Somehow Jürgen Klopp kept the whole show on the road for as long as he did, and while no one ever claimed he was always easy to work with – including the man himself – lasting that long at a club subject to the scrutiny and demands of Liverpool is an achievement in itself.
Liverpool going back to Klopp? It feels like the kind of move clubs like them no longer make: sentimental, and also a bit desperate, even amid this extraordinary current crisis for Arne Slot. When he dropped the farewell news in January last year, Klopp repeatedly cited his dwindling energy. “My reserves are not endless,” he said. Later: “I’m not a young rabbit anymore.” Later still: “I am running out of energy. I know I cannot do the job again and again and again.”
He said it so many times it was as if he feared his point being missed. Klopp was knackered. He had asked to be released from his contract. As he walked out the door, so back in came Michael Edwards and Julian Ward and others in the Fenway Sports Group hierarchy that had departed in recent years. Their disagreements with Klopp during that time were only ever referred to discreetly, but they were pretty fundamental.
The point has delicately been made since, that they were as critical to the club’s success at Klopp, in various decisions that have now become part of Anfield folklore. Mohamed Salah over Julian Brandt. Sadio Mané over Mario Götze. Most of it chronicled in the book by the club’s former director of research Ian Graham, How to Win the Premier League, a great read and also an advocacy for that Liverpool recruitment directorate in the Klopp years.
But if one was to draw a lesson from that era now, in late 2025, with Liverpool in freefall and Slot’s future a matter of serious debate then it would be this. FSG president Mike Gordon, Edwards, Ward and the rest will certainly not want to go back to Klopp. Last season was vindication that Liverpool could win without him as well as with him.
Klopp’s recent acknowledgement it was “theoretically” possible he could return to Liverpool was just that – nothing made you feel like he wanted it. Besides, he is said to be committed to Red Bull and has already played a role in a managerial dethroning. He was part of the decision to sack his former player, and friend, Marco Rose as RB Leipzig manager in March and select the permanent successor this summer.
Of course, just because Klopp is unlikely to return, that does not mean Slot is immune from the sack. FSG are just as ruthless, even if they approach the problem in different ways.
If we are to learn one thing from Graham’s book, it is that Edwards, Ward and sporting director Richard Hughes will be looking at the data for clues. Graham famously described analysing Klopp’s final, disastrous season at Borussia Dortmund to make sure it was an anomaly rather than signalling more serious issues. When he presented his findings to the then new Liverpool manager, Klopp was delighted that it was judged to be the former.
Slot’s dire 2025-26 will be scrutinised for the same trends. Allowance will doubtless be made for the faltering impact of those new signings. It may require another revelatory book to tell us the rationale behind all of them. Data is king, or at least at the right-hand of the decision makers, and Liverpool have been well ahead of the curve in that respect. Although in the end all interested parties have to agree on new players.
By the same token there is always a dynamic at play and only those who were there in the room know the true nature of the consensus that is presented to the outside world. Those debates on signings between Klopp and Edwards and his team were exhausting enough finally to grind away at both sides. One day we may learn what those same conversations were like in the summer of 2025 as the club pursued Alexander Isak and others.
It is the view of FSG that managers, like players, can go through a dip in form. Alexis Mac Allister is having a poor season and yet the club would not consider selling him. Why not the same rules for managers too? They paid £8m to get Slot from Feyenoord, so convinced were they of his suitability and since then he has won a Premier League. That counts for a great deal with FSG.
There is also a view that many signings take time to hit their stride, and not all can have the immediate impact of Salah or Virgil van Dijk. The chief complaint from within the squad seems to be that Andy Robertson has lost his place to Milos Kerkez with the latter yet to demonstrate that he is an adequate replacement. There is also clearly some hardballing going on over contracts, and the future of Ibrahima Konaté, a free-agent in July, is unresolved while his form has tanked.
Drawing a line between performance and the contract politics of the squad is never easy. Not everyone can have the deal they want, no matter what they might have done in the past. Clubs have to push hard on contract value, especially those run without an owner-benefactor, and that can leave some players feeling bruised.
When it comes to the new deals for Salah and Van Dijk, it would be easy to say that should have been different. It is not just the age and cost of those players that influenced that decision. No club likes to lose players for free, and with Trent Alexander-Arnold departing as a free-agent, notwithstanding that early release fee, it is easy to see why those renewals made sense.
This is the moment when the system or recruitment and wage structure and the primacy afforded to data analysis that FSG has established at Liverpool is tested to its greatest degree. There would arguably be no greater triumph than having proven all the sceptics wrong on the wisdom of spending on the likes of Isak, Florian Wirtz and Kerkez. Maybe in 12 months’ time that is where the club will find themselves.
Regardless, the FSG system will endure. It is far from perfect. It learns from its mistakes and that makes it ruthless, which should tell Slot one thing. His predecessor Klopp stepped down when he felt himself no longer able to keep pace. It will not be he who rides to the rescue, but that does not mean that Slot can keep losing games and not be sacked.
Much as FSG would prefer that not to be the case, there are some universal rules that football cannot ignore – and chief among those is that in a slump like this it is the manager who pays the price.