Liverpool thought Arne Slot was building a new dynasty - he will soon be in a deck chair if he can't fix this mess but is retaining a poker face - IAN LADYMAN'S verdict from crunch press conference

The wind whipped hard outside Liverpool’s training ground today. Whether it’s the type capable of blowing a man out of a door remains to be seen.

Shortly before 3pm, a little early perhaps to get the whole thing out of the way, the man trying to walk through a storm ambled into a room with his hands in his pockets and sat down.

There was a half-smile of recognition from Arne Slot. Not particularly for those in the room but more because he knew what they were about to deliver. More questions. More ways of talking about the same painful subject. More circles travelled. More veiled criticism.

Slot, the Liverpool manager, spoke of doing ‘120 interviews’ after Wednesday night’s humbling by PSV at Anfield. He was exaggerating but that will be how it feels for the 47-year-old right now.

This is how it is when you are losing football matches and Slot, this gentle and likeable Dutchman, is currently losing games like a drunk loses chips at the blackjack table. Liverpool have been defeated in nine of their last twelve games to take Slot to the point of personal sporting bankruptcy.

A 3-0 defeat at Anfield to Nottingham Forest was followed by Wednesday night’s Champions League embarrassment, a 4-1 disaster against a modest Dutch team once again in front of their own supporters. For all that common sense points towards a sensibly run football club placing faith in a manager who delivered a Premier League title in his debut season earlier this year, that is not the way sport works and Slot knows it well.

Asked about his sleep, he puffed out his cheeks and smiled: ‘How do you think?

‘Not the best. Although if we win I don’t sleep so well also because of the adrenaline.

‘It wasn’t as though I lay awake the whole night. I had a few hours of sleep, enough to feel fresh.’

Football managers are always at their most fascinating to observe when under proper pressure. Everyone smiles when they are winning.

In the bad times, some coaches carry the worries of their world all over their face. Some can barely get their eyes off the floor. Others internalise it much better.

Here, had you not known of Liverpool’s troubles, had you been watching through a window, Slot would have offered up not a single clue as to his desperate predicament.

Clean shaven and bright, he spoke of pressure without really allowing it to manifest. Ditto when he talked of the frustrations of seeing a team create chances and fail to take them. 

In terms of Liverpool’s defending, he was spared a deep dive on that one. There was some mercy in the room after all. 

Equally, what there wasn’t from Slot today and what there hasn’t been for quite a while is a solution to a problem that threatens to end his time at Anfield incredibly prematurely.

Elsewhere in the building, his players were involved in some fan engagement sessions. Maybe they have the answers.

If they do, they must start to show their hand at West Ham on Sunday. One feels there will not be many more opportunities, at least under this manager.

There doesn’t seem to be a lack of effort from Slot’s players. Dressed in his slim-look black Liverpool tracksuit, Slot revealed that some of them hit season’s bests for running during last night’s defeat.

‘All the data yesterday was really high,’ Slot said.

‘They had a lot of personal bests but it didn’t lead to anything in terms of the result.’

In his head, Slot will know that this is a drop-off in form that actually started last March when Liverpool lost to Newcastle in the Carabao Cup final and to PSG in the Champions League. Defeats this season to teams like Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Manchester United were narrow and by single goal margins but those against Manchester City and now Forest and PSV were not.

So this is a problem that is worsening and of course everybody is now an expert with a platform. On social media and fan YouTube channels, they are talking with faux authority and wisdom of the flaws in a summer transfer strategy that they all said would bring their club another title in the summer.

They are tearing apart Slot’s tactics with language that is jargonised and lifted straight from Sky Sports News. But it nevertheless adds to the noise around a football club that seemed to be exactly where it wished it to be just a matter of months ago.

Slot underlined once more today that his conversations with the club’s owners continue to be unexceptional. He spoke of fighting on together and reasoned that his players’ intensity dropped only once a 2-1 deficit became a 3-1 problem last night. He talked of positive spells in games that haven’t been reflected in scorelines.

When it was suggested to him that his team’s XG (expected goals) numbers in recent games had been in the positive, he briefly took the opportunity to break from the circle of doom before adding with a dose of realism: ‘XG doesn’t always tell you the right story because it is when you get those chances that really matters’.

Liverpool have had some early in games recently. Had they taken them – particularly against Forest – things could have worked out differently. But here we are in swimmers clinging at branches in swollen rivers territory. The truth is that there is a wretched vulnerability about Liverpool at the moment that Slot just can’t fix.

Liverpool have had poor seasons before. The one that followed their COVID title success in 2020-21 was pretty miserable, for example. Jurgen Klopp’s team won just five out of 17 in the middle of that one.

But previously there have been clear reasons. Injuries or problems with big players. Currently, the root causes of Liverpool’s sharp decline are hiding themselves. We can’t see them and, more importantly, Slot can’t seem to either.

And this is the challenge that stands before this amiable, proud and modest man right now. If he doesn’t work it out soon, he will be doing so from a deck chair in one of those sunshine resorts that managers always head to when they get sacked.

Liverpool were convinced a new managerial dynasty was upon them last May. Once the title was won, Slot’s face was inked on to the banner depicting great Anfield managers of yore that adorns the Kop before every kick-off.

But Bill Shankly did fifteen years at the club and Bob Paisley nine. Joe Fagan only did two but chose to step away. Kenny Dalglish and Rafael Benitez did six each while Klopp stayed for nine.

Can Liverpool really cut Slot - a title winner - adrift after less than 18 months?

Logic says not but results talk a language of their own in football and at the moment the message they are sending is clear. We thought Slot's greatest challenge would be navigating a first season after Klopp. We were wrong.