It’d be an understatement to declare that Liverpool fans won’t care to remember the 2025/26 Premier League season, having begun it as champions and ended it scraping a fifth-place finish.
That alarming decline ultimately cost Arne Slot his job, with Andoni Iraola hired from Bournemouth to try and oversee a significant improvement in the coming years.
Despite the massive drop-off over the past 12 months, football betting odds still cite the Reds as third favourites to be crowned champions of England in May 2027 (behind Arsenal and Manchester City), so can the Merseysiders bounce back immediately to contend for the top prize again next season?
After Liverpool last finished fifth in 2022/23, they recovered to secure third place in the following campaign, and they’d been well in the thick of the title race until a costly slump of form in April saw them drop out of contention.
Of course, that was a team managed by Jurgen Klopp and containing born winners like Mo Salah and Andy Robertson, along with the attacking brilliance of Luis Diaz. None of those are with the Reds now as they seek to banish the awful memories of last term.
However, there’s a sense of optimism that Iraola can instigate a revival and get the best out of immense talents such as Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and the precocious Rio Ngumoha, whilst also being able to count upon the elite experience of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker.
The Spaniard has inherited a squad with plenty of quality, and there’s still two months of the transfer window remaining to enhance the playing pick even further and give Liverpool the best possible chance of competing for the title once the spring rolls around.
The Reds enjoying a notable improvement is one thing; catching up to Arsenal and Man City is another. We finished a mammoth 25 points behind the Gunners last season, so the task of overhauling that in one go is an enormous one.
Only the most optimistic of LFC supporters would see their team being in a title race in April and May 2027, but the mission for Iraola is to at least bring Liverpool closer to the summit and revive genuine belief of challenging for the trophy the following year.
At a minimum, the Reds need to be in a position where they’re not sweating over Champions League qualification during the run-in to the campaign. If they repeat their 2023/24 exploits of a third-place finish and keeping on the coattails of the top two, that’d represent a huge step forward under the new head coach.
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Nonsense. We always go for the league. Who’s your psymaster?
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