The Blame Game

Are Liverpool's struggles tied to Richard Hughes or Arne Slot?

Is it Arne Slot’s fault that Liverpool headed into the 2025/26 Premier League season with glaring gaps in their squad? No. The blame there lies at the feet of Richard Hughes. The Sporting Director, who seems to be doing a very good job according to David Ornstein, is responsible for assembling the squad.

He seemingly felt as though the Premier League champions could get by without the addition of another senior centre-back and one more attacker. Had the Reds been able to keep key players fit, they probably would’ve been absolutely fine. The title would’ve likely been beyond them without the perfect storm, largely because Slot needed to bed eight new first-team players in, but they had the quality for a top three finish.

Liverpool, as we know, weren’t able to keep key players fit though. Jeremie Frimpong has spent time on the sidelines and Conor Bradley is now out for the season. Giovanni Leoni suffered a torn ACL on his debut and is set to miss the entire campaign. Alexander Isak was in and out of the team prior to his leg break against Spurs while Hugo Ekitike has had fitness concerns and Cody Gakpo missed the majority of December.

These injury issues have made the decision not to bring in reinforcements during the summer, when the club had the opportunity, look silly. And it has heaped pressure on Hughes. He didn’t give Slot the best chance of succeeding and it was seemingly a choice rather than out of necessity.

So, you can sympathise with the Dutchman. He was given a difficult task of bringing everything together following the summer overhaul (eight players departed and eight arrived) and the tragic loss of Diogo Jota.

I said it in one of these newsletters at the start of the season. Slot has the toughest job in football. It’s one thing having to bed in one superstar, the former Feyenoord boss was given multiple big money signings in a single window and told to make it work. He wasn’t set up to fail but the chances of success were slim, at best.

The one-time AZ manager cannot be blamed for that. But what can he be blamed for?

This is a question few seem to want to answer. Can he be blamed for the drop off in quality across 2025? Depends who you ask, really. Some will say the drop off was inevitable because the title was a formality and teams always ease off in the final stages. This is true, to an extent, but the drop off started in February, when there was still a title to be won.

In the 2-2 draw with Everton in early February, Liverpool had a win probability rate of 18%. The win over Wolves on February 16th? The Reds had a win probability rate of 41% which dropped to 21% without the penalty. How does the win probability model work?

It is basically a shot analysis simulator. You enter in the individual shot data from a match and it shows the probability of every outcome.

Why do I like it? Well, it essentially removes the noise around volume. For example, a team might have 25 shots in a game but only one of those efforts has an xG of over 0.3. The rest are all between 0.02 and 0.05. Say we take the top end number there, 24 of those gives you an xG of 1.2. You then add in the ‘big chance’ and it takes your xG haul to, say, 1.6. If you draw 0-0 having created 1.6 xG, the narrative is you’ve been unlucky not to score.

The reality, however, is that you struggled to create and had to resort to low value shots, time and time again.

Sheer volume matters, of course. But the chances you’re creating need to be high value to be worthwhile. If you’re doing 10+ hit and hopes per game, you aren’t in a great place as an attacking team.

The link to the tool is here.

In games against Manchester City (44%), Everton (52%), Fulham (53%) and West Ham (43%) last term it was a flip of the coin.

We dominated Leicester (82%) and Spurs (74%) to secure the title and then things tailed off. Against Chelsea, the Reds had a win probability rate of 24%. Against Arsenal, it was 39%. Against Brighton, 32% and against Crystal Palace on the final day of the season, it was 36%.

From January until the end of the season, Liverpool had a win probability rate of 57%. In the final nine games of the season, with the Reds unable to use Alexander-Arnold in three of them and then him only starting two of the other games, they had a win probability rate of 49%.

Flip of a coin.

And this has continued on into the new season.

Liverpool have played 21 Premier League matches this term and have had a win probability rating of over 60% on just five occasions. If you remove the penalty against Burnley at Turf Moor, that figure drops to three.

The only other times they’ve had a win probability rating of over 60%? Manchester United, Leeds United (at Elland Road), and against West Ham United. Meanwhile, Arne Slot’s side have had a win probability rating of 40% or under on 10 occasions.

During this unbeaten run, results had papered over the cracks. Against Spurs, the shot analysis gave us a win probability rating of 23%. Against Brighton, another game we won, we had a win probability rating of 36%. Even against Wolves, one of the worst teams in the Premier League, we had a win probability rating of 42%.

Of course, this shot analysis has limitations. It doesn’t take into account game state or context. It analyses what has happened and not what will happen. But it backs up the idea that Liverpool haven’t been good.

And the data backs up that idea too.

For example, underlying numbers had us as a 65 point team across a 38 game season for the entirety of 2025. We’re currently on course to finish on 63 points. In 2023/24, 63 points got you a sixth place finish. Last season, you would’ve displaced Brighton in eighth.

In previous years, 69 points was the magic number for a top four finish. Fortunately for the Reds, rival teams for a Champions League berth are also poor this season, so you’re probably going to scrape a top five finish with 60 points. Slot’s side might stumble over the line here.

Can Slot be blamed for any of this? Again, it depends who you ask. Some are willing to write off the latter half of last season because the title was won, and the majority of this season because of the turnover in the summer.

So the Dutchman will be two seasons into the job and we’re only able to assess him on a brief spell when he first joined? This is why it becomes difficult to take those so vehemently in favour of retaining Slot as Liverpool manager seriously. The goalposts are continuously moved to protect him, just because Liverpool fans are supposed to back the Liverpool boss. We’re different from other teams. I agree that we are. But at what point do we stop ignoring the elephant in the room and actually address the situation?

The Reds lost nine from 12 at one stage of the season. We’re 22 games into the Premier League campaign now and we don’t even have a 50% win rate. In an attempt to shore things up defensively, Slot has neglected the forward line and that’s why we’re drawing so many games. That is on the manager. That is his choice. We’ve had to contend with injuries but can you honestly say he’s managed to get the best out of the players he’s had available to him?

The game plan seems to be to set up not to concede and hope that one of Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike or a midfielder produces a moment to win the game.

Last season, Liverpool ranked top for big chances and were comfortably first for xG in the Premier League, while having the second best defensive record. This term, the Reds have the third best defensive numbers when looking at the underlying data but rank sixth for xG and seventh for big chances.

That, in a nutshell, is the issue. The attack is struggling and instead of looking to fix it, Slot looked to just make Liverpool more difficult to break down to ease the burden on the forward line. The approach seems to be to keep a clean sheet and hopefully win 1-0. That isn’t on Hughes. That is on the manager.

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