Just when Liverpool looked to have revived their season, momentum has stalled — with a shudder.
A comprehensive 3-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday shredded the optimism generated by victories over Real Madrid and Aston Villa in the previous week and left Arne Slot’s side eight points adrift of Premier League leaders Arsenal.
Liverpool’s 18 points is the worst record after 11 games of a league title defence since Leicester City in 2016 and problems are mounting in almost every area of the squad.
James Pearce, Simon Hughes, Andy Jones and Gregg Evans assess the 11 most serious issues Slot has to confront as he bids to save his season.
Wirtz’s struggle to adapt
Liverpool’s £116million summer signing of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen was viewed as a major coup.
“He’s exceptional. He’s the best player we’ve got in Germany. The supporters will love him,” former Liverpool midfielder turned Bundesliga pundit Dietmar Hamann told The Athletic.
Slot viewed Wirtz as being integral to filling the creative void in the team following the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold to Real Madrid. The Germany international had provided 34 goals and 35 assists across the two previous seasons for Leverkusen combined.
However, getting the best out of Wirtz has proved elusive. The 22-year-old attacker has found it tough adjusting to the Premier League’s pace and physicality. He has yet to register either a league goal or assist and it’s no coincidence that his most encouraging performances have come in the Champions League where the style has suited him better.
Slot’s initial plan of using Wirtz as a No 10 in a three-man midfield had to be abandoned because they were so open out of possession. The Dutchman has also experimented with using him off both the right and the left. It worked well against Real Madrid but less so at the Etihad, where he was peripheral.
Florian Wirtz has struggled to adapt to the Premier League (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
“Florian needs time to adapt to his teammates, teammates need time to adapt to him,” Slot told reporters before the weekend.
He’s young and needs to be cut some slack, but there’s no doubt that Liverpool have been hampered by the fact it’s November and Wirtz is yet to deliver a standout display in the Premier League.
Balance between consistency and rotation
After beating Aston Villa, Slot made one change for a victory over Real Madrid before the same starting XI was swept aside at Manchester City.
Clearly, Slot was trying to get some momentum into Liverpool’s campaign by choosing consistency over rotation, an approach that served him well in the first half of last season when his team took control of the title race, although it also led to some burnout in the final third of the campaign.
Slot is still towards the bottom end of Premier League managers when it comes to rotation — he has made 15 changes in his league starting XIs, the sixth lowest in the division, and has used 22 players in total.
Players used by each PL club in 2025-26
But across all competitions, he has rotated more this term, albeit while trying to integrate as many as seven new players. That policy changed last week, when consistent selections suggested Liverpool had turned a corner before they ran out of steam in Manchester.
To turn Liverpool around, he needs to find a balance.
Konate’s defensive lapses and lack of cover
Last season, Ibrahima Konate’s partnership with Virgil van Dijk provided the platform for last season’s title success. He used his pace to mop up danger and his power to hold off attackers. He was pretty useful in the build-up phase, too.
This season, it’s a different story. Konate was painfully exposed against Manchester City, making the mistake that led to the penalty Erling Haaland failed to convert, and then allowing the Norwegian a free header for the opening goal. City sensed a weakness and targeted Konate ruthlessly.
Ibrahima Konate was targeted against Manchester City (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
The Frenchman has been so inconsistent this season that he’s fortunate to still be in the team. Although he was dominant against Arsenal and Real Madrid, errors have occurred far too often.
He started the season slowly, was particularly bad in the defeats to Crystal Palace, Galatasaray and Brentford, and appears low on confidence.
The lack of defensive cover is not helping, either. Liverpool have only Joe Gomez to turn to after missing out on Marc Guehi and cruelly losing Giovanni Leoni to injury.
The fact that Konate’s contract standoff is not even a major talking point says a lot about his form. In seven weeks, he can talk to European clubs about signing a pre-contract as a free agent; few on Merseyside are clamouring for him to be offered big money by Liverpool.
Isak’s struggles
Alexander Isak was always going to need time to get up to speed after joining Liverpool on deadline day in a British record £125million transfer.
Going on strike at Newcastle United enabled him to get the move he wanted but, having missed so much of pre-season and the opening weeks of the new campaign, he was in no shape to make an instant impression.
With a special fitness programme drawn up, the hope internally was that, by October, Isak would be physically ready to show why he’s regarded as one of the Premier League’s most lethal marksmen.
It hasn’t happened. His Liverpool career currently spans just 429 minutes of football across eight appearances in all competitions (six starts). His only goal was a close-range finish against second-tier Southampton in the Carabao Cup.
