By any measure, Nottingham Forest’s victory at Anfield should not have been an earthquake. Last season’s stumble was written off as a passing tremor—an aberration in Liverpool’s otherwise imperious home record. But this latest collapse did not feel like a blip. It felt like a diagnosis. And it revealed a truth Liverpool have refused to confront: Arne Slot’s champions are bleeding from more than one wound.
Forest did not merely win. They imposed themselves with a clarity and calmness that Liverpool have forgotten. Sean Dyche’s side arrived with a plan, executed it with conviction, and left with the biggest win at Anfield in the club’s history. Murillo, imperial in both penalty areas, Savona, lethal from full-back, and the brilliant Morgan Gibbs-White orchestrated a victory rooted in one precious commodity: control.
Liverpool, meanwhile, were a team trapped beneath their own weight. Eight losses in 11 matches. Six defeats in the last seven league games. Bottom half of the table. A second consecutive 3-0 embarrassment—the kind of capitulation not seen since 1965. Slot’s men did not collapse in one area; they collapsed in all.
The first half-hour promised order: high pressure, sharp passing, an Alexis Mac Allister header somehow blocked by Anderson. But once Forest landed their first punch, Liverpool disintegrated like wet paper.
Chaos by Design
This was not simply a bad day at the office. This was a team losing its identity.
Slot responded to the deficit with substitutions that mirrored the mood: frantic, confused, hopeful rather than purposeful. He launched forwards onto the pitch like someone scattering pebbles into a storm. Ekitiké, Chiesa, Ngumoha—all entered. None changed the rhythm. If anything, they exposed the team further.
Liverpool were no longer defending; they were improvising. And Forest, serene in their structure, simply waited for their moments. Gibbs-White’s late goal—calm, measured, inevitable—sent home fans to the exits before the ball had even kissed the net.
A Champion Playing Like a Stranger
How do champions fall this fast? How does a £400m summer yield so little coherence?
To understand Liverpool’s present crisis, you must look behind the scoreline and into the engine room—into the tactical machinery Slot has attempted to install.
1. A Build-Up That Builds Little
The departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold and the injury to Alisson Becker have destabilized Liverpool’s first act: playing out from the back.
Mamardashvili, left-footed and stylistically different, funnels possession into uncomfortable zones. Where Alisson would naturally find van Dijk—the team’s most composed outlet—the new keeper pushes play right, into the uncertain hands of Konaté, Bradley, or Frimpong.
This is not trivial. In modern football, the keeper dictates the direction, rhythm, and risk of a team’s possession. At Liverpool, that compass is now skewed.
Opponents know it too. They block the left, trap the right, and wait for Liverpool to fold. And without Alexander-Arnold’s two-footed audacity—his ability to open angles most players do not even see—the team is easily suffocated.
2. The Diminishing of Salah
For years the right flank was Liverpool’s heartbeat: Salah cutting inside, Szoboszlai pushing forward, Trent drifting into midfield to unpick defenses with the subtlety of a violinist.
This season that triangle has dissolved into static lines.
Salah now receives the ball with a defender clinging to his back rather than space ahead of him. The lanes are crowded, the midfield rotations chaotic, and the Egyptian is forced to play sideways instead of forward. His brilliance thrives on orientation—on facing goal, not retreat.
Liverpool have robbed their greatest weapon of the conditions that made him great.
3. A Press Without Purpose
Under Klopp, Liverpool pressed with the fury of a storm—collective, synchronized, suffocating. Under Slot, the team has adopted a more controlled 4-2-4 press, seeking a numerical advantage at the back.
The idea is modern. The execution is weak.
Because Liverpool keep four defenders deep to maintain the “plus one,” they often press with fewer bodies than the opponent can build with. Rival full-backs receive the ball freely, rivals link play comfortably, rivals escape pressure too easily.
Slot knows the weaknesses—his adjustment against Arsenal proved it—but he lacks the personnel or appetite to abandon his principles entirely.
Beyond Tactics: The Human Toll
Liverpool’s tactical problems are real. But they are not the whole picture.
The sudden, tragic death of Diogo Jota cast a shadow over Anfield far darker than any tactical malfunction. Slot himself acknowledged what everyone could see: this squad, this staff, this club is grieving.
Footballers are not machines. No training ground drill can erase trauma. No analytics can quantify emotional weight.
The slump is tactical, yes. But it is also existential.
The Verdict: A Club at a Crossroads
Liverpool’s decline is not a story of one weakness but many:
A destabilized build-up structure
A compromised press
A struggling Salah
A confused midfield rotation
A captain fighting fires everywhere but the right places
A grieving dressing room
And above all, a system that does not yet fit the players it commands.
Forest exposed these issues with ruthless efficiency. But they did not create them. Liverpool’s unraveling has been months in the making.
The question now is not whether Arne Slot can fix one problem. It is whether he can fix ten at once—and whether the club will give him the time to rebuild not just the tactics, but the spirit.
This, more than any scoreline, is Liverpool’s real crisis.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
