Arne Slot’s Gamble Backfires As Liverpool Hit New Low

Arne Slot could do no wrong last season, when he led Liverpool to a record-equalling title without so much as breaking sweat in his first campaign in England.

But the Midas Touch has deserted the Dutchman this term, with the Reds slumping to a sixth defeat in their last seven outings in all competitions on Wednesday night.

Liverpool’s 3-0 loss at home to Crystal Palace in the Round of 16 of the Carabao Cup was their heaviest in Slot’s time in charge and the third time they have lost to the south Londoners in three different competitions in three months.

Palace beat Liverpool on penalties in the Community Shield, the traditional curtain-raiser of the English football season back in August, before defeating them 2-1 in the Premier League at the end of last month.

The team Slot fielded at Anfield on Wednesday night bore little resemblance to the one that was denied a point by Eddie Nketiah’s injury time winner at Selhurst Park on September 27.

The Dutchman made 10 changes to the team that lost 3-2 at Brentford on Saturday night, with Milos Kerkez the only player retaining his place in the starting XI.

Mohamed Salah, Hugo Ekitike, Cody Gakpo, Florian Wirtz, Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate and Dominik Szoboszlai were all omitted from the matchday squad, while Alexis MacAllister, Andrew Robertson, Wataru Endo and Federico Chiesa were the only senior players in the starting line-up.

Arne Slot’s selection gamble backfires

It was a bold call, but one which backfired spectacularly as Palace scored twice through Ismaila Sarr in the last four minutes of the first half, before the excellent Yeremy Pino added a third late in the second half.

Slot, however, defended his team selection insisting his hand was forced by the circumstances.

“At this time with only 15 players available in our squad,” he told reporters after the game.

“And to add to that, this club has always used this competition for academy players, it felt to me as the right decision.

“And I haven’t changed my opinion about it since the result because with our starters we haven’t been able to win a lot from Palace as well.”

He then told BBC Radio 5 Live that Liverpool’s “squad is probably not as big as people think it is”.

There were some mitigating factors to Slot’s team selection.

Club record signing Alexander Isak was injured, as were Curtis Jones, Ryan Gravenberch and Jeremie Frimpong.

Furthermore, Liverpool face a difficult run of fixtures, with Aston Villa due at Anfield on Saturday night, before Real Madrid arrive on Merseyside three days later.

The Reds, who are already seven points behind league leaders Arsenal, then travel to Manchester to face City in their last game before the international break.

There is a possibility Liverpool enter the 10-day hiatus on the back of six consecutive Premier League defeats, an unthinkable prospect when the Reds sat alone at the top of the table after winning their first five league matches of the season.

And yet, while injuries have limited Slot’s options, his warning over the depth of the squad at his disposal came as a surprise.

This, after all, is a manager who embarked on a record spending spree in the summer, splurging £446.5m ($598m) on players, the most any club has ever spent in a single window.

Isak arrived from Newcastle on transfer deadline day for a British record £125m ($167m), surpassing the benchmark Liverpool had set in June when they acquired Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen for £116.5m ($156m).

Ekitike, the Premier League’s third most expensive signing of the summer, also moved to Anfield for £79m ($106m) from Eintracht Frankfurt.

Kerkez and Frimpong, meanwhile, revamped Liverpool’s options at full-back at a combined cost of £76.5m ($100.6m).

“I saw a team struggling to play three games in seven days. It’s not an excuse,” Slot continued.

“To lose a game of football is not a complete surprise, because I could see the struggles some players had in pre-season.

“It’s also a new challenge for players that came from different leagues to play in the Premier League and Champions League.

“In two days we play Villa, and the last time I played a player when we thought he was ready, was Alexander Isak and he went out with injury.”

At the same time, Liverpool’s season was never going to be defined by the Carabao Cup, which is bottom of the pecking order when it comes to the priorities of Premier League clubs.

And yet, losing to Palace will only pile on the pressure on Slot, whose normally calm demeanour has disappeared over the past five weeks.

Liverpool face crucial run of games

The next three fixtures could sour his mood even further.

Villa haven’t beaten Liverpool since October 2020, losing seven of their next 10 meetings in all competitions and haven’t won at Anfield in 11 years.

But if history is firmly behind Liverpool, Villa arrive on Merseyside on the back of five consecutive wins in the Premier League, the most recent of which came on Sunday when they beat City at home for the third consecutive season.

Real Madrid, meanwhile, extended their lead at the top of LaLiga to five points after beating Barcelona 2-1 on Sunday and have a perfect record in the Champions League after three games.

As for City, they have already lost three times in the Premier League but remain a point ahead of Liverpool in the table.

Last season marked the Reds’ first win at the Etihad in the Premier League in a decade and Slot could do with repeating the feat next month.

“There are many reasons why we’ve lost five out of six or six out of seven,” he said in his press conference on Wednesday night.

“None are good enough to accept losing so many, and I can come up with arguments but none will be enough to go to that standard because Liverpool losing so many is always too much.”

Liverpool are in the middle of a historically bad run of form and no other team in Europe’s top five leagues has lost as many as games as they have over the past month.

And while being knocked out of the Carabao Cup will not move the dial, it exacerbates the need for an immediate response over the next three weeks.

Slot may have had the Midas Touch last season, but even title-winning managers can run out of credit at some point.