The celebrations from last season feel like a different universe. As Kevin Schade's shot cannoned in to make it 2-0 at Brentford, Liverpool's players looked exhausted, bewildered and painfully aware that something has gone very wrong.
Virgil van Dijk arguing with Cody Gakpo, Ibrahima Konaté staring at the grass — small scenes that summed up a club suddenly unmoored.
A Crisis in Full View
Liverpool have now lost four Premier League matches in a row for the first time since the injury-ravaged collapse of 2021, and this sequence carries a different kind of dread.
There are fewer obvious excuses this time, only the hard fact that the champions look like a team in freefall. The trip to West London smashed any lingering illusions that last season’s form would carry them through.
Early Setbacks, Boxed-In Answers
The script went wrong inside five minutes when Dango Ouattara volleyed home after a clinical Brentford throw-in routine.
From that moment Liverpool seemed unprepared for the battle, missing gilt-edged opportunities through Mohamed Salah and failing to seize control.
Kevin Schade’s composed finish before the break put the contest beyond a comfortable reach until Milos Kerkez’s stoppage-time strike offered a fleeting reprieve
VAR, Grit and Growing Desperation
A VAR review that upgraded a challenge to a penalty for Brentford underlined how small margins are now swinging against Liverpool. When mistakes accumulate and decisions fall the other way, confidence drains fast.
Igor Thiago’s spot-kick restored Brentford’s two-goal cushion and, by the time he added a tap-in to make it 3-1, Liverpool’s shape and ideas had dissolved into reactive scrambling.
Salah the Symptom, Not the Cure
Mohamed Salah’s late thunderbolt gave a flicker of hope, but even he looked a long way off his last season’s self. His struggles have become emblematic: a talisman short of spark, a team missing its rhythm.
Injuries to the likes of Alisson, Ryan Gravenberch and others explain part of the malaise, but tactical disconnects and a summer of upheaval have left Liverpool fragile rather than fearsome.
The Reckoning Begins
Fans jeered, tempers frayed and chants aimed at the manager signalled impatience as much as anxiety. Arne Slot faces the brutal task of steadying a ship that suddenly lists, and the calendar offers little mercy: Arsenal and the chasing pack will not pause for a crisis.
For now, the club that hoisted trophies last season finds itself searching for the same heartbeat that once made them unstoppable. The good times are not gone forever, but they feel very far away.
