Carragher Sees Slot Keeping Job Even Without Champions League

With thirteen games left to play, defending champions Liverpool are currently sixth. Even if the top five qualify for the Champions League next season as expected, they would miss out. To make matters worse, on paper December and January looked their easiest run of league matches this season and the next few months appear far more difficult.

The sides they’re chasing are also in better form, showing improvement as the season has entered into its second half. The Reds may only be four points off Chelsea in fifth—though goal differential effectively makes it a five point gap—but objectively, it would be hard to see Arne Slot’s side qualifying for Europe’s top cup competiton next season.

“If you said to me are Liverpool going to finish in the top five I’d say no, at least not right now,” was ex-Red Jamie Carragher’s take. “They’d have to have a huge upturn in form and the sides above them would have to drop. And I think it’d be difficult to defend the manager if he misses Champions League football even winning the league the season before.

“But it was interesting to me, the round table a few days ago with Billy Hogan, the manager, and Richard Hughes. In some ways, I think most supporters looked at that and saw it as a statement to stop talking about the manager, saying he’s fine, he’s our guy. So it doesn’t really matter what [pundits] say—I see the manager staying almost no matter what.”

Since the start of December, the Reds have have played twelve league games with a record of four wins, six draws, and two defeats. That’s 18 points at a rate of 1.5 points per game. Over the entire season, including a start that saw them record a string of late victories and a slump through October and November, they have recorded 1.56 points per game.

It seems fair to say at this point that this is exactly what this team is—and that what it is isn’t nearly as good as it should be based on talent. Regardless, there is nothing beyond fanish optimism that could justify expecting this side to end up with much more than a 1.56 points per game average in the final table, which would add up to 59 or 60 points.

On current trajectories, that would obviously not be enough. Last season, it would have been good enough for ninth. The season before, it would have been good enough for seventh. The season before that, eighth. The season before that, sixth. The season before that, well, you get the picture. In all likelihood, Slot and this Liverpool side will not qualify.

If, as Carragher and many fans suspect, the recent round table was a message of support and statement of manager-backing intent from the club’s upper management, then it does rather seem as though the club have accepted finishing outside the Champions League places. And that they retain full support of the manager in spite of that.