Alexander Isak has had fitness struggles (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
When he has played, too often he has looked isolated and his only goal involvement in the Premier League was an assist for Cody Gakpo at Chelsea.
No sooner had Slot declared Isak’s ‘pre-season’ over, he broke down, picking up a groin injury against Eintracht Frankfurt last month as the intensity of two starts in four days proved too much. The 26-year-old hasn’t featured in the five matches since, with Slot deciding to leave him on the bench at the Etihad after he only returned to team training on Friday.
Properly integrating Isak in the team after the international break is going to be crucial to delivering an upturn in fortunes. He really has to step up.
Slow starts and conceding first
Liverpool currently appear to be beaten as soon as they concede first.
Incredibly, they have not recovered a single point from a losing position in the Premier League this season, which looks even worse when the figures from the title-winning campaign are compared.
When Liverpool have conceded first (PL)
TeamConceded first?Time conceded 1st goal
No
64mins
No
57mins
No
–
No
–
No
58mins
Yes
9mins
Yes
14mins
Yes
2mins
Yes
5mins
No
–
Yes
29mins
No team recovered more points (23) after going behind than Liverpool last season, as Slot showed his prowess with clever tweaks and alterations.
This season, though, is the exact reverse. Defeats to Crystal Palace, Brentford, Chelsea, Manchester United, and Manchester City have all come after Liverpool have let in the first goal.
Liverpool have had problems in the past with slow starts, particularly in 2022 under Jurgen Klopp, but their impressive powers of recovery pulled them through. It was the same last season and they found strength at the right time. How they need a bit of that resolve again now.
Fitness issues
One of the reasons Liverpool hired Slot was his ability to keep players fit and performing at their peak.
His sidekick Ruben Peeters was also lauded as a performance expert who had improved the availability rate of Feyenoord’s squad. Those skills seemed to have been transferred to Liverpool last season as the squad was handled with care and consideration.
The work that goes on behind the scenes remains incredibly detailed. Yet the issues around player availability this season are clear.
Take two key players at either end of the pitch. In September at Galatasaray, Alisson sustained a fifth hamstring injury in three years and has missed the last eight games. Experts told The Athletic that the risk of recurrence with hamstring injuries is high, and the fact he’s picked up his two most recent ones in different ways highlights that.
Last year against Palace, Alisson was hurt while kicking long downfield, but at Galatasaray, the problem occurred when he sprinted back towards his goal after a loose Ibrahima Konate pass.
Alisson walks off after sustaining an injury at Galatasaray (Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images)
Giovanni Leoni’s ACL injury on debut was pure bad luck but Isak, as mentioned above, has had issues caused by having a disrupted pre-season, while Alexis Mac Allister also missed a large chunk of the summer and Curtis Jones has also missed games.
Maybe Jeremie Frimpong sums up how things are going wrong for Liverpool right now. His durability and the fact he had missed just two games for Bayer Leverkusen over the previous three seasons were part of what made him so coveted, yet he has already sustained two hamstring injuries in the opening three months.
Set-piece frailty
Fed up hearing about set pieces? Unfortunately, Liverpool continue to concede from them.
While it is a different story in Europe as Liverpool have scored four times from dead balls, Nico Gonzalez’s goal for Manchester City was the sixth goal Slot’s side have conceded from a set piece in the league. It’s one of the top flight’s worst records.
The concern is that the goals have come in several different ways. There was the long free kick against Newcastle that wasn’t dealt with. Against Southampton in the Carabao Cup and Crystal Palace in the league, poor headed clearances by Wataru Endo and Ryan Gravenberch respectively presented simple chances.
Long throw-ins cost them against Palace and Brentford and their concentration slipped during the second phase of the set piece conceded against Manchester United when Harry Maguire was one of three players unmarked at the back post.
Aaron Briggs was appointed as the full-time set-piece coach in the summer, with Lewis Mahoney arriving as first-team set-piece analyst, and it seems inconceivable that work isn’t being done on the training ground to address the situation. Slot even admitted that Liverpool had spent the day before the trip to Brentford preparing for Michael Kayode’s long throws.
But a solution does not seem forthcoming. Liverpool’s current squad and summer recruitment is not built for set-piece defending, in a league that has become so dominated by them.
Konate and Van Dijk are Liverpool’s only aerially dominant players. Darwin Nunez — who was excellent as a near-post defender — has been sold, with nobody capable of taking that role.
Concentration, desire and aggression all deserved to be scrutinised when it comes to Liverpool’s set-piece defending at present.
Winger depth and the lack of an out ball
There were a lot of sensible reasons for selling Luis Diaz to Bayern Munich, but what is looking less sensible is not signing a direct replacement.
