Liverpool Faces Decline as Season Ends with Bob Marley’s Anthem

The Kop tried to sing away the truth. “Every little thing is gonna be alright,” rolled around Anfield, a defiant chorus of Bob Marley as Liverpool’s 2025/26 season finally wheezed to a halt.

No one inside the ground truly believed it.

This was not just the end of a campaign. It felt like the slow closing of a chapter that had defined a generation. Two more pillars of the club’s modern renaissance have gone. Half of the squad Arne Slot inherited just two years ago has already departed. Several more are expected to follow Mo Salah and Andy Robertson out of the door in the coming weeks.

The word on everyone’s lips was not “transition.” It was “decline.”

Echoes of the 1990s

Supporters old enough to remember the early 1990s have seen this film before. Back then, Graeme Souness dismantled Kenny Dalglish’s ageing but title-winning squad at speed, lost his job, and left behind a club that drifted for years in a fog of mediocrity.

The parallels are uncomfortable. Salah has not been shy in airing his concerns as his own nine-year spell – one of the greatest in Liverpool’s history – drew to a close. His unease mirrors that of a fanbase that has watched the spine of a serial-winning side stripped away while results have nosedived.

Liverpool stumbled to a 1-1 draw with Brentford on the final day. On paper, it secured Champions League football. On the pitch, it did little to convince anyone that this team is heading in the right direction. No wins in the final four games. Just four victories in the last 14 in all competitions.

Strip away the excuses and the context and the numbers are brutal. Sixty points. Fifth place. No trophy.

That is not a near miss. It is a failure.

Last season, 60 points would have left Liverpool ninth and out of Europe entirely. The year before, seventh and again no European qualification. Three seasons back, ninth. Sixty points is also the lowest total to reach the Champions League since 2003/04 – the season Gerard Houllier left in that oddly cordial, photo-op farewell on the Anfield pitch.

This time, there was no such veneer of calm. Only questions.

Slot’s Silent Lap

Slot insists he can win the fans back next season. He will need to. Even as the players took their lap of appreciation, the conversation on the concourses and outside the ground was not about the draw with Brentford or the return to the Champions League. It was about the Dutchman.

As the squad circled the stadium, acknowledging a support that has endured its lowest league win total in a decade – just 17 victories – Slot stayed rooted to the bench. Arms folded. Expression stony. Watching, not walking.

Perhaps it was nothing more than a manager lost in thought at the end of a draining year. But symbolism matters in this city. The lap is not a hollow ritual. It is a handshake between players, staff and supporters. A shared nod that, whatever the table says, they have gone through it together.

Slot missed his moment. He looked apart, not a part.

Salah, by contrast, understood the stage and the audience. Speaking to Sky Sports, he distilled the club’s identity in a few sentences: the fans “don’t care that much about the result as long as you sweat and give your blood here, they’ll love you forever.”

It was a reminder of what Liverpool demands: not perfection, but commitment. To turn up, to run, to fight. To walk through the storm together. And there has been a storm, from the shock and emotion around Diogo Jota’s death in pre-season to the relentless grind of a campaign that never truly settled.

Injuries, Choices and a Squad Left Short

When Slot was asked to sum up Liverpool’s season in one word, he chose “injury.” On one level, he is right. Fitness issues have bitten hard and often.

Yet the manager’s own words from October hang over that argument. Back then, he was adamant that a lean group was a deliberate choice: “This is a decision we have made together, I completely believe in this, because if you have 25 [players] it’s very hard to manage your squad.”

You cannot celebrate a small squad in autumn and then curse its limitations all winter and spring. Not when you know the calendar: an expanded Champions League, a relentless Premier League, domestic cups, midweek after midweek. Not when you also know that some of your new signings are not ready to play 90 minutes twice a week.

The logic never added up. The consequences were predictable.

Slot spoke of the risks: if Liverpool suffered “two, three or four injuries,” suddenly 15 or 16 players would be asked to shoulder almost all the minutes. That scenario arrived. The response, though, was not to trust the depth that did exist.

Trey Nyoni, the gifted 18-year-old midfielder who debuted under Jurgen Klopp at 16, finished the league season with just 21 minutes. Federico Chiesa, sidelined again, played 318 league minutes. Wataru Endo managed only 170.

Kieran Morrison, captain and standout of the Under-21s, was named on the bench 13 times. He got on the pitch once, for five minutes in an FA Cup win at Wolves.

The squad was thin by design, then thinned further by a reluctance to use those on the fringes. All of that came before the baffling decision not to bring Harvey Elliott back to Anfield in January, even as the bench screamed out for proven quality during the run-in.

In the end, Liverpool did not just look tired. They looked avoidably tired.

Heavy Defeats and Heavy Standards

Slot has been quick to stress the calibre of the opponents who dumped Liverpool out of the cups. A 4-0 defeat to eventual FA Cup winners Manchester City. Another 4-0 loss to PSG, a side unbeaten in two-legged European ties for two seasons.

The logic is clear: lose heavily, but lose to the best, and there is no shame in it.

That argument will not land on Merseyside. Not with a support that has grown used to fighting for the biggest prizes. Not with leaders like Virgil van Dijk, Robertson, Salah and Curtis Jones all publicly stating that this season has fallen below what Liverpool should accept.

Salah’s parting message to his teammates at the AXA Training Centre cut through any spin: “Being in Liverpool, winning something for Liverpool and winning games is the best thing that could happen to you all.” This is not a club that measures success in qualification alone.

Slot described Champions League football as “our lowest base,” pointing to Chelsea and Tottenham as “big clubs” who have missed out on Europe entirely this season. For some supporters, that line will sound like a recalibration of ambition. Liverpool are not supposed to be comforted by the struggles of others. They are supposed to set the pace.

The numbers tell their own story. The longest unbeaten run this season was 13 games, a response to a 4-1 home humiliation by PSV that many viewed as the nadir of the campaign. Yet even that stretch was deceptive. Draws with Leeds twice, Burnley and Fulham. Wins padded by Barnsley in the FA Cup and a West Ham side heading for relegation.

It was not the surge of a team ready to challenge again. It was a side clinging on.

A Summer of Surgery, Not Tweaks

The uncertainty around Anfield this summer stretches far beyond the dressing room. Slot has just one year left on his contract. So do the key decision-makers above him, Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards. Stability, once Liverpool’s great off-field strength, now looks fragile.

On the pitch, the churn could be even more dramatic. Up to nine first-team players may depart. Salah and Robertson are already on their way. Ibrahima Konate is out of contract. Chiesa and Endo are likely to be moved on. Jones, with a year remaining and serious interest from Inter Milan, is widely expected to go. Alisson is wanted by Juventus. Joe Gomez, another entering the final 12 months of his deal, could be sold. Alexis Mac Allister may also be available at the right price.

Strip that out and what remains is stark. Liverpool head into next season with Cody Gakpo as their leading current goalscorer for the club. Behind him, a centre-back, van Dijk, is next on the list.

Slot has spoken of “a little transition” this summer, not as “drastic” as last year. On paper, though, this looks less like a tune-up and more like major surgery. New leaders, new goals, new structure. All while trying to convince a sceptical fanbase that the trajectory is upwards, not backwards to the Souness years.

As the final whistle blew and the players drifted down the tunnel, the Kop clung again to Marley’s refrain: “Don’t worry about a thing.”

The song floated into the evening air. The reality is very different. A lot of Liverpool supporters will spend this summer doing exactly that.