Andy Robertson Reflects on Liverpool Losing Their Edge

Andy Robertson admits Liverpool “lost their edge” last season – and says the squad simply stopped caring about football in the wake of Diogo Jota’s death.

The Portugal forward was killed in a car crash in July 2025, along with his brother Andre Silva, as they travelled through Spain on their way back to England for the start of pre-season. Liverpool were reigning Premier League champions, gearing up to defend their title. Overnight, the mood around the club changed completely.

“It’s difficult to describe or talk about, really, because what we went through, it was horrendous,” Robertson said on the Stick to Football Podcast on Disney+. “Say if I'm talking about the new signings, they're coming into a club that is heartbroken.

“They're trying, and that's where I felt so sorry for these guys because they'd signed and they were signing for big money and all that, if I'm talking about football. It took them months to settle in because we didn't care, we didn't care about football.

“That was the truth of it. We didn't care about football because you've just lost one of your best mates in the changing room.”

Liverpool’s standards, he admits, inevitably slipped.

“We were elite in everything that we did for years,” he said. “And maybe we couldn't be that because of what had happened. And then they then started getting quite a lot of criticism. And that's why I think these lads will be absolutely fine at Liverpool. I would treat this season as their first season. That's the way I would do it.”

“We lost that edge”

Robertson did not dress it up. The team that had hunted down titles and lived off intensity no longer had the same fire.

“I think all footballers, we all have that edge, don't we? And I think when you lose that edge sometimes then you can't perform to the best. And I think last season we lost the edge.

“I think when I look back on it now, I think we lost that determination a little bit and things like that because I know at times we were maybe going, ‘You know what, what's the point?’

“Like look at what Jota's family are going through. Look at his kids. But yeah, we were grieving. It was our mate at the end of the day. He’s not a footballer to us, he was a teammate, he was a friend.”

For Robertson, the timeline still feels brutal. One week he was celebrating Jota’s wedding. Days later, he was standing with the same family at a funeral.

“The week before he died, I was at his wedding. So that's one of the most difficult things you'll ever go through. Seeing him on the happiest day of his life, and then the next week you're seeing his family torn apart.”

Slot’s handling of tragedy

Liverpool’s season never truly recovered. Arne Slot lost his job at the end of the campaign after the champions slipped to fifth in the Premier League. The Dutchman’s reign will be judged by results in the record books, but inside the dressing room, Robertson insists his response to the tragedy deserves respect.

“We spoke a lot (in pre-season). The manager was really good, to be fair,” Robertson recalled. “Like our pre-season was barely anything because, to be fair to Arne, he was like, ‘If you don't want to train, you don't train.’

“Say one day you come in and you're struggling or whatever, that was his attitude of the pre-season.”

Liverpool leant heavily on the club psychologist, who organised small informal groups where players could simply sit with a coffee and talk. Those sessions became a quiet lifeline.

“So we did that quite a few times, and I think that helped. But it was incredibly difficult times.

“But then you always just feel sorry for his family, for his wife. At the end of the day, their life got flipped completely upside down.

“Ours, we were heartbroken and everything like that, but for them daily, it must be so difficult even now.

“We managed to get through it together, I think, and we always just said, ‘Look, we'll always remember him,’ and everything like that.

“But we had to play football at the end of the day. We didn't have a choice in that. We tried to do it as best we could and that's why last season was so tough.”

From open-top bus to funeral

Robertson knows the game is ruthless. Slot’s dismissal underlined that. Still, he cannot shake the feeling that context was lost as frustration grew over performances and results.

“It's a difficult one. At the end of the day, football's based on results, and we didn't get enough results. And that was the fact,” he said.

“But if you go back to the summer before, we have the biggest parade in Liverpool's history, right? We're on the open-top bus, we're going through the city centre, and I think over a million people had come out and seen us.

“The next day, we all shake each other's hands, we all go off for the summer. The next time we see everyone is at the airport heading over to Porto for his funeral. That's the next time I see all my teammates.

“So, from going from the highest of highs in terms of being on a parade with the Premier League trophy, and you're parading it round thousands and thousands of fans, to then seeing staff and players the way we were, like that, it's not normal.

“It's not normal what we went through. So, I think could it have been factored in? Yeah, maybe it could have.”

The season rolled on. Expectations did not ease. Inside the camp, the players knew the reality: grief could not be an excuse forever.

“But then when the season goes on and things like that, we know that we then have to do better and we need to win games and things like that.

“And I get why then there was a lot of frustration around the way we were playing, the results that we were getting. I can understand it.

“But what I would say is at the time at the start, the manager was really good and he helped us a lot. He understood the situation in terms of pre-season, in terms of not pushing us too hard, not trying to cause too much competitiveness or whatever, in case somebody was struggling that day or whatever.”

Liverpool still started the campaign strongly on paper. Five wins from five and the noise around Anfield was familiar: title talk, momentum, belief. Inside, Robertson says, the picture was different.

“And, we then were starting slow, but we then go and win the first five games, and everyone thinks Liverpool are going to win the league again.

“We won the first five games but we were probably covering over the cracks at that point. And then after the international break, the cracks came.”

Those cracks cost a manager his job and a champion team its crown. For Robertson and his teammates, they also mark the fault line between the Liverpool that dominated English football – and the Liverpool still trying to rediscover its edge without one of its own.