It has long been felt, as Liverpool have lurched from one disastrous result to the next, that the only thing keeping Slot in the Anfield hotseat is Xabi Alonso’s insistence on taking a break before making his next move in management. Alonso’s return to Liverpool as manager has felt like a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ ever since he proved to be just as talented a coach as he was a midfielder by guiding Bayer Leverkusen to their first Bundesliga title while remaining unbeaten in 2024.
As Jamie Carragher pointed out in hisDaily Telegraph column on Saturday, there are plenty of parallels between the current situation and when Liverpool were courting Jurgen Klopp in 2015 while Brendan Rodgers was still in charge. To make matters worse for Slot, the emphatic result at the Etihad Stadium clocked up an unwanted 15 defeats for Liverpool in a single season for the first time since Rodgers’ final campaign on Merseyside.
If Liverpool’s owners were as ruthless as Bayern Munich, who sacked Julian Nagelsmann in the March international break in 2023 and replaced him with Thomas Tuchel, they would make the change now. It seems, though, that they are just waiting to make a smooth transition in the summer. It means that Liverpool are going to endure more resounding defeats from now until the end of the campaign, with their pain highly likely to continue on Wednesday in the French capital.
