Arne Slot will rightly get criticism for Liverpool’s Carabao Cup final defeat – not necessarily for the defeat itself, but the manner of it with his side failing to show up at Wembley.
But while the result will barely register in the history books of Liverpool Football Club and only be a footnote in what should be a season that ends with a 20th league title, the performance could have far reaching consequences.
We can all question Slot’s decisions, most notably the lack of use of the fringe trio of Harvey Elliott, Wataru Endo and Federico Chiesa, and why he wasn’t able to get his team to offer any attacking threat whatsoever until being 2-0 down and with six attacking players on the pitch.
Slot has 17 days now to assess his decisions, an opportunity to review most of his first campaign in charge. Lessons will no doubt have been learned. Questions will be asked like was it really worth playing the best XI in all those Champions League group games?
It should also be a fortnight of planning for what promises to be a huge summer for him and the club. The Dutchman’s insistence last week that the ongoing uncertainty over contracts doesn’t affect his planning should probably be taken with a large pinch of salt. How can it not?
Uncertainty throughout the squad
How can Slot be going into his first proper summer, having fully assessed the squad he has, not knowing whether arguably his three most important players – three of the greatest players to have worn the Liverpool shirt – will be in his squad next season? It’s an absolutely surreal situation to be in.
Liverpool have four world-class players in their squad. As things stand three of them won’t be at the club next season and the fourth, Alisson, has his position severely questioned by Giorgi Mamardashvili‘s arrival.
What then of the remaining players? Of which, only seven are contracted beyond two more years (and two of those are Darwin Nunez and Chiesa). Why would any player sign a new contract now, not knowing whether those world-class players will be playing alongside them?
It’s not a huge reach to suggest that from the XI that started the Carabao Cup final, only the midfield three and Ibrahima Konate could remain first-choice starters next season (and Konate only has 12 months left and interest from PSG).
The rebuild required – is it possible?
Slot can’t control the problems around contracts, but what he can control are his opinions on the squad and the shortfallings this season.
Truth be told, this squad is nowhere near the level of the Reds’ last title-winning team of 2020. The first XI isn’t a patch on Rafa Benitez’s class of 2009 that finished second. A rebuild is required regardless of contracts.
But that rebuild becomes almost impossible if Salah, Alexander-Arnold and Van Dijk all depart. To replace those three and get an actual centre-forward, plus a left-back, would be one hell of a summer. A whole new spine of the side.
And if the likes of Elliott, Chiesa and Endo move on in search of making more than cameo and cup appearances, then who will be lining up to become Slot’s squad men knowing that, in his own words, he has mainly started “with [the same] 13 or 14 players [who] have shared most of the playing time.”
Ryan Gravenberch has clearly been over-used, while Endo wasn’t even trusted to start a home game against Southampton inbetween the energy-sapping two legs against PSG.
Would that change if Slot had more trust in his squad players? He rotated very little at Feyenoord too. When he has rotated this season, at PSV and Plymouth, he insisted it was for the longer-term benefit of the first-choice XI, which you could argue hasn’t exactly played out well since then.
Either way, to sign a first-choice right-back, left-back and an entirely new front three, plus squad options, is simply unthinkable.
All this means that Slot could win the title in his first season, then have pretty much a new team in his second. And with Man City facing their own squad rebuild and a bizarre summer with the expanded Club World Cup, too much upheaval at Anfield could hinder what might well be a golden chance to win back-to-back titles in Slot’s first two seasons.
Clarity is needed in the corridors of Liverpool FC. Fast.
