The setting was a plush executive box at Fenway Park, home of baseball’s Boston Red Sox, in July 2012.
Liverpool’s principal owner John W Henry took a seat, having granted a rare interview to those of us from the Merseyside media who were covering the club’s pre-season tour of North America.
Two months earlier, Liverpool’s Fenway Sports Group (FSG) ownership had sacked a club icon in manager Kenny Dalglish and subsequently appointed Brendan Rodgers as his replacement. In that 2011-12 campaign, Liverpool had won the League Cup and narrowly lost the FA Cup final to Chelsea but trailed home a disappointing eighth in the Premier League.
“The FA Cup would not have made any difference had he won it,” Henry said bluntly. “I think it was obvious to every Liverpool fan that something was wrong and something needed to be done.”
FSG’s attitude towards the domestic cups has not changed in the near 14 years since. Now more than ever, qualifying for the Champions League is viewed as far more important, given the revenue doing so generates.
Winning the FA Cup would not have saved Arne Slot’s job this summer, in the same way as bowing out of the competition at the quarter-final stage on Saturday will not seriously influence how this troubled season is viewed by his bosses at FSG.
However, it is the manner of the humiliating 4-0 quarter-final defeat to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium that should set alarm bells ringing on both sides of the Atlantic.
After a bright start, Liverpool capitulated, conceding four times in the space of 20 minutes either side of half-time. The fact that no further embarrassment was inflicted owed more to City easing off than any discernible improvement from the visitors.
Slot’s Liverpool look so brittle, so broken. Rather than dig deep when faced with adversity, they wilt. The “mentality monsters” the Dutchman’s predecessor Jurgen Klopp used to talk about now resemble mentality minnows. The body language is so poor — too many players feeling sorry for themselves rather than taking responsibility.
Dominik Szoboszlai bemoaned the lack of “fighting spirit” afterwards, and what was most galling about that damaging spell in the match when Liverpool fell to pieces was the inability to do even the basics.
“If you tell me that from 15 runs City made, we didn’t follow them 15 times, then I don’t agree with you,” Slot said.
“But if you simply look at the goals, I see runs not being followed, I see crosses not being blocked, I see duels not being won. Every single time we forget to block a cross or follow a runner, then it was a goal. No one will remember it, but in the first 35 minutes, there was a lot to like from my team.”
The rot set in after Virgil van Dijk’s rash challenge on Nico O’Reilly allowed Erling Haaland to break the deadlock from the penalty spot. Florian Wirtz failed to track Antoine Semenyo in the build-up to the second goal, with Ibrahima Konate beaten far too easily in the air by Haaland.
Van Dijk gave away a penalty that allowed City to take a 1-0 lead (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
The third was even worse, with Joe Gomez inexplicably gifting the ball to Marc Guehi from a Liverpool throw-in. Two passes later, Semenyo was running in behind Van Dijk to score. The fourth saw Slot’s side plumb greater depths with O’Reilly allowed to waltz through and tee up Haaland to complete his hat-trick.
What a nightmare start to a season-defining run of fixtures. A sense of trepidation will accompany Wednesday’s Champions League quarter-final first leg against holders Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes. Ousmane Dembele, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue will be licking their lips at the sight of such glaring frailties.
The buck stops with Slot. The ease with which opponents are able to play through Liverpool points to glaring tactical issues. He’s been unable to find solutions to the problems that have dogged his soon-to-be-deposed Premier League champions all season and excuses are wearing thin.
“Again, we faced a team that was outperforming their xG (expected goals) by a mile, and that’s happened constantly. We are always under ours,” he said on Saturday. “It would be nice if we could score a goal once in a while from the chances we create.”
Yes, Mohamed Salah and Hugo Ekitike were guilty of missing big opportunities when it was 0-0, with the former’s miserable afternoon summed up by his failure to convert a second-half penalty.
But City, who created an xG of 2.5 versus 1.4 for the visitors, were slicker, quicker, showed greater hunger and were more ruthless in all departments. Given how Liverpool have gone toe-to-toe with City throughout much of the Pep Guardiola era, the chasm that has opened up between the sides this season is alarming.
Liverpool have lost the three meetings by a combined score of nine goals to one. That’s some fall from grace having done the double over City en route to the title a year ago.
The most damning indictment of what they served up at the Etihad on Saturday afternoon was the sight of away supporters heading for the exits before the hour mark, after City went four up. You could hardly blame them, given how badly they had been let down.
It was a difficult afternoon for Liverpool fans at the Etihad (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
“We don’t want them to leave early. We have to perform better,” Slot said. “It is up to us to react for them and for ourselves.”
This was Liverpool’s 15th defeat of the campaign in all competitions — their most since 2014-15, when the wheels came off Rodgers’ reign. That was the season that began with Luis Suarez’s sale to Barcelona, when they made a hash of replacing him with the signings of Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert.
Saturday was the heaviest loss of Slot’s near two-season reign, but the fifth time in 2025-26 that Liverpool have been beaten by three goals or more.
The mitigating factors have been well documented, but the manager continues to haemorrhage support among the fanbase. Some pointedly chanted the name of Xabi Alonso, the former Liverpool midfielder turned coach who is available after being fired by Real Madrid in January, as they made their way out of the Etihad.
FSG wants to give the Dutchman the chance to put things right next season, but that position will be untenable if the campaign completely unravels in the coming weeks.
That period straight after half-time here was the most worrying. Whatever Slot said in the dressing room during the break clearly didn’t hit home as Liverpool got worse rather than better. He was also too slow to make substitutions.
Now it’s Champions League or bust.
Bringing a seventh European Cup to Anfield in May seems fanciful. Securing the top-five finish his team need to play in UEFA’s blue-riband club competition again next season looks daunting enough with the fixtures they have left — the seven matches include trips to Everton (currently three points behind them in eighth), Manchester United (third) and Aston Villa (fourth), plus home games with Chelsea (sixth) and Brentford (seventh).
Can Slot summon a response from the wreckage of such an abject surrender?
Liverpool’s illustrious European history is littered with heroic tales.
Given their current plight, they will need another miracle to get past PSG.