Arne Slot sat alone in the Anfield dugout and puffed out his cheeks as Liverpool completed their customary lap of honour following a 1-1 draw with Brentford, a moment that preceded his departure being confirmed by the club six days later. Liverpool announced on Saturday that Slot had stepped down as manager with immediate effect.
The 2025-26 season proved calamitous by the club’s standards. Liverpool secured UEFA Champions League qualification with a fifth-place finish and 60 points, but suffered 20 defeats in all competitions in what was described as a shambolic Premier League title defence for a side that began the campaign as overwhelming favourites to retain the crown.
While Liverpool’s hierarchy maintained public support for Slot throughout the campaign, sources told ESPN that privately his departure had come to feel inevitable amid unrest at Anfield. Making a change soon after the end of the season was viewed internally as the best way to limit disruption for a squad facing a significant revamp this summer. “That this was a difficult decision for us to make as a club goes without saying,” Liverpool’s ownership said in a joint statement on Saturday. “The contribution Arne has made to Liverpool FC in the time that he has been with us has been significant, meaningful and — most importantly of all to supporters and ourselves — successful.”
Slot’s greatest success at Liverpool will remain the 2024-25 Premier League title, won by a 10-point margin. That triumph marked just the second time Liverpool had won the league since the Premier League began in 1992. The club’s transition after Jurgen Klopp’s nine-year tenure drew scepticism at the time, and Slot insisted in his first Liverpool news conference that succeeding a highly successful predecessor represented an ideal opportunity. “You can look at it as the way to be the successor of someone who was really successful,” he said. “But I look at it in a way that that is ideal because there is an opportunity to win something.”
Slot arrived at Anfield with a reputation built on his work at AZ Alkmaar and Feyenoord. His understated, straight-talking persona was credited with winning the dressing-room last season and bringing strong performances from several players, including Ryan Graven, even as results ultimately failed to match expectations.
