By Tony Attwood
According to that magnificent source of dubious information, the Sun, “Liverpool on worse run than any other club in Europe’s top five leagues with Arne Slot now third favourite to be sacked.” That may or may not be true, but they certainly are proving the point that Untold has laboured in the last couple of seasons, which is that clubs that succeed have learned how to stop a poor result becoming the start of an ongoing dip in form.
And just in case you missed it before, let me reiterate: unexpected defeats and draws happen to all clubs. But the danger for clubs is that one such result can turn into a series, and that, of course, ruins a club’s chances of winning the league. We have studied how it has happened to Arsenal over recent seasons, but also noted that so far this season, it hasn’t.
After the away defeat to Liverpool, Arsenal bounced back by beating Forest. After the draw with ManC, Arsenal have been winning all the way.
A 2-1 Liverpool away defeat to Crystal Palace on 27 September was expected by almost everyone (including me) to be a mere blip, with Liverpool being able to swish the memory aside and return to winning ways. But in fact that loss was followed by three more defeats.
Then a superb 1-5 away win against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champs League had us all thinking, right, they are over the dip, off they go again, but it was followed by two more defeats, to of all teams, Brentford and Palace. Not that two clubs are particularly bad, but it was not quite the same as playing ManC or Arsenal.
This is the sort of “dip” which we discussed so much last season, and was put down as the reason for Arsenal not winning the league. Arsenal didn’t have to stop having defeats, we argued, but had to stop having two or three poor games one after the other.
One of the problems with dips, of course, is that the journos love to leap in and make things worse. The headline “LIVERPOOL are on a worse run than any other club in Europe’s top five leagues with Arne Slot now third-favourite manager to be sacked in the Premier League,” doesn’t help much either. That was in the Sun, which is notorious for putting the boot in when a club is already struggling.
So Liverpool have lost six of their last seven matches, and that suggests that it might be time to reintroduce our “Last Six Games” table – although a little earlier than we normally do. Especially as we are told in the Sun that “no other side in Europe’s top five leagues has suffered more defeats in that time frame.”
| P | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 2 | +8 | 16 |
| 2 | Aston Villa | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 4 | +5 | 14 |
| 3 | Manc City | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 12 | 3 | +9 | 13 |
| 4 | Bournemouth | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 12 | 7 | +5 | 12 |
| 5 | Man Utd | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 10 | +1 | 12 |
| 6 | Tottenham Ho | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 6 | +6 | 11 |
| 7 | Sunderland | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 4 | +2 | 11 |
| 8 | Brentford | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 11 | 9 | +2 | 10 |
| 9 | Newcastle U | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 5 | +2 | 10 |
| 10 | Brighton & H | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 11 | 11 | 0 | 8 |
| 11 | Crystal Palace | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 12 | Chelsea | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 7 |
| 13 | Leeds U | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 8 | 9 | -1 | 7 |
| 14 | Burnley | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 8 | 11 | -3 | 7 |
| 15 | Liverpool | 6 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 10 | -2 | 6 |
| 16 | Fulham | 6 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 10 | -3 | 6 |
| 17 | Everton | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 9 | -5 | 5 |
| 18 | Wolverhampton | 6 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 11 | -6 | 2 |
| 19 | West Ham Un | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 12 | -9 | 1 |
| 20 | Nottingham Forest | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 12 | -11 | 1 |
The Sun, as willing as ever to put the boot in adds, “Slot is now third-favourite in the league to lose his job behind Wolves’ Vitor Pereira and West Ham’s Nuno Espirito Santo.” Which actually probably doesn’t mean that they bothered to phone up their local bookmaker and ask for the odds, but they just looked at the bottom three clubs in the last six games.
Now the last time Liverpool finished outside the top five was 2015/16 when they finished eighth, and the last time they were relegated was 1953/4 when they finished bottom of Division One. So we can see, unlike Arsenal, who have not been relegated since being elected into the first division in 1913, Liverpool do have a more recent connection with the lower levels.
But what has caused this mess?
Quite possibly Liverpool did not really think about what happened at the end of last season when they took their collective foot off the accelerator and drew two and lost two of the last four games. And it has been pointed out that their last 11 games at the end of the season really were not of league-winning standards. Looking at their results in the Champions League, the League Cup, and the Premier League, those last eleven games showed four wins, two draws and five defeats which seems to be their current level.
Considering those games as if they were league games (although in fact two them were cup games), that would give them 14 points from 11 games. In fact, in 2024/25, from their first 11 games Liverpool got 28 points, exactly double what they have this season.
Now I have often written about the slow way in which Arteta turned Arsenal around with league finishes of 8th, 8th and 5th, before the three seasons of coming second. I believe that we should all feel very fortunate that Arsenal had a board who were willing to let Arteta go through those first three seasons of reconstruction at his own pace, for it is on that experience, as much as the three second-place finishes, that the current success is built.
Liverpool’s great success of course, is that in six of the last seven seasons they have come in the top three. They don’t really have any experience as a club of handling this sort of situation
Arsenal, on the other hand, had just one win in four league games in February/March this year and one in six in April/May. The lessons learned there are worth their weight. Liverpool are now learning what it is like to start feeling desperate about a run of poor results. Arsenal have already learned that lesson, and it shows.
