Andy Robertson has described the emotional weight of Liverpool\u2019s 2025-26 campaign after Diogo Jota\u2019s death, saying the club\u2019s struggles went far beyond tactics or transfer business.<\/p>\n
The former Liverpool fullback said the atmosphere inside the dressing room was shattered in the aftermath of the tragedy, and that the pain affected every part of the team\u2019s season. Liverpool finished fifth, ended without a trophy and later saw Arne Slot, Mohamed Salah, Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 and Robertson depart.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to describe or talk about it, because what we went through was horrendous,\u201d the Scotland international said of Jota\u2019s death on the Stick to Football podcast. \u201cIf I\u2019m talking about the new signings, they\u2019re coming into a club that is heartbroken, and they\u2019re trying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when I felt so sorry for these guys because they had signed and they were signing for big money. If I\u2019m talking about football, when it took them months to settle in, because we were like ghosts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t care about football. That was the truth of it. We didn\u2019t care about football because we just lost one of our best mates in the changing room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool\u2019s decline was severe even before the emotional backdrop was fully considered. After winning the league in 2024-25 and spending close to \u00a3450 million ($600 million) last summer on players including Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Hugo Ekitik\u00e9, the side had to wait until the final day of 2025-26 to secure Champions League qualification.<\/p>\n
They closed the campaign on 60 points, 25 behind title winners Arsenal. Under Slot, the club\u2019s defeat total rose from four in his debut league season to 12, with half of those losses coming in the opening months after Jota\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll footballers have that edge, don\u2019t we, and I think when you lose that edge, sometimes you can\u2019t perform to your best,\u201d Robertson continued. \u201cI think last season we lost the edge. When I look back on it now, I think we lost that determination a little bit, because I know at times we were going, \u2018What\u2019s the point?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at what his family are going through, look at his kids, but we were grieving. It was our mate, at the end of the day. He\u2019s not just a footballer to us. He was a teammate, a friend. He was everything. For us it was incredibly difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jota\u2019s memory remains part of the club\u2019s response, with Liverpool retiring number 20 ahead of last season and wearing a special honorary patch on their shirts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robertson says Liverpool\u2019s 2025-26 season was shaped by grief after Jota\u2019s death and the dressing room was broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20170,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1047,180,182],"class_list":["post-20171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-champions-league","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}