Slot Debate: Results, Standards, and the Replacement Problem

Liverpool edging back towards the Champions League spots should feel like relief, but it’s hard to shake the bigger question: if you want Arne Slot gone, who exactly are you replacing him with?

Being back in the Champions League qualification picture is something, at least. But it doesn’t exactly settle the nerves when you look at the run-in and realise plenty of the hardest tests are still sitting there waiting.

And that’s why the whole Arne Slot conversation keeps circling back to the same sticking point. You can be unhappy with what you’re watching, even furious, and still not have a clear answer to the obvious follow-up: who comes in instead?

Why the club won’t bin a title winner lightly

Names always get thrown around. Glasner. Iraola. Maresca. The usual shortlist energy. But there’s a factor fans (and probably the club) keep coming back to, whether we like it or not.

Slot has won the league in his debut season. You can argue about the context, and plenty of us do. He inherited a side built by Jürgen Klopp, and it’s fair to say rivals haven’t always been at their sharpest. But even with that caveat, winning the league at the first attempt is still a serious thing on a CV.

So from the club’s point of view, trading that in is not a decision you take on vibes alone. Not when the stakes are this high, and not when the alternative is a leap into the unknown.

The football, the stubbornness, and the fear of sliding

Truth is, you can hold two thoughts at once. Slot’s achievement carries weight, and the football can still be hard to stomach.

If you feel the tactics are blunt, the patterns predictable, the in-game changes too slow or not there at all, you’re not imagining it. When a team looks like it’s playing within itself, it drags the crowd down with it, and then every wobble starts to feel like a bigger crisis.

That’s the worry behind the frustration. Liverpool went from looking like champions to looking like a side scrapping for position in what feels like no time. The club can’t afford to drift further away from the top table, especially when there’s a sense they’ve raised their recruitment standards to try and kick on again.

Interim options: the Gerrard argument

This is where the caretaker idea comes in, and I get it. There’s a romantic part of it, but there’s also a practical argument being made: Steven Gerrard would walk into that dressing room with instant authority.

The thought is he lights a fire, brings back some edge, gets us playing quicker and more direct. Not perfect, not a long-term blueprint, but a jolt. Something to break the mood if it’s gone stale.

But it also feels like the club won’t entertain an interim unless things truly collapse. They tend to pick their moments, and they tend to be picky.

So unless results fall off a cliff and a genuinely top-tier alternative becomes available, it’s hard to see Liverpool making a move just because the football is grim. That’s where the anxiety sits, really: stuck between not liking the current direction and not trusting the options outside it.

Written by chewysuarez7: 14 January 2026