🗣️ “This is worse than Rodgers, worse than Hodgson.”

🗣️ “We’ve been prolonging the inevitable for months.”

🎧 To listen, search ‘Anfield Index’ on all popular platforms.

🆕 ‘Post Match Raw’ with Guy Drinkel, Jim Boardman & Dave Hendrick… OUT NOW!

🗣️ "He stood there with his hands in his pockets watching it happen.”

🗣️ “There are no answers, no adjustments, no reaction.”

🗣️ “We’re watching a manager out of his depth.”

🎉

Hope you got the picture hooks too.

🗣️ “We’ve gone from belief to ‘oh well, never mind’.”

🎧 To listen, search ‘Anfield Index’ on all popular platforms.

🆕 ‘Post Match Raw’ with @guydrinkel, @JimBoardman & @HendrickD82… OUT NOW!

🗣️ “This used to be the best fixture in football. Now I feel nothing.”

🗣️ “Under Klopp, you expected a reaction. Now you expect surrender.”

Like Mo’s “outburst” when he talked about all he’d done for LFC - nobody disputes or downplays that, he’s a true legend, but players are picked on what they can do now, not what they did.

Arne won’t be forgotten, he’s also a legend, but what he’s doing now is what matters now. As sad as that is.

Fagan did not allow Liverpool's players to celebrate for long. "Here are the Championship medals. If you qualified for one, take one," he told his squad after their short summer break. "The trophies we won last season, the European Cup, League Championship and League Cup are gone. In the past. We start again. We're European champions. We have to defend our title."

I’d argue too many players know they’re first pick regardless of performance. Few fear being dropped.

As for past success it’s exactly that. The past. As with players, if the standard drops too far we have to say goodbye. Title winning managers always knew that. The past doesn’t win games today.

It’s been the same story every week.

By his usual standards it was a sitter, and the penalty would have been consolation at best.

Sitters get missed, goals get conceded, what matters then is how you react. Heads down, no changes to tactics or personnel, Slot stood hands in pockets looking lost. Sad to see, but that was the reaction.

Slot says he’s heavily involved in transfers so yes, maybe it is.

Can’t keep using Diogo as an excuse. To be fair he doesn’t, he mainly uses number of games and how other teams play for his excuses.

I’d rather not take anything away from him for last season, which is kind of what you’re asking me to do. How often this season has he really looked capable of being a manager at this level, handling the pressure, reacting to bad moments, getting the best out of his players?

Insightful

Slot had no ideas what to do when City went ahead. He won the title for Liverpool, yes, it’s sad to see, yes, but he needs putting out of his misery. And it needs to happen now, before the damage becomes irreversible.

A devastatingly low point today for Liverpool Football Club. The manager is sadly out of his depth and that’s been clear to all but the most sycophantic of fans for quite some time. He has to go, now.

Mohamed Salah confirms he will leave Liverpool at the end of the season.

435 games
255 goals
119 assists

Not bad, and there's time to add more before he departs Anfield... 👑

#LFC

He’s going to be missed. In fact in many ways he already has been missed. Look at the results.

Still think he has plenty to offer, maybe by playing more centrally for example, but clearly didn’t feel that could happen under the current set up.

Proper #LFC legend. Fare well Mo.

#EgyptianKing

All good things must come to an end. Mo Salah to leave #LFC at the end of the season.

Mo Salah has been far more than a “good thing” for Liverpool FC. This season has been far from his best for the Reds, in an awful season for the Reds, but he’s still way ahead of so many other top flight players.

It definitely still needs raising, it shouldn’t after all this time but it does. We should be raising it from higher up in the club, I’d say get UEFA involved too but they’re useless.

Klopp wasn’t perfect, but one of his greatest qualities was how he reacted to adversity, and how he got his players to react to it. A game wasn’t over until the final whistle, every player was important, he knew how to motivate a tired squad, he understood how players think.

There’s a way of saying things and a way of reacting to it. Klopp in my view would talk about it but he’d also react to it better, he’d try to solve the problem, he’d make changes, he’d use it to fire his players up. This manager grumbles, avoids making changes and sounds like he’s already given up.

Screenshot showing a two-column table summarising seven moments from Arne Slot’s press conference where he mentions limited rest, physical and mental fatigue, recovery, injury risk from games coming quickly, and the disadvantage of a Saturday 12.30 kick-off after a midweek match.

I asked AI to summarise how often Arne Slot made references to tiredness, fatigue and similar in his last press conference.

Every time he does this - and he does it a lot - it’s a team talk for the opposition. Does it cross his mind what it does for his own players?

Enough’s enough.

The only place you can get advanced stats and data viz for #lfc vs Brighton is via @barts78.bsky.social for @anfieldindex.com
barts78.github.io/DrBarts2526/...

Meanwhile the thuggish actions from Martinelli, throwing the ball at him and trying to push him off the pitch as he lay in agony on the turf, will not be retrospectively punished.

Screenshot from LFC official website with photo of Conor Bradley. Headline: “Conor Bradley injury update”

As we all feared, now confirmed by the club, Conor Bradley has “sustained a significant knee injury” and “will undergo surgery in the coming days and then begin a period of rehabilitation at the AXA Training Centre. No timeframe is being placed on his return to playing at this stage of the process.”

Screenshot from official Liverpool FC website. On whether he spoke towards Salah as part of the group in training... Yes. I communicated towards him that he wasn't travelling.

You can read it on the official club website:

It shouldn’t be preferential treatment. It should happen with any player who crosses such a line. It doesn’t mean it goes unpunished, but it means they get their grievances heard - and hear some back. Doesn’t mean it justifies the action, but makes it easier to fix the underlying issues.

Slot admits he’s only spoken to Mo once since, in front of the other players, to tell him he’s not travelling.

Did it really not cross his mind, instead of guessing, to have a chat with a key player from the title win and ask why he felt the need to go public?

Rhetorical question.

Mo Salah says he’s been thrown under the bus, that his relationship with Arne Slot has broken down.

Two days later, Slot says it’s “difficult” for him to know what Salah meant or who he was talking about, that he’d “have to guess a little bit”.

Disgraceful selective editing by Sky Sports News of the answers Alisson gave in the press conference to questions about Mo Salah.

The clamour to demonise a player, without a single thought for the human being behind the words, is shameful.