Liverpool's Season Ends in Disappointment as Anfield Sings Bob Marley

They tried to sing themselves into believing it. As the final whistle blew on a grey, joyless campaign, The Kop reached for Bob Marley and the comfort of a familiar chorus: “Every little thing is gonna be alright.” It sounded less like defiance and more like reassurance. Mostly for themselves.

Liverpool’s 1-1 draw with Brentford wrapped up a season that felt like the slow dismantling of an era. Two more pillars of the side that conquered everything over the past nine years have gone. Half of the squad Arne Slot inherited just two summers ago has already departed. Several more are expected to follow Mo Salah and Andy Robertson out of the door.

The sense of finality around Anfield was impossible to miss.

A failure dressed up as qualification

On paper, Liverpool finished fifth and secured a place in next season’s expanded Champions League. On the pitch, they limped to the line. No wins in the last four league games. Just four victories in their final 14 matches in all competitions.

Strip away the spin: this season has been an outright failure.

Sixty points is not a platform. It is a warning sign. Last season, 60 points would have left Liverpool ninth and out of Europe altogether. The year before, it would have meant seventh and no Champions League. Three years back? Ninth again.

This 60-point haul is the lowest total to secure Champions League football since 2003/04, the season Gerard Houllier walked away in a carefully choreographed, mutual parting. Back then, Liverpool knew they had to reset. Now, they are being dragged into one.

Supporters old enough to remember the early 1990s can feel the echoes. Graeme Souness broke up Kenny Dalglish’s ageing, title-winning core at speed. Results crashed. Standards slipped. Mediocrity settled in. The fear on the Kop is simple: that history is starting to rhyme.

Salah has felt it keenly enough to say so. As his extraordinary nine-year spell closed, his public comments carried a clear message: this is not the Liverpool he signed up for.

Slot’s missed moment

Slot insists he can win back the fans next season. He will need to. Even his body language on the final day jarred.

As the squad walked their traditional lap of appreciation, the Dutchman stayed rooted to the bench, looking sullen and detached. Perhaps it was reflection. Perhaps fatigue. But in a stadium searching for connection, the image of the head coach sitting alone while the players saluted the stands did not sit well.

The walk is symbolic at Anfield. Players and staff thank the supporters for their backing. The supporters, in turn, show their loyalty, even in hard times. Slot had a chance to step into that exchange, to acknowledge a fanbase that has just endured the club’s lowest league win total in a decade – only 17 victories. Instead, he watched from a distance.

Salah, by contrast, understood the moment instinctively. “They [the fans] don’t care that much about the result as long as you sweat and give your blood here, they’ll love you forever,” he told Sky Sports.

That is the deal at Liverpool. You walk through the storm with them. This season, the club has had more than its share of storms – not least the shock and grief following Diogo Jota’s death in pre-season. But the expectation remains: you face it together, visibly, relentlessly.

Injuries, choices and a squad left short

In his post-match press conference, Slot was asked to sum up the season in one word. His answer came quickly: “Injury.”

On one level, he has a case. Liverpool have been hit hard and often. But his own words from October now hang over him. Back then, he was adamant that a lean squad was a deliberate choice: “This is a decision we have made together, I completely believe in this, because if you have 25 [players] it’s very hard to manage your squad.”

You cannot celebrate a small squad in autumn and lament its fragility in spring.

Liverpool went into a season of Premier League intensity and an expanded Champions League with a group that was clearly light. Slot admitted even then that new signings were not ready to play 90 minutes twice a week. Yet the club still chose not to bolster the numbers.

“I like my squad so much,” he said in October. “But we don’t have 25 or 26 [players], so if we end up with two, three or four injuries, 15 or 16 players, where Rio and Trey are two of these 15 or 16, then need to play almost all the minutes and then things can become complicated.”

Things did become complicated. And some of the complications were of his own making.

Trey Nyoni, the gifted 18-year-old midfielder who debuted under Jurgen Klopp at 16, finished the league campaign with just 21 minutes. Federico Chiesa, marginalised again, played only 318 league minutes. Wataru Endo managed 170.

Kieran Morrison, captain and standout of the Under-21s, made the bench 13 times but saw just five minutes of first-team football, in an FA Cup tie at Wolves.

On paper, Liverpool’s squad was small. In practice, it was even smaller, because several players were effectively ignored. Then came the Harvey Elliott farce: no agreement to bring him back to Anfield in January, even as the bench cried out for quality during a brutal second half of the season.

Injuries hurt. Selection choices and squad planning made them worse.

Heavy defeats, heavier questions

Slot has leaned on context when discussing the cup exits. Liverpool were hammered 4-0 by eventual FA Cup winners Man City, and 4-0 over two legs by PSG, a side that has not lost a European knockout tie in two seasons.

Those facts are accurate. They do not make the defeats easier to swallow.

This is a club that has grown used to staring down the best and often beating them. Losing heavily, twice, in the space of one season, does not align with the standards set by Virgil van Dijk, Robertson, Salah and Curtis Jones – all of whom have been blunt in saying this campaign has fallen well short of what Liverpool should be.

Salah’s parting words to his team-mates at the AXA Training Centre cut to the core: “Being in Liverpool, winning something for Liverpool and winning games is the best thing that could happen to you all.”

Slot called Champions League qualification “our lowest base,” then pointed at Chelsea and Tottenham as big clubs who failed even to reach that. It was meant as perspective. To many supporters, it sounded like a softening of ambition.

Liverpool are not supposed to be comforted by the struggles of others. They are supposed to be chasing trophies. Exiting competitions to the eventual winners is no consolation when you lose 4-0 and it comes in the middle of a run of four defeats in five.

Even the season’s best spell carried an asterisk. After a humiliating 4-1 home loss to PSV – arguably the nadir of the campaign – Liverpool went 13 games unbeaten. It looked impressive in isolation. Look closer and the shine fades: draws with Leeds (twice), Burnley and Fulham, and seven wins that included Barnsley in the FA Cup and a West Ham side that would go on to be relegated.

It was a run that papered over cracks rather than healed them.

A summer of transition – and turbulence

Now comes the hard part. The future, on and off the pitch, is clouded.

Slot has only one year left on his contract. So do the key figures above him, Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards. The men tasked with shaping the next version of Liverpool could all be out of the door next summer.

On the playing side, the potential churn is even more dramatic. Up to nine first-team players could move on: Salah, Robertson, Ibrahima Konate, Chiesa, Endo, Jones, Alisson, Joe Gomez and Alexis Mac Allister are all in various states of uncertainty, from expiring deals to serious interest from Europe’s elite and the possibility of sales at the right price.

If even a portion of those exits materialise, this will not be a gentle refresh. It will be major surgery.

As it stands, Liverpool go into next season with Cody Gakpo as their leading current goalscorer for the club. Centre-back Van Dijk is next on that list. For a team that once overwhelmed opponents with waves of attacking threat, that statistic is stark.

Slot has spoken of another summer of “a little transition,” not as drastic as last year. The reality looks anything but little. The squad is ageing in some areas, unproven in others, and thin in too many. The spine that delivered the greatest nights of the Klopp era is being ripped out.

Inside Anfield, the fans tried to drown out those worries with Marley’s reassurance. “Don’t worry about a thing.” Outside, walking back through the streets, the mood was very different.

They will worry. About the squad. About the direction. About whether this is a stumble before a reset – or the start of another long, slow slide away from the summit.