Why Arne Slot’s Choices Are Grating

My main issue right now isn’t that Liverpool are having a bumpy season. That happens. It’s the feeling that we’re choosing the hard way, again and again, even when the squad has enough quality to be smarter about it.

Arne Slot has lost a lot of credit with me over the Crystal Palace game. If you’re going to rotate heavily, fine. You’ve got to. But you still need a plan that gives you a foothold in the match, and you need bench options that can actually change it if it starts going wrong. That one felt like it was thrown away, and I can’t pretend it didn’t stick.

Rotation is fine, but it can’t look like surrender

There’s a difference between managing minutes and waving a white flag. Supporters can accept changes when there’s logic to it: protecting legs, maintaining intensity, keeping competition alive. What’s harder to swallow is when the set-up looks like it’s asking for trouble and then the game plays out exactly that way.

And that’s the maddening bit: it’s not about demanding the same XI every week. It’s about making sure the rotated side still has balance, leadership, and at least one or two “right, we’ll drag this over the line” options available off the bench.

Selection loyalty can become stubbornness

Another gripe is the continued use of Konate and Macca even when they’ve looked miles off it. Every manager backs players through dips, and you don’t want a squad living in fear of one bad half. But there’s a point where it starts to feel like loyalty turns into stubbornness, and the team pays for it.

If the run we’re on is happening in spite of certain performances rather than because of them, then it’s fair for people to ask what the alternative is. Not because we want heads on spikes, but because form has to matter at some stage.

Fitness, football and that “glass jaw” feeling

The team looking unfit is the scariest part. When the legs go, everything else goes with it: the press becomes half a press, the distances grow, the second balls disappear, and suddenly you’re defending transitions every two minutes.

And when you’re not playing well, mentality becomes the thing you lean on. Liverpool used to be the side that could take a punch and keep walking forward. Lately it’s felt more like a glass jaw: one wobble and the whole performance gets shaky. That’s not just tactics, it’s confidence and physical sharpness all tangled together.

The strangest bit is the table. Dropping 22 points and still sitting in the top four is mental, and it says as much about everyone else as it does about us. But it also screams opportunity. Because the talent is there. If Ekitike becomes the player we think he can be, if Wirtz keeps showing what he’s capable of, and if Szobo stays a machine, there’s still plenty to play for. It just can’t drift into another miserable run, because you can see how easily it could.

Written by Wassa-lfc: 2 January 2026