Solid, but toothless: Slot had to roll the dice

It didn’t feel like we set up for a draw so much as we ran out of ways to win it. When your nearest thing to a forward looks short of sharpness, the margins get even thinner.

I’m not having the idea that Liverpool "played for a draw" here. To me it looked simpler than that: we just didn’t have a proper route to winning the match once the game settled. If Gakpo is the closest thing you’ve got to a forward and he’s not quite fully fit after an injury, then you can be as tidy as you like and still not scare anyone.

That’s the bit that frustrates, because for spells we actually had control. We were largely solid, didn’t look like we were going to fold, and we had a decent grip on the shape of it. But solid only gets you so far. If you’re not threatening their back line, if there’s no real edge to your pressing triggers or your final ball, you end up playing the match in front of them. Comfortable for the opposition, even when it feels like you’re on top.

The moment for changes came and went

The obvious “sensible” tweak for me was the bench, and it’s why I’m disappointed with Arne Slot on the night. When we had our best spell, around that 60 to 70 minute window, that’s when you’ve got to try and force something. Not chaos for the sake of it, just an injection of intent.

That’s where Chiesa comes into it, and maybe Rio as well. Fresh legs, a bit of unpredictability, someone who’ll make the defenders turn and actually have to defend their box properly. Even if it doesn’t work, at least you’re trying to tilt the game. Waiting until the pattern has already drifted into “we’ll see this out” territory is basically choosing safety.

My bigger worry: what’s the actual plan?

The truth is, one match like this doesn’t shift my view of Slot either way. If anything it underlines it. I’m still not convinced he’s got his ideas right yet, and I’m not sure the results will be good enough over the medium term if this is the ceiling: organised, but blunt.

There’s a difference between being hard to beat and being a side that can win when the game turns into a scrap. Right now we look more like the former. Maybe that changes with better fitness and better options, but you can only judge what’s in front of you.

We’ve seen this movie before

And for anyone insisting we were set up not to lose, it’s worth remembering we’ve done “away damage limitation” in a much uglier way before. Cast your mind back to that away day at Manchester United near the end of Rodgers, when we barely laid a glove on them. Whatever you thought of this one, it wasn’t that.

Rodgers had more natural forwards available back then and still managed to make us look timid. Here, Slot was clearly light in that department. It doesn’t excuse everything, but it does explain why the whole thing felt like it had a hard limit.

The only “saving grace”, if you can call it that, is the league can be patchy. If it stays that way, we might scrape enough points for fourth. But scraping can’t be the plan at Liverpool.

Written by Something Red: 17 January 2026