What a difference a few weeks make in football. Before the first international break of the season, Liverpool were purring. Three wins from three in the league, including a scarcely believable injury time winner by teenager Rio Ngumoha against Newcastle, which was followed up with three points against Arsenal thanks to a simply outrageous Dominik Szoboszlai free kick.
They had also beaten Bournemouth on the opening weekend, a result that looks better with age as the Cherries hum along themselves, settling into fourth place in the league.
Heading into this international break and, depending on the content you consume, the wheels are teetering. Driving at 100 miles per hour, Liverpool are trying to replace those wheels with newer, shinier wheels they picked up at great expense during the summer. The guy trying to ease them into position is having to go all the way to the back of the car and hurl them aimlessly forward, to little success. We can tell he’s good at his job but it’s just not working for him at the moment. There’s a bearded man in the passenger seat not exactly contributing. All the while, the entire motorway is stopping to watch and scream at the shiny headed driver who’s plan, which started off reasonably well, is quickly becoming undone at the bolts.
That butchered analogy aside, Liverpool are going into the next two weeks, following three straight losses, facing many more questions than before. It’s Arne Slot’s most difficult spell in the job so far, a role he took to like a duck to water and quickly managed to ease the club and fanbase past the force of nature that was Jurgen Klopp.
How could it sour so rapidly? Despite their run of form which lasted five unbeaten games of the league, it was clear everything wasn’t all rosy. Late wins were required each time, while the team was chopped and changed to amalgamate new signings and bend for injuries, suspensions and the lack of fitness of Alexander Isak. At no point has the team looked truly settled, while mainstays from last season - namely, Alexis Mac Allister, Ibrahima Konate and Mo Salah - are struggling to find form.
As Liverpool dipped into their fountain of luck one too many times, it all came home to roost when Crystal Palace spat it back in their face with a late winner of their own the weekend before last. Suddenly, the cracks that were being papered over began to peak through. A turgid 1-nil loss over in Turkey against Galatasaray piled on the misery, and then Chelsea delivered a hammer blow with another late winner of their own at the weekend.
Suddenly, there’s pips of sweat on the forehead of the otherwise calm and calculated Slot, who this time last year was absolutely massacring Manchester United and his compatriot in the opposite dugout Erik ten Hag on Sky Sports afterwards, explaining with cruel transparency how easy it was to tear through his system.
How the tide has turned, as Marc Cucurella, the eccentric curly-headed Chelsea full back, was doing the same to Slot, specifically pointing out the ease at which they could get past Mo Salah and into Liverpool’s half.
Which poses Slot with the most difficult question of all. Can he persist with Mo Salah? Trying to account for an attacker that won’t track back or can’t defend is trouble at the best of times, but when that player is one of the club’s greatest ever, with a great deal of influence and, whether he admits it or not, pride and ego, it’s a dangerously difficult line to toe for Slot. One that could go horribly wrong, if he sits the ferocious forward who contributed an astounding 29 goals in their league title hunt last season, having promised to deliver numbers if Slot made him feel “comfortable” in the team.
“He was very honest with me, we had a few honest conversations and he said to me: ‘OK, I will get the best out of you. I will put you in a situation where you feel comfortable but I need you to provide the numbers.”
That pact is now looking shattered, just as Salah’s legs appear to be waning.
The thing that might sway Slot in a certain direction is he has the guts of €500million worth of attacking power that needs to be embedded, players that, all going well, will be contributing long after Salah has gone.
Buying two strikers at such vast expense, Isak and Hugo Ekitike, did seem a bit odd at the time. Given how well the Frenchman has taken to life at Anfield, and with Isak being the main component of the attack having chased him all summer, how do you fit both into a forward unit? Behind them, Florian Wirtz is trying his best but is overthinking things and trying to force something to happen. He’s been pilloried on social media as his goal and assists stats lay at zero, but he’s clearly not fazed and in many situations, is Liverpool’s classiest player.
How that all intertwines with a Salah that isn’t delivering the required output is something Slot will contend with over this international break. He has problems elsewhere, such as why none of his right backs are settling in a post-Trent Alexander Arnold world, with various mish-mashes of Conor Bradley, Jeremie Frimpong and even Szoboszlai being tried there. By the end of the Chelsea game at the weekend, the Hungarian midfield engine was back at right back, while Ryan Gravenberch was at centre half. Two of last season’s most important midfield cogs were in defence while his third, Mac Allister, is looking desperately out of form and quite possibly nowhere near peak fitness.
As for replacing Trent, the thought process was that they had replaced him in the aggregate, to force a baseball term from Moneyball. Wirtz would do a lot of the creative heavy lifting while Bradley or Frimpong would be an old fashioned full back, full of running and carrying the athleticism of the right side of the pitch so Salah could do his thing. That simply hasn’t worked yet, and is a pressing issue that, if sorted, may see other jigsaw pieces fall into place.
On September 3rd, Salah spikily took to Twitter and critcised a post which highlighted Isak and Wirtz and asked people to name a bigger upgrade in footballing history than them over Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz. In it, Salah rightfully punched back, saying “how about we celebrate the great signings without disrespecting the PL champions?”
Naturally, the original tweet has aged like sour milk - on Sunday, the pace and directness of Diaz would’ve been a welcome injection as Cody Gakpo plugged away with no great deal of threat, while Nunez - as, let’s say, fruitless as he was at times in front goal - never, ever stopped working and even if his goalscoring ability left something to be desired, he was a menace and a huge threat with his pace and strength.
And now, Salah may have to face his own words as those very “great signings” may have to usurp him in the starting eleven for a little while.
And, somewhat inevitably, the Diogo Jota situation has been raised. In an interview with Virgil van Dijk after the game he acknowledged this as something that rests on the players’ shoulders, and it’s not something that can really be dismissed by anyone, as much as rival fans see it as a convenient excuse as Liverpool’s form takes a downturn.
But that’s not exactly a fair assumption to make. Nobody knows what’s going through the mind of some of these players. Salah, who was brought to tears in front of the Kop on the opening weekend against Bournemouth, may well be playing with a heavy weight on his mind. Alexis Mac Allister, in addition to clear fitness troubles, may well be struggling to focus as he enters a work environment every day with the glaring, painful absence of the jovial Jota.
It’s not on us to make assumptions of what these players feel, nor to second-guess their intentions when this point is raised. It only happened in early July. These players attended their funerals three months ago. Grief is a cruel, unruly and utterly unpredictable beast.
Liverpool, in my completely non-expert and somewhat copium opinion, will be fine. These players are simply too good and the infrastructure around them is too strong. Slot isn’t suddenly a bad manager. Nobody who could engineer a title win with a squad he inherited and make it look that easy can be a bad manager. But there are troubles and kinks that he needs to work out. Isak will score goals, Salah will find form eventually, and Wirtz will strike a balance with his new teammates.
How long that might take and how many jabs Slot and his team take in the meantime, with a title race intensifying around them, remains to be seen. If Slot can navigate his current Salah situation and somehow spark a rejuvenation in players that have lost their way, they’ll be fine and this week will just be another reference point in kneejerk football reactions.