Brentford broke Liverpool's spirit and exposed Arne Slot's biggest problem

It’s difficult to know where to begin when assessing the demise of Liverpool this season.

The list of problems feels never-ending at present: an inability to defend set-pieces, the open, porous nature of the Reds’ center, the ineffective displays of key players, and the lack of control exerted for long spells of matches. There are more, of course. The abundance of flaws for a side that so authoritatively romped to the Premier League crown last season is remarkable.

This campaign has been anything but. It has been a jumbled mess. After 14 games, only once has Liverpool truly played well. Even that display, the 5-1 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt, needs a massive asterisk added to the scoreline, given how naive and toothless the opposition were.

Those two adjectives could aptly summarize Liverpool’s display on Saturday in west London, as the champions were swotted aside by a side many tipped for relegation before a ball had been kicked in August.

The defeat to Brentford felt like the worst performance of this recent bad sequence, perhaps the nadir of Slot’s reign so far. Even more alarming, Liverpool was aware of the threat posed by the Bees, yet was simply incapable of countering it.

At the moment, Liverpool is approaching games with the same philosophy. It looks to play its own game, relying on the qualities of the team’s undeniably elite-level players, regardless of the opposition.

Against Frankfurt, that wasn’t an issue. At Brentford, it certainly was. Was there an arrogance to Liverpool’s approach? Perhaps an ignorance that alterations were necessary against a side that offers such a unique and effective style.

Liverpool wanted to play the game on its terms, but Brentford boss Keith Andrews was never going to allow that. At the Gtech Community Stadium, the hosts were hungrier, more determined, and clearly more aligned as a unit. While much of the vitriolic reaction to Slot on social media has been overblown, there’s no denying he has made errors this season.

Even the Dutchman’s blunt assessments aren’t helping. Last week, his comments about Manchester United's playing style drew great ire from Old Trafford, while his remarks that Liverpool lacked the “very basics” at Brentford were always going to create headlines.

As a minimum, Slot should have ensured his Liverpool team was hard to beat, well-organized, and then looked to be more expansive. Too often this season, it has been the reverse, with a front-foot, offensive approach taking precedence over a solid framework. That will never work.

The positioning for Brentford’s second goal was a prime example, when the team’s exuberance to push forward afforded Mikkel Damsgaard the time and space to slip a pass through the chasm at the heart of defense and tee up Kevin Schade to slot past Giorgi Mamardashvili.

There was no pressure on the diminutive Dane, while Liverpool’s back four should have been at least 10 yards deeper.

Further naiveties were evident with the number of needless throw-ins and corners conceded. Slot, Virgil van Dijk, and Andy Robertson admitted post-match that Liverpool had spent the majority of Friday’s training session practising how to deal with Brentford’s set-piece threat, yet it took the Bees just five minutes to net from a long throw.

Brentford’s best attributes may be Liverpool's kryptonite, but other teams have figured out how to play against the Reds. Slot has even acknowledged this, and referenced again on Friday how many long balls his side is currently facing.

It’s why any sense of a potential title fight is beginning to feel forlorn. There are just too many issues for Slot to solve.

Further defeats feel inevitable. Perhaps that was inevitable after a summer with such wholesale change, yet most supporters placed their trust in Slot to oversee that transition. Instead, the Dutchman’s selection and tactical decisions have too often been ill-judged.

“You’re getting sacked in the morning,” chanted the home fans. No one really believes that, but given last season’s title and the extravagant summer outlay, performances should not be this bad.

That Liverpool has lost as many league matches this season as it did during the entirety of the 2024/25 campaign is a damning statistic.

On the weekend in which the clocks went back, what Slot would give to roll time back to April, and somehow recapture the composure and confidence that was so prevalent last season.

Given the personnel changes, a copy and paste from last term is impossible. But discovering a way of reintegrating some of that poise is essential if Liverpool is to salvage anything from the campaign.