Liverpool 0-3 Nottingham Forest: Premier League champions humbled in historic defeat - as pressure mounts on Arne Slot to arrest alarming slide

It will come as little comfort to Arne Slot that a sizeable number of Liverpool’s followers had already walked away by the time his side were down by three. They had seen enough and, most damningly, they had seen it all before.

Where and when will this tailspin end? And does Slot have the nous to correct it? Those are questions that are growing in volume around a title defence of ever-diminishing returns and recurring errors. Shambolic would barely do justice to the latest instalment.

The run now stands at six defeats in seven, but there are other data points to cover how the mighty have fallen so far and so fast.

One of them concerns set-pieces – the masters now resemble the most dopey of apprentices, with nine conceded via dead-balls in the Premier League alone. Murillo sends his thanks.

Then there’s the will. The sheer desire to fight. We saw none of that in the second goal, partially gifted to Nicola Savona by a defence that lacked the wit to track a Neco Williams run or the guts to mount a proper tackle on the same guy. Goodness, we shouldn’t be able to say that about a Liverpool side, but just watch the tape if you don’t believe it.

Finally, where was the pride? Where was the granite to stand up to a side who arrived with a little wind in their sails but only two teams beneath them prior to kick-off. By the time Nottingham Forest finished this mauling, they had recorded their biggest ever victory at Anfield and Liverpool were left processing a negative goal difference and the chorus of boos from those supporters who have lost patience. Hard to blame them.

Naturally, we will see it through the prism of Liverpool and Slot and a side of gifted components that has badly lost its way.

But we should also talk about Sean Dyche and the quality of his work. Where Ange Postecoglou could only find square pegs for round holes, Dyche has resurrected Forest by enabling his players to keep to their strengths. Let the defenders defend, let the attackers attack, let the sprinters roam, and what other complication does there need to be?

It was best shown by Murillo, who was immense and for none of the cosmetics that come with the scoring of goals. He defended exceptionally, as did Nikola Milenkovic, which is not unrelated to the fact that they have been freed from a requirement to keep to Postecoglou’s high line. Dyche’s genius has been in his embracing of simplicity.

But there was more. Elliot Anderson excelled, same as Morgan Gibbs-White, scorer of the third.

And yet so much of it was allowed by Liverpool’s deficiencies, which also saw a continuation of Alexander Isak’s struggles. His wait for a Premier League goal is now 202 days and this was a performance that offered zero silver lining to that statistic.

His inclusion was one of five changes made by Slot. Of the side trounced by Manchester City prior to the international break, Florian Wirtz, Conor Bradley, Andy Robertson and Giorgi Mamardashvili also stepped out for Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Milos Kerkez and Alisson Becker.

Some of that was enforced; some of it was desire with flecks of desperation. In the nuts and bolts, it meant the use of Dominik Szoboszlai as a right back, which is well within his capabilities, as he has shown previously, but carried the consequence of stripping Slot’s midfield of his most reliable attacker.

The first half here was a case in point. Liverpool dominated possession and had the best of the chances, but yielded precious little, especially in the areas Szoboszlai usually populates. Curtis Jones, taking up the responsibility, worked dog-hard yet produced very little. His relationship with Isak was almost non-existent, but that traced mainly to the striker’s positioning – across the first 20 minutes he had a single touch. His next was a cross that failed to beat the man on the near post. Tricky.

Of those who did cut through, their moments were fleeting. Mo Salah, for one. He was livelier than we have often seen this season, but failed to overwhelm Neco Williams in their duel. When he did have success, with a brilliant pirouette that spun him away from three men in a crowded area, Milos Kerkez botched the opportunity Salah created for him.

There were similar frustrations for Alexis Mac Allister, who had the first chance of the match but somehow saw it blocked on the line by Elliot Anderson. To be fair to Mac Allister, Anderson was everywhere, an omnipresent force in all parts of the pitch. His claim for a starting role at the World Cup with England is growing ever stronger.

From those interventions, Forest were able to burgle Liverpool with a first-half lead. The goal followed the familiar path of a set-piece, with Vergil Van Dijk heading Anderson’s delivery clear, but only as far as Murillo. With a touch to set himself, he curled low past Alisson.

Much as the latter’s presence is huge for Liverpool, and much missed across the past two months, he was never going to keep that shot out. But still there was a need for a VAR check to ascertain if he was unsighted by Dan Ndoye, who was hovering in front of him in an offside position. The VAR decided the interference did not warrant disallowing the goal.

A moment later, Forest scored again, this time through Igor Jesus, but Andy Madley ruled that he had handled on his way past Ibrahima Konate. The VAR supported Madley, but replays suggested the Brazilian controlled with his chest, not his bicep.

If that was a reprieve, it didn’t last long - within a minute of the second half, Forest got their second. Slot was furious and had good reason, because Williams created the chance with his pull-back for Savona but he was helped immensely by two blips from Mac Allister.

In the first instance, that meant his failure to track Williams’s run – a blame shared with Salah - and in the second, the Argentine was weak in the challenge when he finally caught up to his man, prior to being turned. The ball to Savona was no less precise and the finish sufficient for breathing room.

Dyche immediately pointed to his head in a call for composure; Slot reacted by switching to a 4-3-3 and then subbing off Konate for Hugo Ekitike. It only got worse, shown by a third goal when Omari Hutchinson lacerated Rio Ngumoha and Andy Robertson on the run before having his shot saved by Alisson. Gibbs-White, left all alone in the middle, buried the rebound.

Fair play to those who had left – they had better timing than many of the players out on the field in red.