One of the most underrated aspects of football is luck. Sure, we’ve all sat and said, “Lucky buggers” when Manchester City have scored a late goal, or declared, “We’ve been lucky there” when Liverpool have avoided conceding a big chance, but in general, people play down how much luck plays a role in the outcome of football matches. Arne Slot will know only too well how much luck the Reds have had so far this season, both good and bad. In the first seven matches of the campaign, Liverpool were lucky to walk away from all of them with wins. In the matches that have happened since, we’ve been somewhat unlucky to have lost as many as we have. Take the Manchester United game, for example. We were incredibly unlucky that Virgil van Dijk clattered into Alexis Mac Allister and left him injured ahead of their opening goal. That misfortune was then compounded by the match referee deciding to ignore the rules around head injuries and allow the game to play on.
After ignoring the penalty we should have had in the first half, our old friend Chris Kavanagh on VAR duty has just intervened for Brentford.
3-1
— Two Left Boots (@twoleftboots.bsky.social) 25 October 2025 at 21:30
In the game against Brentford at the weekend, we were equally unlucky that the Video Assistant Referee, Chris Kavanagh, decided that it was his place to weigh in on the van Dijk tackle, declaring it to be on the line of the penalty area in spite of the lack of any definitive evidence showing as much. Having got ourselves back into the game through luck of our own at the end of the first-half, we were denied the opportunity to put the pressure on Brentford when they restored their two-goal advantage and continued to defend well. That we were so unlucky in both games doesn’t mean that we weren’t also really poor in both of them. Football matches are about riding your luck almost as much as they are about playing well and putting the opposition on the back foot. When your luck deserts you, as it appears to have done for Arne Slot right now, it can feel as though it’s never going to come back. As a result, the main thing that you can do is set up in a manner that removes luck from the equation. So why aren’t we?
A Team Not Built for This Version of the Premier League
I was listening to the Post-Match Show on The Anfield Wrap in the wake of our loss to Brentford and I thought a really good point was made by John Gibbons. Arne Slot felt that we didn’t have enough control over matches last season, failing to turn a 1-0 into a 2-0 or 3-0 frequently enough. As a result, we spent this summer recruiting players who are built to dominate football matches and create goalscoring moments. At the same time, the Premier League itself began to move towards a more physically dominating style of play, with long throws and set-pieces becoming the order of the day. The result is that we seem to be entirely unable to cope with the physical approach from every other team, all whilst they’re finding it remarkably easy to score against us. Players like Jeremie Frimpong, Florian Wirtz and Milos Kerkez are not built to be able to withstand tall, physical players towering over them and out-muscling them at every set-piece.
Leeds, Wolves and Nottingham Forest.
The only teams in the Premier League with fewer open play goals than Arsenal, who will probably win the title this season.
Doesn’t matter in the least how you get there but set pieces are very much the direction of travel in 2025/26.
— Andrew Beasley (@andrewbeasleyfootball.com) 27 October 2025 at 10:35
At the same time, even our physical powerhouses such as Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté have been in a terrible run of form, meaning that they can’t offer the sort of protection from long throws, free-kicks and corners that we might ordinarily hope from them. Add in the fact that Giorgi Mamardashvili isn’t really used to the Premier League in the same way that Alisson Becker is and you can see a squad that is struggling to find its way home more often than not. Meanwhile, Mikel Arteta has spent the last few years building a team that puts its entire emphasis on set-pieces, even if it’s at the expense of open play goals. Personally, I find Arsenal incredibly boring to watch and think that their dependence on corners and throw-ins is the antithesis of what I want from my football team. As things currently stand, however, they are almost certainly going to win the title, so won’t care very much how it is that they get there. Is that good planning from the Spaniard, or good luck?
What Can Slot Do?
Arne Slot is an intelligent man and an excellent manager. In spite of the cries of the more churlish out there, he didn’t win the title last season because of Jürgen Klopp. In the long run, I am confident that he will be able to turn it around. Yet in the short term, he needs to do more to stop the rot. He is not a passive participant in what’s going on with the Liverpool team right now. He has made plenty of mistakes along the way and has got his tactics wrong on more than one occasion during the campaign to date. The big question he needs to answer is about what he can do to fix things. In my opinion, one of the best places to start is by making us more solid defensively. Whilst I obviously understand his desire to push his defence up the pitch in order to make the playing area smaller, it is leaving us hugely exposed time and time again, with opposition sides only needing to find one decent through ball to an attacker who’s timed his run well and we’re in massive trouble.
This Liverpool side is an embarrassment. I don’t care how much money we’ve spent or how players need to “adapt”, defending like that is criminal at any level.
#BRELIV
— Jonathan Rimmer (@jonathanrimmer.bsky.social) 25 October 2025 at 20:49
Although it goes against his instincts, I think we need to ask the defence to drop deeper and get the midfield to focus more on offering them support than constantly trying to hit the opposition on the counterattack. We aren’t attacking well as things currently stand, so the least that we could do is to be more solid at the back. The fact that we keep going behind so easily means that we’re always on the back foot, having to score once or twice just to get back on a level playing field. Drawing a few games 0-0 isn’t how you get the crowd off its feet, but it is how you tell opposition sides that they’re not getting any free gifts from us anymore. It is also the easiest way to win a game 1-0 by sneaking a goal rather than having to score several to win. I obviously appreciate that it isn’t as easy as just saying, “Defend better” and then it happens. Yet at the moment, what we’re seeing is a manager asking his players to do the same thing over and over again and somehow being surprised at the results.
