Stick or Twist

And so, the end is near. For the season, this newsletter, and maybe Arne Slot at Liverpool. What should the club do?

After Diogo Jota died, I said I didn’t care if Liverpool finished 17th this season. How can anything on a football pitch matter after a tragedy?

While I have frequently become annoyed during matches this season, I broadly stand by what I said. We have seen Mohamed Salah crying on the pitch. Andy Robertson was unable to think of anything else before playing a crucial World Cup qualifier, a tournament for which Portugal have symbolically included Jota in their squad. The pain doesn’t fade easily or quickly.

To expect the grieving Reds of 2025/26 to be ultra competitive entirely misses the weight of what they endured (and continue to carry).

“Nobody can prepare for what we had to go through… the first time me seeing the lads after the trophy days, we’re on a plane on the way to one of our mate’s funerals. It’s been tough and we can’t hide away from that.”

Andy Robertson, The Overlap, May 2026

And to be clear, I thought they would win the league or at least be in the race when the season began. It’s just that I was also willing to accept a lost season in a way many supporters were not. There’s no right or wrong here, it’s just cards on the table time.

We’ve reached that point because the season is ending. The club need to decide whether to stick with Arne Slot (as appears likely) or twist on somebody else. Many fans are hoping, even demanding, the suits opt for the latter. But supporters worry about table positions and 19 defeats and being behind Manchester United and jokes from their mates at their expense and if the manager has a mid-season holiday and players’ social media posts.

Much of that is noise. Bad optics, to use a phrase of the day, but mostly noise.

FSG, Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes will be concerned with the signal. Trying to find some of that here is the perfect way to round off the final edition of this newsletter.

The End of the Newsletter

Many of the talking points which follow have been touched on throughout the campaign. We can now assess them with the season (effectively) over to try to determine what impact they have upon Slot’s immediate job prospects.

Open Play

There are two obvious ways to approach this: a comparison with the rest of the league or a look at the shifts since 2024/25. For the former, you can make a case that Liverpool have been broadly fine. Their expected goal difference is only 0.07 per game below champions Arsenal (though we’ll get to set plays shortly).

The concern for fans is how much of this is down to Slot versus how much rests with the brilliance of players who are improvising rather than working to coached plans.

The Reds’ other problem is not so much the season-wide performance as the trend. Liverpool rescued Jürgen Klopp’s poorer campaigns by finishing strongly. It engenders positivity about the future, unlike the way in which Slot’s side are stumbling over the finishing line for 2025/26.

Gathering cups in May? Gathering a few decent performances would do for now.

If Liverpool dispense with Slot having recently backed him, this chart explains at least some of why they will have had a change of heart.

The Reds’ open play xG difference average for the season peaked at match 15 (the 3-3 draw at Leeds), when it equated to 0.63 per game. It has hit 0.6 at points since, but the split works out at 0.59 for the first half of the campaign and 0.26 since.

It has been less than half as good since turning for home, in other words, in a season that wasn’t going very well before that.

A comparison with last season is enlightening for all teams, not just Liverpool. The Reds’ open play defence has worsened by about 0.15 expected goals per match, which is not ideal but won’t sink a season. What will drag a team down, will make a grown man cry, is the offense dropping by over three times as much.

When you sign Hugo Ekitike, Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz but are unable to start them together in the league, seeing the new-look attack flounder is somewhat inevitable. And although Liverpool have seen by far the biggest slump in open play attacking, very few clubs have escaped a downturn since last term.

Slot is a very good manager. His career proves as much, with 2025/26 the first slump of his career. Whether he is the right man to lead a top team in a Premier League heading in this direction is another matter.

Set Pieces

Liverpool have already twisted in this sense by dispensing with the service of Aaron Briggs. He left after 18 matches, a convenient point for assessing change across a season.

The Reds had scored three league goals via set plays when Briggs was dismissed, conceding 12 at the other end. Those figures are 15 and eight for the 19 matches since.

Nerds being nerds, we must examine the xG. It’s a confusing picture.

The underlying numbers have increased at both ends since Briggs left, with the conversion rates all over the place throughout the campaign. The improved attacking rate over the previous half season would still only place the Reds eighth in the Premier League if expanded across the entire campaign.

The difference between the potency of Arsenal and Liverpool’s set pieces is beautifully laid bare. The Gunners have generated as much set play xG in their 37 league games this season as the Reds have in their previous 68. Worship at their meat wall.

Slot frequently refers to set piece goals yet his entire Liverpool tenure has produced little more xG than Arsenal have in 2025/26 alone. Whether he stays or not, whoever is in charge next season has to make the Reds more potent.

Physical Data

“We had a disrupted pre-season. Certain things we had to do and certain things we had to be respectful towards in terms of how we were dealing with it in terms of grief. The manager and the sports scientists, they couldn’t push us too hard too early because of what we were going through and they were going through the exact same.”

