5 rubbish Liverpool sides who were somehow doing better than Arne Slot’s 2025-26 team | OneFootball

Liverpool suffered their 10th defeat of the 2025-26 Premier League campaign with their 2-1 loss at Brighton on Saturday. That’s more than any season in the last 10 years, and there’s still seven games left to play.

Arne Slot is feeling the pressure, having helmed one of the worst title defences in recent history – and that after the club spent heavily to reshape the squad last summer. They currently sit fifth in the table, with just 49 points after 31 matches.

We’ve looked at five poor Liverpool teams who had more points at the same stage of the season – and, tellingly, what happened to the manager in charge.

2022-23

AKA the ‘midfield collapse’ season.

Liverpool had come within a couple of games of the quadruple the year before, but this was the season Jurgen Klopp’s side just stopped functioning. The likes of Fabinho and Jordan Henderson fell off a cliff.

They were seventh with 50 points at this stage of that campaign, behind Tottenham and Aston Villa and miles off Newcastle, with particular lowlights including defeats to Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth and Wolves.

Klopp’s Reds did thrash Manchester United 7-0 and rallied to win seven in a row in the spring. Slot could really do with something like that this time around to build confidence that he’s the man to turn things around, as Klopp eventually did.

Even with that excellent late-season turnaround, it proved too little too late. Liverpool finished 5th on 67 points, the lowest placing and tally of Klopp’s eight full seasons.

2020-21

AKA the ‘unprecedented injury crisis’ season.

Roy Keane famously labelled them ‘bad champions’, but to be fair, they had to contend with the entirety of their central defence missing most of the campaign.

After 31 games, Liverpool sat sixth with 52 points. Four points behind Leicester in 3rd, miles off runaway leaders Manchester City and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United in second.

As they did a couple of years later, Liverpool – stitched up with the likes of Rhys Williams, Nat Phillips and even Henderson filling in the backline – turned things around in the run-in, taking advantage of Leicester’s collapse.

Alisson’s goalscoring heroics were partly responsible for them achieving a more than respectable third-place finish in the end.

2014-15

Life after Luis Suarez.

Liverpool were a shambles in 2024-15, a shadow of the side that fought for the title the season before. Signings like Rickie Lambert, Lazar Markovic and Mario Balotelli set the tone for a poor year.

But even that Liverpool side had five more points at the same stage of the season than this current 2025-26 team.

We’d be amazed if Slot survives an end to the season nearly as bad as that one, though. They ended up eighth in the end on 60 points, having won just one of their last six games, with other results including defeats to Hull, Crystal Palace and a particularly infamous 6-1 away to Stoke City.

Brendan Rodgers soldiered on over the summer, but patience wore thin after Liverpool didn’t look any more convincing in the early months of the 2015-16 campaign. He was sacked in October, and the rest is history.

2009-10

Rafael Benitez’s final season at Anfield was a pretty miserable one.

The nadir of the Hicks and Gillett era, Liverpool failed to make it out of their Champions League group, lost to a heavily-rotated Arsenal in the League Cup and were dumped out of the FA Cup by Reading.

The league campaign never got going either, with five defeats by Halloween. They eventually ended up seventh, their lowest finish in 11 years.

Even then, at this stage of that season, they had two more points than they do now. Puts things in perspective.

2003-04

Liverpool actually had the same number of points at this stage of the 2003-04 campaign. Just about fourth ahead of Newcastle United and Birmingham City(!) but miles off Arsenal’s Invincibles.

To be fair, that team wasn’t that rubbish. They achieved their primary objective of qualifying for the Champions League by finishing fourth.

Still, it wasn’t enough for Gerard Houllier to keep his job. A series of limp cup exits – Portsmouth in the FA Cup, Bolton in the League Cup, Marseille in the UEFA Cup – gave the sense that the French coach’s time had run its course.

“I’d rather have stayed as manager but I leave on good terms with everybody. I may have left Liverpool, but Liverpool will not leave me,” Houllier responded at the time.

“The board decided change was necessary if we were to realistically challenge for the title next season,” reasoned chief executive Rick Parry.

Liverpool weren’t anywhere near that – actually going backwards in the league with a fifth-place finish and lower points tally – but Houllier’s successor Rafa Benitez did deliver the Champions League. Swings and roundabouts.