Liverpool
Slot: Isak and Salah are adapting to a new system, not in crisis
Slot rejects alarm over Isak and Salah, blaming adaptation to a new system and match minutes. early.
Arne Slot has downplayed concerns over Alexander Isak and Mohamed Salah, insisting the perceived dip in form stems from adaptation to a new system and disrupted minutes rather than a fundamental problem. Liverpool remain top of the Premier League, but questions over individual output dominated the manager’s press conference ahead of Saturday’s trip to Chelsea.
Salah has three goals and three assists from nine games across all competitions, a long way short of the output he reached last season when he recorded 29 goals and 18 assists in the Premier League alone. Slot argued the decline in open-play goals began in the second half of last season and is related to how opponents set up.
“I see the same as the second part of last season, where he scored 12 goals, five from penalties [and] one from a set-piece, so six open-play goals,” Slot reflected. “He is part of a team that faces different opposition than the first half of last season. To make that maybe a little bit more of an insight, if you compare how we won the away game against Man Utd, where they tried to play out from the back and we took the ball off them three times, to how United played at Anfield, where [André] Onana only went long, then that is one of the answers why it is more difficult for us to score open-play goals.
“Mo has a part of this, already you could see this in the second half of last season and the first part of this season. But now you are focused on Mo, the next time you are focused on Florian [Wirtz] then you are focused on Cody [Gakpo]… what I’m trying to say is we don’t score as many open-play goals anymore as we did in the first part of last season. This is something we work very hard on.
Slot highlighted Isak’s limited minutes after a truncated pre-season and time away from the squad. “I said to him when he started that the difficult thing will be you will have your appearances, but if you add the minutes together, [he] probably only had two or three 90-minute games,” Slot explained. “That is what we inherited from the situation of him not being with the team in Newcastle and we knew this before, so it’s not an excuse.
“He already scored a goal, he gets fitter and fitter, but the main thing is he adjusts to his teammates and the teammates adjust to him. The more he plays together, the better things will work. He had a great counter movement in the [Crystal] Palace game , where in the end the midfielder didn’t see that and he already played the ball to the right. If he would have seen it, he would have been one-on-one to the goalkeeper. So, these are things you get if you play more together.
Slot also addressed criticism of Ibrahima Konaté, noting errors have been shared across the squad and stressing a measured assessment of performance. “What I think is if you are losing a game of football, as we did against Galatasaray and against Palace, then it doesn’t help if you lose a ball a few times very easily,” the Reds boss concluded. “He has been one of them, definitely not the only one because against Galatasaray I think apart from the penalty they created three or four moments and all three or four from us losing a very simple ball without any pressure, which happened to him once in the Crystal Palace game and once against Galatasaray.
“If you then lose a game of football, there’s so much focus on that moment and then all of a sudden [the] 90 minutes have been very, very poor, which is not the way I analyse a game. Especially not afterwards where I have the time to analyse, to watch it one more time, and see what we did well and what we did wrong.
“In the last two games, it has been obvious and clear we’ve made a few errors, not only him but also others, that we’re not used to. If you do things people are not used to and you lose a game a football then normally he, other ones and the manager gets criticised.”
Liverpool
Liverpool at a Crossroads: Slot’s Short-Term Future Hinges on Champions League Result
Slot’s future at Liverpool hinges on Wednesday’s Champions League tie as criticism and doubts grow..
A run of unsettling reports has placed intense scrutiny on Arne Slot’s position at Liverpool, with Wednesday’s Champions League last-16 second leg against Galatasaray framed as a potential turning point. The Reds travel to the tie trailing 1–0 on aggregate and return to Anfield needing to overturn that deficit.
The line of argument running through recent coverage assumes Slot holds the same reservoir of goodwill at the club as his predecessor. While both men share the same tally of Premier League titles, the German’s teams were celebrated as much for their high-energy style as their trophies. Slot himself has conceded this iteration of the team are “boring.” Supporters made their displeasure heard with boos after Sunday’s 1–1 draw with relegation-battling Tottenham Hotspur.
At present Slot is not thought to be in immediate danger of being sacked. Still, The Athletic’s James Pearce warned he must “turn this around” and that “the clocking is ticking” on finding a solution. Those alarm bells could start ringing as soon as Wednesday night.
Liverpool created a notable number of chances in Istanbul, a fact that offers hope of a comeback, but chronic defensive problems continue to compromise any sense of security at the back. Slot reportedly retains the faith of the club hierarchy, yet The Athletic’s Simon Hughes warned “it will be really, really hard for Slot to rescue back that trust” should Liverpool again exit in the round of 16.
Slot’s appointment as Liverpool’s “head coach” in the summer of 2024 coincided with the arrival of Richard Hughes as sporting director. The pair presided over the largest single-window spend by any club last summer. Hughes has been linked with a role at Al Hilal, according to The Telegraph, though no official contact is thought to have been made. Both Slot and Hughes have contracts running until 2027.
