The Merseysiders currently find themselves just inside the Champions League spots (presuming that England takes the additional spot on coefficient scores.
As things stand (as of 23 March), the Premier League is all but guaranteed to win one of two extra European Performance Spots by UEFA.
Whilst Liverpool’s performances in Europe may contradict matters at home, the fact of the matter remains that Arne Slot’s men are considerably off the boil.
Indeed, Spencer Mossman’s analysis on X (formerly Twitter) highlights that the club has suffered a massive drop-off from their title-winning form of 2024/25.
Yes, still qualifying for the Champions League would have to represent a small victory for the club in light of the turmoil of the season.
But this is still a squad carrying so much quality that it has to be considered something of a failure if we’re only holding on to Champions League football as a result of a technicality.
To be completely fair to Slot, it’s not like his predecessor, Jurgen Klopp, delivered season upon season of incredible success.
But you always got the sense, even in the “difficult” seasons, that things were being worked upon behind the scenes to get some kind of sustainable improvement from the second half of the campaign.
Take the 2020/21 season as an example, with injuries decimating our backline and forcing the likes of Nathaniel Phillips and Rhys Williams into the limelight.
By early March, Liverpool were toiling in eighth, but won eight out of their remaining 10 Premier League games to ensure a top-three finish in the table.
That’s title-winning form. Or, at the very least, top two form.
But this toothless Reds outfit looks incredibly unlikely to win 80% of their remaining seven league games on current form, and that’s despite having an arguably more functional starting-XI to work with.
In fact, to get near the same points total in 2020/21, Slot’s Liverpool would have to win every remaining game (which would take us to 70 points).
As we close in on April, however, there’s simply no sign of us getting our act together for the business end of the season.
If our Dutch head coach is to survive beyond the summer, he has to prove that he can inspire a similar turnaround to his predecessor.