Robertson on The Overlap

Liverpool have covered an average of four kilometres fewer than their opponents in the 33 league matches for which data is available this season. As previously discussed, how much this matters is up for discussion:

Walk, Jog or Sprint: The Distance Covered Debate

The Reds have sprinted slightly further than their opposition overall, ‘winning’ this metric 19 times They’re clearly still capable of moving at top speed when required.

As they finished 16th for covering distance in the Premier League last season, potentially little has changed in their approach. They simply never had a solid base of advance physical work from which to build.

While pre-season will be disrupted by a World Cup this summer, it won’t be sent spinning sidewards by the death of a player. It’s reasonable to assume the squad should be fitter next season.

Pressing

This is perhaps the ultimate battle of eye test versus analytics this season. The Liverpool press looks horrible. Too easy to play through, offering wet paper bag-levels of resistance. The fast-twitch fibers of the likes of Firmino, Henderson and Mané didn’t die for this standard of passive engagement.

But.

There are just four clubs who average more possession-adjusted pressures per match than Liverpool. Only the same number have a better success rate, with Manchester City the sole side who top the Reds on both points. Hmm.

Maybe the Statsbomb data is incorrect. Perhaps it counts different things to what we think of successful pressures when watching a match. The range of success rates isn’t very wide so it could be that the teams are essentially alike.

This brings us back to the changing style of the Premier League. A lot of teams aren’t that bothered about pressing, or at least not in the gegen, Klopp sense. They’ll close opponents down without haring about like maniacs.

Whatever the explanation for Liverpool’s apparently good press by the above measure, Opta is inclined to agree from an attacking perspective. The Reds have translated 10 high turnovers (which are ball recoveries in the final 40 metres) into goals, the most of any team in the Premier League. One thing stands out in their PPDA data though.

Liverpool have allowed 11.5 passes per defensive action, the seventh lowest mark in the division (where a lower number equates to a more intense press). That figure was 9.7 after six matches of the campaign, below any team’s current level.

Some of the slide will be down to Slot implementing a different style after three successive three-goal defeats. The squad being undercooked physically might be the bigger factor. Either way, what was strong has declined. It also brings us nicely to the final section.

Style of Play

Salah recently called for the return of the “the heavy metal attacking team that opponents fear”. Kopites, disgruntled after a series of anaemic performances, are largely in agreement.

But they also wanted Slot to be replaced by the new Chelsea manager, Xabi Alonso. If he were at Liverpool and if he implemented his title-winning Leverkusen template (a reasonable assumption with Jeremie Frimpong and Florian Wirtz on board), the Reds might be even slower than they are now.

We can recreate the above chart for the 2025/26 Premier League. It shows that Liverpool have been a little faster than average moving up field, playing roughly 0.6 passes per sequence above the going rate for the division.

The Reds’ direct speed of 1.84 metres per second is below the 1.93 they posted in Klopp’s final season. No surprise.

However, it is higher than the 1.73 they recorded last term and markedly above Liverpool’s figure of 1.45 in 2022/23. More pertinently, it is within 0.01 of what Slot’s Feyenoord delivered when setting a new club record for Eredivisie points in his final campaign with them. We are seeing the established speed of his football.

You don’t have to like it, but you’ll have to go along with it as long as Slot is in charge.

Conclusion

There are not vast amounts wrong in the areas of football that can be easily measured.

The attack needs to perk up in open play, which would have the twin benefit of lessening the burden on the backline. The same is true for set pieces, though sharper concentration in defence would at least tip the balance of chances back in their direction. They should also be better prepared physically next season, which should improve them on every front no matter what else changes.

But what about the intangibles? We have seen the team give up in games, collapsing badly after making reasonable starts on multiple occasions. Salah will have left but the squad may no longer retain faith in Slot and his methods.

Unpicking the effects of grief from any other disharmony among the playing staff is not an easy task. Perhaps this is why the club is willing to give the gaffer another shot next term. We can only speculate at how life has been behind the scenes this season.

Whatever happens with the identity of the manager (sorry, head coach) and no matter where the team finish in 2026/27, we’ll be there. Cheering, grumbling, analysing, venting. Win, lose or draw, the fans are the constant. Take note, FSG.

I won’t be sad if Slot leaves. The season has been too disappointing, too often. Nobody will be stunned or upset if Liverpool move in a new direction. I will always wonder what might have been had the boss had a better run of things this season though. He didn’t stand much of a chance from the start.

We all assumed the hard part for Slot would be replacing Klopp. That looked routine compared with steering the team after the death of one of their teammates.

Thanks for the title, Arne. Maybe I’ll see you around next season.

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A final thank you for your support with this newsletter, friends. A reminder that I will be refunding the outstanding amounts for the existing annual subscriptions next week. If you have any issues, please email me at andrew@andrewbeasleyfootball.com.