Why Liverpool are struggling — and the three solutions to Arne Slot’s headache | OneFootball

Even as he closed in on the Premier League title that rendered his first season at Liverpool a spectacular success, Arne Slot realised it was getting harder for him. His side were finding it harder to cut opponents open. It was a recognition that underpinned Liverpool’s summer spending. If some of their £450m outlay was spent on a quest for another dimension, Liverpool have instead suffered back-to-back defeats for only the second time in his reign.

Slot nevertheless sees the start of the new campaign as a continuation of the second half of last. He saw Galatasaray’s celebrations when they beat Liverpool on Tuesday, as though it were their Champions League final. He inferred that part of his stellar start at Anfield came from opponents underestimating him, figuring that Liverpool were more beatable without the charismatic presence of Jurgen Klopp.

“Jurgen was so well known that a new manager came in and everyone thought 'Oh, let's start to play against Liverpool,'” said Slot. “Teams played in a completely different way in the first half of the season against us than they did when we were top of the league after half of the season and top of the Champions League after the first part of the season.”

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Arne Slot and Liverpool head to Chelsea on Saturday looking to avoid three defeats in a row (Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Liverpool have found it tougher to score from open-play. They have spent much of 2025 encountering packed defences. "It's been mainly the playing style of the other team and if you look at [Crystal] Palace, you look at Galatasaray: how much they throw themselves in front of a ball, what they all try to do, all these things together make it harder for us now to score from open play than it was in the first part of last season,” he said. "This is something I already saw last season. That's why we also had the window that we had; sometimes to replace, sometimes to add a certain quality.”

It explains the signing of Florian Wirtz, a No 10 designed to bring extreme creativity and designed to displace the runner Dominik Szoboszlai. It has not quite worked out that way yet: the German is yet to get an assist in either the Premier League or the Champions League. Slot may have diagnosed the problem, even if the solution is yet to have the desired impact.

“We've brought in a very different midfielder then we had last season, which we think we needed because the amount of goals we found from open play in the first part of last season and the second part of last season, there's a big, big difference,” he said. “We didn't shut our eyes for the second part of the season, how many times we needed a set-piece [to score].”

Hence the arrival of Wirtz for £100m; Alexander Isak, the £125m record buy, was also introduced to help add incision. Perhaps Liverpool will have a greater threat when the Swede is fully fit, when each has gelled with his new team-mates.

“That's part of it,” said Slot. But even before their arrival, even as Mohamed Salah had record-breaking season last year, some of his goals became scarcer in the final few months. Slot noted that five of Salah’s goals in the second half of last season were penalties, a sixth also a set-piece.

Liverpool may have to imitate Arsenal. “A set-piece is definitely one of the ways to unsettle or unlock a low block,” Slot noted. “The No 2 of the league has scored 60 per cent of their goals from set-pieces.” Virgil van Dijk’s injury-time winner against Atletico Madrid was proof Liverpool can possess a similar threat. “We've unlocked those teams in the second half of the season by scoring seven corner kicks,” Slot added.

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Virgil van Dijk provided the winner from a corner in Liverpool’s Champions League opener (Getty Images)

There have been fewer in the Premier League now, though Szoboszlai scored a match-winning free kick against Arsenal.

But Liverpool were deadlier in open play when they ran riot in 2024, culminating in the 6-3 demolition of Tottenham and the 5-0 thrashing of West Ham. Liverpool scored 45 goals in their first 18 league games last season, an average of 2.5 per match.

It dropped to 2.05 thereafter; still respectable but fewer. It was accompanied by a defensive drop-off. They conceded 20 goals in the last 15 league matches, 1.33 per game, after only 21 in their first 23.

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(Adam Davy/PA Wire)

So far in the current campaign, they are scoring 2.0 goals per league game, conceding 1.16. Add in the Champions League and that becomes 1.25 conceded. Once again, this season, even with very different personnel, bears distinct similarities to the end of last.

It leaves Slot searching for solutions: for his team to find the wingers often enough and early enough to isolate them one against one, to convert more corners, to find a way through a low block. He is waiting for Isak, waiting for Wirtz. And he is discovering it isn’t as easy as it appeared last autumn.