Slot’s Only Real Miss Was the Bench

There was a spell in the second half where you could feel it turning. The tempo picked up, the crowd would have been ready for it, and Liverpool looked like the side who might just force the breakthrough. That’s why the one thing I can properly pick at with Arne Slot here is the timing and ambition of the substitutions. When you’ve got your tails up, sometimes you’ve got to lean into it and try and nick the win.

It’s not a big rant, either. Truth is, there wasn’t much else to moan about. The structure looked decent, the effort was there, and we didn’t look like a team hiding from the moment. If anything, it was that familiar feeling: we do the hard work, we get into promising areas, and then the final ball or the final decision lets us down. One touch too many. A pass played behind instead of in front. The shot that gets snatched at. It’s nearly always the last action.

Good football, then a dead end

That’s what makes it frustrating, because you can see the shape of a really good side in there. We can win it back, we can play through pressure, we can control phases. Then we arrive around the box and it goes a bit noisy. Not chaotic in a fun way, just slightly disjointed, like the timing between runners and passers isn’t quite synced yet.

And when you’re missing a proper centre-forward, it’s always going to show. You lose that obvious option in behind, the one who pins the centre-halves and turns half-chances into something you can actually finish. Without that, you end up having to be even cleaner in the final third, and we weren’t. The margin for error gets smaller, and ours still feels a bit too wide.

The “we’re Liverpool” argument only goes so far

I get the instinct of “we’re Liverpool, we shouldn’t be dropping points here”. That’s part of what makes the club what it is. But it only carries you so far when you’re looking at the context of a season: form, rhythm, and who you’ve actually got fit and available. Sometimes you have to judge what’s in front of you.

That’s why the second half stood out. Given where we’re at, it was a surprise in the best sense. We looked well up for it. We looked like the better team for a stretch. Which, in a funny way, is why it stings. It felt like one big decision away from turning a solid performance into a proper statement.

Composure changes everything

The encouraging bit is that this doesn’t feel like a broken side. It feels like a side that’s a couple of small upgrades away from winning matches comfortably: a calmer head in the box, a slightly quicker choice on the edge of it, and maybe a braver shove from the bench when the momentum is there to be grabbed.

If that clicks, a lot of these “nearly” games start becoming three points, and nobody’s talking about what Liverpool “should” be doing. They’ll just be doing it.

Written by PatrikBurgher: 16 January 2026