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“The failure is big,” said Ryan Gravenberch as he digested the Champions League defeat by Paris Saint-Germain that ensured Liverpool’s season will finish trophyless. It was a more appropriate description of the team’s plight than Arne Slot’s insistence the future looks bright and a reality the head coach cannot avoid whether Champions League qualification for next season is secured or not. As it must be.
Failure is unthinkable for a club whose business model depends on its lucrative revenue streams and a team that, 12 months ago, was about to win the Premier League title at a canter and was then remodelled to the tune of almost £450m. With the top five all qualifying, Chelsea fading from the conversation under Liam Rosenior and a five-point advantage over Brentford and Everton with six games to play, it would be a humiliating final blow for Liverpool to miss out. Slot’s defence for getting a third season to manage Liverpool’s transition would be holed.
Sunday’s Merseyside derby, the first to be staged at Hill Dickinson Stadium, has assumed huge importance for Slot. But not simply in the aftermath of Tuesday’s Champions League exit. The visit to Everton represents the conclusion of what was long considered a defining period for him, a sequence of five matches in 16 days that would determine Liverpool’s course in the FA Cup and Champions League plus strengthen – or undermine – their claims on a top-five finish. The first four matches have yielded three defeats, two competition exits by an aggregate scoreline of 8-0, two differing gameplans against PSG that did not work and one league win inspired by the 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha.
Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, who hired Andoni Iraola at Bournemouth, was present at Anfield to witness the side perform valiantly against the European champions, but badly underperform their xG – in this case 1.94 – yet again. Repeated shortcomings are not a bad luck story. The misfortune was to lose Hugo Ekitiké to a suspected achilles injury when he collapsed with no one near him in the 27th minute. Should Liverpool’s worst fears be confirmed in the coming days Ekitiké, one of the few pluses from last summer’s expensive intake, would be unlikely to play again this year.
Hughes will have heard the applause for Liverpool’s efforts that greeted the final whistle. There was more support for the team and their performance inside the ground, where it matters, than on social media, where it does not. He will recognise Ekitiké’s injury is the latest in a long line of problems that have conspired against the club this season. The absence of their leading goalscorer would mean the new £320m front line that sent expectations soaring – Alexander Isak, Ekitiké and Florian Wirtz – have played 115 minutes together by the season’s end.
Hughes would also have seen that Slot’s decision to start Isak for the first time in four months against PSG did not pay off. Nor did the decision to switch to a back five for the first and only time in his Liverpool reign in the first leg at Parc des Princes. Slot’s explanation for starting Isak was logical – the striker had 45 to 55 minutes in him and might deliver the early goal that Liverpool craved – but five touches summed up the forward’s minimal impact before his half-time substitution. A Champions League quarter-final against the best side in Europe is not the place for experimentation.
“The good thing is Alex is back,” said Slot after the second leg. At the time it sounded like a £125m lead balloon being dropped on to a miserable night, misplaced positivity to accompany Slot’s assertion: “The future looks very bright for this team, for this club. We have showed we can compete with the champions of Europe in our stadium.”
But with Ekitiké out and Liverpool stumbling through the run-in, in keeping with the entire season, a fit Isak could prove the difference between Champions League qualification and humiliation. Isak and Wirtz are overdue repayments on their exorbitant transfer fees, even taking into account the former’s serious injury, having massively underwhelmed. It is on Slot to get that supply line functioning in the final six games.
Gravenberch made no attempt to sugarcoat Liverpool’s exit in an interview with the Dutch media outlet Ziggo Sport. Asked whether it was acceptable to be eliminated by a team as impressive as PSG, the Liverpool midfielder said: “No, actually not. It’s disappointing. We have to pick ourselves up as Sunday is waiting. We still have six matches in the league and we just want to play in the Champions League next year as well. We have to give it our all.
“We have been a bit unlucky whereas last year we got a lot of things going our way. This year it feels we’re only getting setbacks – [conceding] a lot of goals in the last minute, not finishing our own chances when we are playing well. It’s just a tough season … ultimately you want to win a trophy but if you don’t have that in a season like the one we’re having now, you can only learn from it.”
