The Two Liverpools

As most of you will probably know, I was the victim of a Twitter pile-on over the weekend. Someone decided to clip something I said on an Anfield Wrap show about not wanting Liverpool to sign Marc Guehí unless some sort of explanation of his actions around the rainbow armband was offered to the LGBTQ+ community. This is something I have been consistent on from the moment we were linked with him, even writing a blog about it on this site. For some reason, though, it became the focus of the ire of many knuckledragging morons on social media, up to and including me getting threats to my safety and bombarded with any number of homophobic messages. I am perfectly comfortable with my position on the matter and will not be backing down at any point, such is the extent to which I feel as though it is an important topic, to say nothing of the fact that what I have experienced is nothing when compared to what members of that community go through every day.

Obviously @adamlsmith.bsky.social is right about Guehi and I’d rather have someone else.

— TheCenci (@thecenci.bsky.social) 3 January 2026 at 11:10

I will always stand shoulder to shoulder with those that are most repressed and underrepresented, regardless of the personal cost to me. I also don’t think some of the ‘gotchas’ that people were tweeting are as clever as they think they are. ‘We have Muslim players’ and ‘wait until he realises there are other Christians in our squad’ was another. Not all religious people are bigoted, but many bigots choose to hide their discrimination behind religion. Mo Salah poses with his family in front of a Christmas tree every December, for example; does that seem like the actions of someone who follows every tenet of their religion? Even so, I am willing to admit that there may well be people with backwards beliefs in our squad, but they haven’t made them public. If there were to do so, I would be just as critical of them as I am of Guehí. It is 2026, for goodness sake. Why on earth does anyone care a jot who people have sex with and fall in love with, as long as it’s legal and consensual?

The Liverpool We Want This Side to Be

I am firmly of the belief that there are two Liverpool sides in existence right now, with the most damaging being the Liverpool that we all want to watch week in, week out. Having won the Premier League at a canter last season, spending a huge amount in the summer, it was not unreasonable to go into the campaign hoping that the Reds would be able to step it up a gear. Arne Slot proved himself to be a tactically astute manager, with virtually every substitution paying off and almost all of the changes that he made working out well. Mo Salah belied his age by scoring goal after goal, also adding assists to his game, whilst Virgil van Dijk looked every inch the best centre-back in the world. The decision to keep the squad broadly the same, adding only Federico Chiesa in the summer of 2024, proved to be a wise one and the spending spree that saw the best attacking midfielder on the market as well as one of the top strikers seemed to be Liverpool flexing their muscles.

Liverpool seem to have lost everything that made them so entertaining to watch under Klopp.

— James Nalton (@jdnalton.bsky.social) 4 January 2026 at 16:03

Having watched Liverpool challenging for the Premier League title virtually every season for nearly a decade, supporters went into this campaign with a level of expectation around how we would perform that has very clearly not been lived up to. I’ll explore the reasons why that might be the case shortly, but the reality of the matter is that pretty much everyone had an idea of what the Reds would be like this season in their head and most have refused to let go of that. It means that when we play a team like Leeds United, Nottingham Forest or Fulham away, the belief is that we should be swatting them aside. Never mind that Forest beat us at Anfield last season, or that we’ve struggled at Craven Cottage quite a lot in recent times, to say nothing of the difficulties we’ve had against newly promoted sides for years. This is Liverpool, so the expectation is that these points should be added to our tally without anyone even so much as breaking a sweat, right?

The Liverpool That Actually Exists Right Now

In the summer, we lost Diogo Jota in the most appalling, tragic circumstances. This is not an excuse for anything, but it is part of an explanation. There are many who feel that the players should be over it by now, so it rarely even gets so much as a mention when discussing the club’s form. A professional sports psychologist believes that the grief the players, management team and everyone associated with the club are going through will not reach its peak until the Spring. To simply ignore it as a factor is moronic, in my opinion, and Arne Slot is suffering every bit as much as his players. I think this is fairly clear in the fact that the man who seemingly couldn’t get anything wrong last season is now barely able to get anything right. The death also interrupted pre-season, with Slot, rightly, saying that no one needed to do anything that they didn’t want to do, which led to an end to the pre-season period that failed to properly prepare the players for the rigours of what was to come.

Liverpool are unbeaten in their last eight Premier League games (W4 D4), currently the joint-longest unbeaten run in the top flight. (along with Man City).

#ARSLIV

— Orbinho (@orbinho.bsky.social) 5 January 2026 at 11:59

The players have struggled to cope with any kind of setback for much of the season, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest when you bear in mind what they went through. Having lost seven games in succession, including three in a row by three goals, Slot had to take things back to basics and put defensive solidity at the top of his agenda. He did that, making us look much harder to beat since, but it has been at the expense of looking fluid in attack. None of the patterns of play that you’d expect to see have been there, which also isn’t a shock when you consider the fact that the manager had to abandon all previously worked-on plans for one that ensured solidity, with no time on the training pitch to make things right. This is not a Liverpool side that will be fighting for the title, instead being one that just needs to limp across the line into the Champions League places and then go again next season. It doesn’t mean mistakes haven’t been made, but the Liverpool we are isn’t the one we want to be and expectations need to be lowered accordingly.