It meant Liverpool began the season with only two senior wingers in Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo. Federico Chiesa is apparently only viewed as an option from the bench and 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha remains a work in progress. Two summer arrivals — Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz — can operate there but it is not a natural role for either.
Wirtz, for example, had his best game for Liverpool in that position against Real Madrid, but on the two occasions he has been deployed there in the Premier League – away to Crystal Palace and Manchester City – he has been non-existent.
But neither he nor Ekitike are prolific one-on-one dribblers. Diaz did have the ability to take on his defender and also was able to carry Liverpool up the pitch, rather than wait for the ball to be fed to him in the final third.
Luis Diaz has been missed since his move to Bayern Munich (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
Their all-round general play is suffering, too. Liverpool have struggled in their initial build-up phase this season, and they no longer have Trent Alexander-Arnold to open the game up or relieve pressure with his passing range. And even when they do go long towards Salah or Gakpo, the ball is not sticking with them.
While a smaller sample size must be considered, if we look at the turnover percentage (possession lost as a share of total touches), Salah’s 35 per cent last season has increased slightly to 38 per cent this season, while Gakpo’s has jumped from 26 per cent to 31 per cent. Diaz was at 24 per cent last season playing as a left winger and No 9.
Liverpool’s centre-forward position is also part of the hold-up problem, with neither Ekitike or Isak, despite their height, being proper target men.
Salah’s work rate
Mohamed Salah’s role in Liverpool’s system has been the subject of much debate.
To get the best out of the Egypt international, Slot wanted him to stay high up the pitch and gave him few defensive responsibilities. Less defensive work equalled more offensive output.
Nobody was questioning it when Salah produced arguably his best season for the club to spearhead Liverpool’s title charge, but when the output decreases and opponents see that flank as a weakness, perceptions change.
Marc Cucurella spoke openly about Chelsea targeting it before their meeting with Liverpool in October. Manchester City, through Nico O’Reilly and Jeremy Doku, also did so to great effect on Sunday, where Salah offered very little help to Conor Bradley against Doku.
Salah cannot be expected to do everything in an attacking sense for his team, but when he is not finishing the chances he does get, then there needs to be more impact off the ball.
(Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Pressing problems
Yet Salah’s role is only part of Liverpool’s wider pressing problem. Last season, Luis Diaz (No 9) and Dominik Szoboszlai (No 10) were instrumental in setting the tone of Liverpool’s out-of-possession work.
Yet at the start of this season, Diaz had been sold while Szoboszlai was playing in a deeper role. Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz replaced them and have taken time to get used to Liverpool’s pressing system.
Slot has tweaked his team’s out-of-possession shape to an asymmetrical 4-3-3 but, in his bid to improve his side when they do not have the ball, he has moved Szoboszlai back into the No 10 role to lead the press.
There hasn’t been much difference in Liverpool’s pressing intensity — shown in the graph below, illustrating their 10-game rolling average for opponent passes per defensive action — but it is the impact that is proving problematic.
Opposition style of play has been a factor. The increased use of long balls against Liverpool has given them fewer pressing opportunities, as has conceding goals earlier in the game, as opponents then do not need to take as many risks near their own goal.
Salah’s goals against Brentford and Aston Villa were two of the rare occasions where Liverpool have been able to force high turnovers that led to goals this season.
In 2024-25, they averaged 4.4 regains in the attacking third.
That has dropped to 3.8 per game this season.
While Szoboszlai’s return brought improvements against Villa and Madrid, it was a failed high press that led to Manchester Ciy’s opening goal — although Liverpool recovered their positions before conceding.
Diaz has been a huge miss out of possession. His second goal for Bayern against Paris Saint-Germain recently illustrated the relentless drive to win the ball back and create a chance for a teammate or, in that instance, himself.
The impact of Diogo Jota’s death
This may appear at the end of our assessment of Liverpool’s issues, but in truth any appraisal of the club’s season should be seen through the prism of Diogo Jota’s tragic death in the summer.
It would be unfair to list this as something for Slot to solve; rather as a huge factor to consider when dealing with players and staff, perhaps even before he is able to confront any of his own grief.
The tragedy of Jota’s passing, alongside his brother Andre Silva, brings awkward realities. Some of Liverpool’s players have discussed Jota’s passing since July but they seem to know that if they offer too much context, especially when they lose, it might sound like they are trying to offer an excuse.
They might also think that aligning the poor results of a football team with the death of a teammate sounds disrespectful. Others might, understandably, be unwilling to share some of the emotional challenges they are facing with the rest of the world.
That does not mean they are not real.