Why defending Premier League champions Liverpool are in decline so far in 2025/26

Liverpool were left embarrassed at Anfield on Saturday after an out-of-sorts Nottingham Forest smashed three past them to compound a miserable run of results for Arne Slot.

​That left the defending Premier League champions with only 18 points from their opening 12 matches (W6), which includes six defeats – already two more than the entirety of their 2024/25 title-winning campaign.

To make matters even worse, Arne Slot’s struggling side aren’t even in the top half of the table anymore. Making their current downward decline in the table even more concerning for everyone associated with the club is that the Reds had accumulated 30 points (W10, D1, L1) at this stage last season, so, staggeringly, 12 fewer.

Delving deeper into the ongoing matter, ​Liverpool find themselves in 11th position in the PL table, the same number of points behind current leaders Arsenal. Liverpool have only found the back of the net 18 times, while conceding two more. Speaking of goals conceded, Slot’s men have conceded 41 last season (the second-best defensive record behind the Gunners’ 34), but have already been breached 20 times in 2025/26.

However, they haven’t been doing too badly in the 2025/26 UEFA Champions League phase, winning three of their four matches (L1), most recently beating Real Madrid 1-0 towards the beginning of the month, where Virgil van Dijk had Kylian Mbappé in his back pocket for 90 minutes.

Liverpool results: What exactly is going on domestically at Anfield?

An abundance of new signings

Liverpool spent around an unparalleled £425 million, a whopping £100 million more than any other Premier League club throughout the summer ahead of the 2025/26 campaign.

An extravagant outlay was spent on seven new players, including breaking the British transfer record fee (£127 million) to prise Alexander Isak away from Newcastle United. Remarkably, Slot inherited another £100 million+ signing, as Florian Wirtz arrived from Bayer Leverkusen. Hugo Ekitike’s signature from Eintracht Frankfurt for £83 million would have likely continued to turn heads of the upper echelons at fellow title-challengers, Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea.

​The owners of Liverpool, Fenway Sports Group, backed by majority shareholder John W. Henry, weren’t finished opening the cheque book there, as they also secured the signings of Wirtz’s former Leverkusen teammate, Jeremie Frimpong (£35 million), arguably, the most-impressive left-back in the Premier League last season, Milos Kerez from Bournemouth for just over £40 million, highly-rated 18-year-old centre-back Giovanni Leoni from Parma and, last but not least, Freddie Woodman on a free transfer from Preston North End.

While the defending champions heavily invested, they also sold several key members of their 2024/25 title-winning squad, including, arguably a Liverpool Hall of Famer, in the form of Trent Alexander-Arnold; which is certainly a hot debate among Liverpool fans.

The England international set up seven goals (only last season’s top-scorer, Salah (who scored 29 goals) produced more assists – 18 – than Alexander-Arnold, who also scored three goals as well). So, if you compare that to the 18 goals Liverpool have netted across the current campaign, it’s plain to see that Trent’s like-for-like replacement, Frimpong, hasn’t yet hit the attacking heights of the current Real Madrid man.

But, to be fair to Frimpong, he has already missed eight league matches this season due to a hamstring injury he suffered against Bournemouth on the opening day, and then a recurrence of that same injury against Manchester United in mid-October.

The loss of wantaway attacking asset Luis Díaz, who swapped English shores to join Bayern Munich, seems to have been particularly damaging on Slot’s forward line, after the Colombian scored 13 goals and provided a further seven assists in 36 PL appearances in 2024/25. Another player to leave the Anfield attacking department was striker Darwin Núñez, who departed for Saudi Pro League club Al-Hilal after contributing eight attacking returns (G5, A3).

Is Arne Slot a one-season wonder?

​Arne Slot won the Eredivisie title with Feyenoord in the 2022/23 campaign, beating PSV Eindhoven by seven points, losing only two of their 34 matches in the process, but finished the following season swapping placed with PSV, before departing for Liverpool.

