Liverpool’s Striker Dilemma: Does Arne Slot Have Time To Find His Number 9? | OneFootball

Six months ago, Arne Slot was celebrating on an Ibiza sunbed, Premier League trophy secured, his maiden English campaign already the stuff of Liverpool legend. The beaches of Dubai and Mauritius beckoned for a squad which had made title-winning look effortless under their new Dutch architect.

The heat of those celebrations has given way to something colder. At Brentford’s Gtech Community Stadium, in the dying light of the last Saturday of the year before the clocks went back, that same man watched his reigning champions surrender meekly.

Three goals conceded, two scored, four consecutive league defeats. If summer felt like endless sunshine, autumn has arrived with brutal finality. Long, cold nights loom on the horizon. The result exposed not just tactical fragility but a recruitment strategy unravelling in real time.

Liverpool’s bold new era was meant to be built in Slot’s image. Nearly £200m in net summer spending; a squad reshaped around his principles. Instead, it resembles crisis management. The leading UK bookmakers have taken notice. The 47-year-old sits at 12/1 to become the next Premier League managerial casualty.

It’s a price which feels premature given the Reds’ history of patience with managers, yet the brutal arithmetic makes it less outlandish by the day. Five defeats from six games. Manchester City and Real Madrid looming on the fixture list.

While defensive errors and midfield lethargy have dominated the post-match autopsies, there’s a more sophisticated problem festering in Slot’s forward line, one which cuts to the heart of his tactical identity and threatens to define his sophomore year on Merseyside.

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Slot’s Striker Conundrum

This season’s Premier League has witnessed an unlikely throwback with the resurrection of the strike partnership. Long throws, set-piece dominance and two centre-forwards sharing the burden. Tactics once considered relics of a bygone 4-4-2 era have returned with surprising potency.

For Slot, who sanctioned the departures of Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz to forge a new attacking identity, this posed an irresistible opportunity. Enter Hugo Ekitike and club-record signing Alexander Isak. Two elite number 9s, both desperate to be the main man, are now forced into uneasy coexistence.

The vision made sense on paper. The Swede, prised from Newcastle in a move the striker himself had to force through, arrived as the marquee centrepiece, a statement of intent from the champions. The Frenchman, who was courted by Chelsea and Bayern Munich before choosing Anfield, was the cerebral complement – intelligent movement, clinical finishing, and crucially, cheaper at £69m.

On paper, it’s flexibility and firepower. In practice, it’s become Liverpool’s most urgent crisis. Ekitike has delivered with five goals. Isak, slowed by groin trouble, has struggled to find his footing. His pre-season was fractured, a byproduct of the drawn-out saga which saw him force his dream move to Anfield. Without a proper bedding-in period, he’s looked short of sharpness, and Slot has been left trying to integrate two strikers who were never given the time to gel.

(Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)

When Two Becomes One Too Many

There was a time when every big club built its soul around a strike partnership – Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke at Manchester United. Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton at Blackburn. These weren’t just attacking duos. They were cultural statements, proof that two talented forwards could elevate each other.

Liverpool have been here before. The 2013/14 campaign saw Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge form one of the Premier League’s most electrifying partnerships. More than 50 goals combined in the league. A brief yet devastating combination which nearly delivered the club’s first title in 24 years. It was thrilling, unsustainable and ultimately emblematic of why two-striker systems rarely endure.

The same pattern played out at Real Madrid, where Karim Benzema and Gonzalo Higuaín, both world-class talents, couldn’t coexist long-term. The latter eventually departed for Napoli to reclaim his status as a primary goalscorer.

At Man City, Julian Alvarez found himself sacrificed. Pushed wide, dropped deep, anything to accommodate Erling Haaland’s dominance. Now the Argentine thrives at Atletico Madrid, liberated from compromise. He’s scoring at nearly twice the rate he managed at the Etihad Stadium.

Ekitike risks becoming Liverpool’s version of that cautionary tale. In almost any other elite team, he’d be an undisputed starter. His movement and finishing would be the centrepiece of the attack. Instead, he exists in tactical purgatory.

(Photo by Ben Hoskins/Getty Images)

How Does Slot Get It Right?

The experiment against Eintracht Frankfurt offered a glimpse of what the partnership could produce, but Isak’s injury set things back to square one.

It also revealed the structural cost of Slot’s summer spending – a midfield stretched thin and defensive transitions which left gaps that Brentford would later exploit mercilessly. Against a team sitting 14th in the table, Liverpool looked vulnerable in ways which simply shouldn’t happen to reigning champions.

The head coach’s predicament isn’t just about managing two strikers; it’s about reconciling incompatible visions of what the Reds should be.

The system which won him the title last season relied on inherited brilliance and tactical continuity from the Jurgen Klopp era. Liverpool were creating more than two clear chances per match while barely conceding any. They were dominant, controlled and devastating on the counterattack.

This season was supposed to mark the transition to his Liverpool – aggressive, vertical, built around a clinical number 9 who could convert the chances that MoSalah and a rejuvenated midfield would create.

Instead, Slot is trapped between two realities. Playing both Isak and Ekitike demands a formation which compromises midfield control and defensive balance. A 4-4-2 diamond, a 4-2-4, even a lopsided 4-3-3 – none have worked consistently. Playing just one means a club-record signing sits frustrated on the bench, or a breakout star loses confidence and rhythm. Neither solution feels sustainable over a 38-match league campaign and the demands of Champions League football.

(Photo by Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images)

Is Time Running Out?

The visit of Real Madrid next Tuesday arrives at a fragile moment for Liverpool. What once felt like a marker of progress now feels like a test of survival. Slot’s side are searching for rhythm and confidence, and Anfield’s lights will expose where both stand. The Villa game may shape the mood, but the match against Los Blancos will reveal the truth.

It’s the kind of night which defines more than a result. It decides whether the Reds can still command the big stage or whether they are merely clinging to the memory of it. For Slot, it is about more than tactics or selection. It is about control, conviction and whether his vision can still inspire belief when doubt surrounds him.

Madrid has been the backdrop for Liverpool’s greatest highs and hardest lessons. What happens next will decide the side of history to which this team belongs.