Arne Slot is still expected to get the chance to rebuild Liverpool this summer, but the scale of the job is becoming harder to ignore.
The 4-2 defeat at Aston Villa left us needing a result against Brentford to guarantee Champions League football, when the final day should have been all about saying goodbye to Mo Salah and Andy Robertson.
Now Pat Nevin has underlined just how sharp the fall has been.
Writing for BBC Sport, Nevin admitted that Liverpool’s defeat at Villa Park did not shock him.
The former Chelsea winger wrote: “As I sat watching Aston Villa destroy Liverpool on Friday night I had an unexpected internal reaction: I wasn’t surprised.”
That is a painful sentence because Liverpool were champions last season, yet now look fragile, open and short of attacking identity.
Nevin added: “The defending champions have fallen so far that a 4-2 defeat in which their brilliant, if ageing, centre back Virgil van Dijk was their most potent attacking weapon no longer had any real shock value.”
That neatly sums up the issue, because Van Dijk scored twice from set pieces, while the rest of the team offered little sustained threat.
Nevin also pointed out that Liverpool are “a massive 25 points behind where they finished last season”, with one game still to play.
The most eye-catching comparison came with Manchester United, who finished 42 points behind us last season but now sit nine points ahead.
Nevin described that as “a staggering 51-point swing”.
That is the kind of statistic that makes supporters wonder whether this is simply a bad season under Slot or evidence of something deeper.
Chris Sutton has already said “a lot of the Liverpool fans just are not having Arne Slot”, and that feeling has grown with every unsure performance.
Jamie Carragher has also warned that Slot must pick Salah against Brentford if the Egyptian gives Liverpool the best chance of winning.
Nevin did leave one route back, suggesting things could still swing our way again “if they have a good summer getting the right new players.”
That is the question now: whether Slot is the right man to rebuild, or whether Liverpool are hoping a transfer window fixes too much.
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We have turned into Arsenal in the final stagnant years of Wenger. We’ve become a technical lightweight team that’s far too easy to score against , and can’t handle the physical aspect of the premier league. Same with FSG and Arsenal owners who under wenger they were just content with getting champions league revenues.
There is hope though , when you look at how Arsenal under Arteta have turned it Around. Arsenal are not a great team, but they do the basics very well, they are organised, they are the best team at set pieces, they have good options on the bench, which they didn’t have last season. They’ve gone from being a soft touch under wenger to the most physical and competitive team in the premier league.
If we can take half of the physical side out of what Arsenal are then the results will improve. The attack wins games but the defence wins titles. Count the clean sheets from Arsenal . Arsenal this season have conceded just 26 goals , we have conceded double that. 52 Enough said.
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