car ploughing into more than 130 people, with injured victims ranging from a six-month-old to a 77-year-old woman. The horrific moment led this month to the 54-year-old dad-of-three Paul Doyle receiving a jail sentence of more than 21 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That has brought a level of closure for those affected but the sadness and pain will never fully recede, something that can also be said about the death of Diogo Jota in July<\/a>. It is impossible to quantify the impact the sudden loss of a beloved figure has had on everyone associated with Liverpool, and especially those who knew him personally. Andy Robertson\u2019s comments after Scotland sealed qualification for the World Cup with a 4-2 victory over Denmark at Hampden Park<\/a> spoke volumes. \u201cI\u2019ve been in bits today,\u201d the left\u2011back said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get my mate Diogo Jota out of my head. We spoke so much about the World Cup. He missed out last time because of injury, I missed out because Scotland didn\u2019t qualify, and we always discussed what it would be like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immense grief does not pass, certainly not quickly, and as Robertson\u2019s words in November highlight it is still very much there for Liverpool\u2019s players, affecting their minds and, consequently no doubt, their performances, which, to be frank, have been dreadful this season. Nine defeats came in 12 games, with a team renowned for sturdiness and control conceding 10 goals in the final three of those through a combination of individual and collective head\u2011loss. It was Liverpool\u2019s worst run since 1953-54 and felt especially remarkable given a start to the campaign that had brought seven successive wins, albeit the signs were there then that not all was right.<\/p>\n

Diogo Jota lifts the Premier League at a jubilant Anfield on the final day of last season. It was the forward\u2019s last appearance at the stadium before his sudden, tragic death. Photograph: Liverpool FC\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

This has been a collapse, pure and simple, and one no one saw coming when Liverpool broke the British transfer record to sign Alexander Isak from Newcastle for \u00a3125m<\/a> on the final day of the window and take their summer spending to more than \u00a3440m on, among others, Florian Wirtz for \u00a3116m<\/a> and Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 for \u00a379m<\/a>. The biggest outlay in the club\u2019s history appeared to set them up for a run of further titles. Instead they have fallen at the first\u00a0hurdle.<\/p>\n

Now Isak is out for a couple of months at least with a fractured leg<\/a> sustained in Saturday\u2019s win at Tottenham, with Giovanni Leoni, another summer recruit, out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament sustained<\/a> on his debut against Southampton in September. Mohamed Salah is unavailable owing to Africa Cup of Nations duty and may not play for the club again after that <\/a>mixed\u2011zone interview at Leeds<\/a>. And then there are all the other things that have taken place in recent weeks, such as Ekitik\u00e9 being sent off for taking his shirt off<\/a>. Yes, that also happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiverpool\u2019s 2025-26 season has been chaotic,\u201d says the freelance football writer and lifelong supporter Andrew Beasley<\/a>. \u201cEmotions have, understandably, veered all over the place and overall it\u2019s been exhausting to watch. But despite the low points, the club should persist with Arne Slot. How many multiple league-winning managers are out there if they don\u2019t? So much has been invested in the new-look Liverpool, Slot needs time to mould it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is reasonable, albeit Slot has hardly helped with some of his tactics, team selections and general handling of the squad. Equally, he has shown grace under fire and proved to be a compassionate and considerate figurehead in the aftermath of the parade and Jota\u2019s death. For Slot as much as anyone this has been the most trying of times, stretching his remit of \u201chead coach\u201d to the limit, and as he moves through the festive period into the new year the one thing the Dutchman may desire more than anything is a return to the peace of old.<\/p>\n

In that regard it helps that Liverpool\u2019s next game is at home against Wolves. Rob Edwards\u2019 side will arrive at Anfield on Saturday with two points from 17 games and on course to be the worst\u2011performing side in Premier League history. This should be a straightforward win for the hosts. But, then again, nothing has been straightforward for them since that increasingly distant joyful\u00a0spring\u00a0day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Virgil van Dijk raised the Premier League trophy on a cool May afternoon at Anfield, the cap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-203537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}