Liverpool FC Forum

[Reg]

Arne Slot lost Alexander Isak — but Liverpool are just not ruthless enough
Head coach says number of goals his team has scored this season is ‘ridiculously low’ but warns the Sweden striker’s return won’t magically fix problems
Paul Joyce
Friday March 13 2026, 10.30pm, The Times

Slot’s 100th match at Liverpool was Tuesday’s dismal display against Galatasaray


Isak had just swept home a first assist from his team-mate but was left grounded in the aftermath, pain etched across his face, having been wiped out by centre back Micky van de Ven’s lunging challenge. In victory at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium back in December, Liverpool still suffered a significant loss.

The striker remains absent as the teams meet again on Sunday at Anfield, although he is now nearing the end of his rehabilitation from the ankle injury that included a fractured fibula and should return after the international break.

There is a sense within the club that he has come out of his shell during a recovery which has been overseen by the head of rehab physiotherapy Lee Nobes. The 26-year-old’s form before the setback showed signs of picking up though, for now, the figures that tell the story of his debut season on Merseyside are not measured in goals (three in 16 appearances) but instead time.

The £125million forward, who completed his acrimonious and protracted transfer from Newcastle United last summer, has featured for only 781 minutes of action, of which 436 have been alongside Wirtz.

More sobering is the fact that Isak’s 15-minute substitute appearance away to Spurs represents the only occasion he, Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike, Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai have been on a pitch at the same time.

With 52 goals across 82 appearances in his last two seasons at Newcastle, the Sweden striker was the “sure thing” who would take the strain and aid the development of £79million Ekitike.

Sometimes Ekitike would play as the No9, on occasions he would start off the left and there would be other games where his role could be that of impact substitute. He has done well, as 16 goals indicates, and at the age of 23 it is natural that he can improve. The France forward spurned opportunities in last month’s defeat by Manchester City and was also clear against Galatasaray in the Champions League on Tuesday only to be thwarted by goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir.

Ekitike has played more than many would’ve expected when Isak’s transfer was finalised. The young France forward is Liverpool’s top scorer this season

Liverpool have, according to Opta, created 138 “big chances” in all competitions this season. That is not dissimilar to Chelsea (142) and City (145), which is a surprise given the general view that the performances under Slot have lacked invention. Yet, other than Aston Villa (27.8 per cent), Liverpool boast the lowest conversion rate for those chances at 32.6 per cent, which goes a long way to explaining why they are sixth in the Premier League.

Last season, Liverpool’s conversion rate was 38.3 per cent. The quality of their finishing has deteriorated even though Slot was at pains to stress in the second half of last season that the summer spending would be designed to make them more ruthless.

“Look at how many goals we’ve scored this season,” the Liverpool head coach said. “That’s ridiculously low for the team, but also for our attackers.

“Ridiculous, I mean, for the standards usually. I think in the last ten years of Liverpool, if you look at the forwards, it’s so much more. And, of course, it has an impact that one of the forwards that we brought in for scoring goals was injured. Almost every game you see how much impact a goal can have on a performance.

“Goals in a low-scoring sport like football — we’re not playing basketball with a game that’s ending up 100 against 98 — it is vital.

“Do you think it would have had an impact if we had one of the best goalscorers in this league in the last three, four or five years available throughout the whole season? I think it’s safe to say that this would have had a massive impact.”

Slot was asked about Isak, rather than bringing up the subject himself, and the situation has further complicated a campaign which began with the death of Diogo Jota.

Liverpool clearly hoped to avoid being plunged into transition due the sheer amount of transfers in and out, but reality has proved different and also coincided with the powers of established stars waning.

No one at Liverpool envisaged Mohamed Salah’s drop off but others have been wasteful. Wirtz, for example, has had 62 shots, scoring six (which represents a 9.7 per cent conversion rate). Of his 12 big chances, he has dispatched only three.

Isak’s absence has come with Liverpool being shorn of Conor Bradley since early January when he suffered a serious knee issue against Arsenal. His availability would have eased persistent problems at right back where an adjustment was always required after Trent Alexander-Arnold’s departure to Real Madrid.

Inevitably, the chopping and changing in personnel will have negatively affected Salah who had played 70 per cent of all matches alongside Alexander-Arnold since arriving at the club in 2017.

Konaté, in the final year of his contract, and Virgil van Dijk, 34, have been ever-present in Slot’s back line this season. Similarly, Giovanni Leoni, the young Italian defender whose arrival from Parma for £26million was prioritised over a move for Marc Guéhi, sustained an ACL injury in late September. He might have allowed more rotation at centre back, but instead Ibrahima Konaté is now within 150 minutes of playing his most in a single season of club football — with two months of the campaign still to run. Virgil van Dijk, 34, has missed only nine minutes in the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup this term.

Yet every team is affected to some extent by injuries, with Spurs a prime example. The caveat to Slot’s assertion that he has not been able to utilise a large chunk of the £450million the club spent last summer is to ask how much more he should have extracted from the squad regardless of that.

Tottenham’s previous visit to Anfield back in April 2025 was the day Liverpool were crowned Premier League champions in Slot’s first campaign in charge. The title preceded transition, and making sense of that has been harder. Where the expectation was of more progression, there has, instead, been regression to fuel frustration among supporters. The 1-0 loss to Galatasaray did nothing to quell that, though Slot maintains there is backing beyond the noise from social media.

“This is probably the nicest club to struggle [at] because you feel the support,” he said. “This club has always shown in different periods, everyone is there for you.”

There has been an improvement in set pieces over the past three months, utilising Joe Gomez’s long throws and turning to inswinging corners as a new weapon, but the fans want to see that complemented with advancements in other areas.

Even now, Liverpool’s hierarchy would maintain that the summer signings are elite or have the potential to become so. Slot would not disagree but urges caution.

“Let’s say [Isak comes back] at the beginning of April, he has been out for 3½ months and not trained with the team for 3½ months.

“The last time he did that, it took him a while to get up to speed. I am really, really looking forward to having him back but don’t get the expectations again so high that the minute he is on the pitch, he is at the level of what we spent that money on.”

[kazza]

Say what you want about Slot, but Mo Salah and VVD will never be the same players again. We seriously need replacements for those two regardless of the manager. Players may not be happy with the manager’s style and may improve with a different direction but not those two, they will only get worse and if we want to be a top club, we need a world class defender and a world class forward. This year it’s also clear that we don’t have a proper captain, a player that the rest of the team are afraid of. Hendo was limited as a player but was a proper captain and we never replaced his leadership. I can’t believe how mentally soft we have become.