Slot certainly couldn’t therefore be classified as a one-season wonder after expertly guiding Liverpool to their first Premier League title since 2019/20 last season, ultimately finishing a double-digit number of points (10), ahead of Arsenal with an eventual record of (W25, D9, L4), equalling a tally of 84.

Several Liverpool fans refuse to pin all of the blame on the Dutchman’s formational or tactical decisions, instead stating that certain players that have severely unperformed, including Wirtz, are to blame. The German couldn’t impress his new fans despite ending his 11-game drought with two assists last month.

Monday morning’s paper talk reckon Slot will be sacked is very premature in my opinion, but as we have seen in football many times, anything can happen. So there is every chance that we might be watching the news tomorrow, that Liverpool are currently looking for a new manager.

New and old players underperforming this season

Florian Wirtz

​Since arriving at Anfield for an initial £100 million, which could potentially rise to £116.5 million depending on add-ons, Wirtz has unbelievably not scored or assisted in 11 PL matches. To give the German international some credit, he does have two assists to his name in the UCL across four games.

Considering Wirtz’s record for Bayer Leverkusen across the 2023/24 and 2024/25 Bundesliga campaigns saw him not only assist Xabi Alonso’s side’s unbeaten campaign (W28, D6) in 2023/24, but also bagging 21 goals and a further 25 assists. It’s mind-boggling why he hasn’t been able to live up to his Bundesliga reputation so far in his early PL career.

One question I asked myself was how many players have been able to successfully make the transition from the Bundesliga to the PL. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one player who has actually accomplished that, and that is Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, who certainly doesn’t need me to explain what he has done; just the two PL titles and Manchester City’s main UCL success stick out. Man City’s teammate Omar Marmoush, who was signed from Eintracht Frankfurt, who admittedly has missed a large spell of this season through injury, but certainly looked something special on the pitch in the 2024/25 campaign. The only reasoning I currently have is that Wirtz will need time to acclimatise to the fast-paced and always unpredictable nature of the PL.

​Another player is one of the greatest to have ever graced the PL, and that’s Mohamed Salah. 29 goals and 18 assists in 2024/25 (which translates to a record-breaking 344 points in Official Fantasy Premier League) is just ridiculous if you consider it. The Egyptian Pharaoh has scored 190 goals in the PL; only Wayne Rooney (208), Harry Kane (213) and Alan Shearer (260) have found the back of the net on more occasions. So, only four goals and two assists in 12 matches so far for Salah, it’s not something you would have put your money on before the start of the 2025/26 campaign.

Mohamed Salah

​Salah is arguably Slot’s first name on Liverpool’s starting XI, apart from maybe Virgil van Dijk, so what exactly has gone wrong for a player who will miss six weeks of the season, between mid-December and January, due to his participation with Egypt at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations?

​Nothing really jumps straight out at you apart from the fact that he is now 33 years of age and that he was heavily touted to leave in recent times, with bids from the Saudi Pro League reported to have been rebuffed by the powers at Anfield. So, firstly, addressing the age-old debate about football players naturally succumbing to older age. It’s something no one, including, he can control, but it will happen. To say Salah is past his prime is certainly a premature statement to make, just take a look back at last season.

Secondly, Salah has won every piece of silverware you could celebrate being a part of at Liverpool. Two PL titles, a UCL trophy, a FA Cup, EFL Cup, a FA Community Shield and UEFA Super Cup. In addition too, many personal accolades, including the 2024/25 PL Golden Boot award with 29 goals, the club’s Goal of the Season award on three occasions, the most goals scored by an African player in a PL campaign (32 in 2017-18 ) and the record for the highest amount of PL Player of the Month awards throughout one season (3 in November 2017, February and March 2018). The list is nearly endless. In my own personal words, it’s not the time for Salah to leave the club he has called home since June 2017.

Could the end be nigh for Slot at Liverpool?

Conclusively, Liverpool have ended up on the losing side in six of their last seven PL matches, prompting people to suggest that Slot could be out of a job before their UCL-phase game against PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday. However, despite this sounding unrealistic, if the Reds were to lose another match at Anfield, there is every chance that it could happen.