The potential loss of a close ally would only weaken Slot’s standing. Meanwhile former players continue to offer forthright assessments; Jamie Carragher labelled Liverpool a “team of individuals” after the Spurs draw. The Dutch coach has offered a different view, but the coming week will be decisive for perceptions of his stewardship.
Arsenal
Money Talks: CIES Ranks the World’s Most Valuable Squads
CIES values nine squads over $1bn; Real Madrid leads at $1.78bn while Tottenham exceed $1bn. Values.
The surge in transfer prices and squad valuations has reshaped how clubs are measured. The CIES Football Observatory produces those estimates by weighing a player’s quality, age, position and length of contract, and those individual valuations are then summed to give each squad a market value.
The scale is striking. There are nine clubs with squads valued above $1 billion. At the top is Real Madrid with a squad valuation of $1.78 billion and Kylian Mbappé listed as the most valuable player at $221 million. Barcelona follow with $1.60 billion, Lamine Yamal accounting for $403.9 million of that total. Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain each sit at $1.55 billion, with Bukayo Saka ($131.5 million) and Désiré Doué ($150.3 million) named as their most valuable players respectively.
Liverpool’s roster is valued at $1.20 billion, most valuable player Florian Wirtz ($149.8 million). Bayern Munich come in at $1.15 billion with Michael Olise ($162.6 million) as their top-rated asset. Tottenham’s squad is valued at $1.03 billion; Xavi Simons is listed as their most valuable player ($98.1 million), despite the club’s current relegation fight and Igor Tudor’s assessment that players “are lacking when we attack, we lack the quality to score the goal. We are lacking in the middle to run and we are lacking behind to stay there to suffer and not concede the goal.”
The list also includes Manchester United ($953 million, Benjamin Šeško $100.3 million) and Inter ($942 million, Lautaro Martínez $117 million). Earlier-positioned squads under $1 billion include Atlético Madrid ($903 million, Julián Álvarez $136.5 million), Juventus ($896 million, Kenan Yıldız $152.5 million) and Brighton ($894 million, Diego Gómez $86.4 million).
Several voices in the game have reflected on the market changes. Karl-Heinz Rumminegge said, “There are some players who do not come with a price tag.” Robert Lewandowski complained, “You are young, you score 10 goals in six months and some club will pay 60 or 70 million,” adding, “Before, you had to achieve something.” Vincent Kompany warned players about hype: “I always tell my players, ‘When there’s hype please don’t believe it, you’re not that good.’”
Whether the valuations mirror on-field quality or the inflation of a transfer market remains the central question CIES data brings into focus.
Analytics & Stats
Szoboszlai’s Conference League Comment Underlines Liverpool’s Finishing and Late-Goal Problems
Szoboszlai warned Liverpool must wake up; finishing inefficiency and late concessions persist. Today
Dominik Szoboszlai opened the scoring with his fourth Premier League free kick of the season, the most any Liverpool player has ever amassed in the competition’s history, but the lead did not hold. Richarlison salvaged a 90th-minute equaliser as Liverpool again dropped points late.
“I feel flat,” Szoboszlai told Sky Sports, barely raising his voice above a whisper. “We have to wake up because if we carry on like this, we should be happy with the Conference League.” Asked for an explanation behind this painfully familiar collapse — it was the eighth goal Liverpool have conceded in the 90th minute or later this season — Szoboszlai delivered a concerning response: “I don’t know why this is happening, I honestly don’t know.
“I think in the first half we played very well, we controlled the whole game and they hardly created chances apart from one or two headers. Second half we just didn’t so the same things.”
There was a clear sense of complacency after the opener: between that free kick and Richarlison’s equaliser, Tottenham registered twice as many shots on target as their hosts (six to three). Manager Arne Slot was less focused on attitude and more on finishing. “I think we are completely underperforming in terms of the chances we create and the amount of goals we score,” he said. “That’s quite a surprise if you look at how much attacking quality we have.”
Slot added: “If you’re not able to score enough, then you have to be able to keep a clean sheet, and that’s something we find really hard this season.”
The numbers underline the problem. “Liverpool have racked up 49 Premier League goals this season from an expected goals (xG) of 50.0, per FotMob.” That one-goal difference which Slot has bemoaned is almost exactly the Premier League average. Ten teams have a larger negative differential between their xG and actual goals scored, while nine different sides have been more efficient than Liverpool this season. Liverpool scored 86 goals from an xG of 83.5 last term, and nine clubs out-performed their predicted goal tally by a larger margin than the Reds.
Opta define a “big chance” as “a situation where a player is reasonably expected to score” and it is these opportunities Liverpool have frequently squandered. The side have converted 32% of their “big chances” this season—only three clubs have a lower rate. Big chances created fell from 150 (1st) in 2024–25 to 81 (6th) this season, while big chances missed moved from 92 (1st) to 55 (4th).
