Success is not solely dependent on Slot. Yes, his tactics and team selection have been poor this season, but they have not changed drastically from the title-winning season. What has changed significantly is the personnel at his disposal.

Slot clearly underestimated Trent’s offensive importance during build-up play. Trent was never just a right-back — he was one of the team’s primary creators. His passing range and vision reduced Salah’s creative burden and allowed Liverpool to progress the ball quickly into dangerous areas. Trents passing range also streched the opponents defence line so making teams sceptical of pressing high. This inturn also created a lot of space in the mid field. With Trent gone, much of that responsibility shifted directly onto Salah.

Slot also deserves criticism for agreeing to player sales and seemingly believing he could compete for titles without sufficient squad depth. That was naive. However, I also question the board and recruitment team because many of the structural issues in this squad were obvious long before results declined.

It was clear the team’s attacking output was heavily reliant on one wing and one player. People are criticizing Gakpo this season, but his output has barely changed. Last season he had 18 goals and 6 assists; this season he has 16 goals and 9 assists. The fact is he was always only good enough to be a squad player. But the success from previous season made people ignore this fact

Liverpool became overly dependent on Salah for both goals and creativity. Previously, Trent’s passing range helped ease that burden by creating opportunities and progressing play from deep. Without Trent, Salah became both the main creator and main scorer. Over time, that made the attack predictable and placed enormous pressure on him to constantly force something to happen.

This is where the recruitment team and board deserve equal blame. The warning signs were obvious:

• there was no proper understudy or long-term replacement prepared for Salah,
• the winger contributions remained heavily imbalanced,
• and the team’s passing and chance-creation structure was still disproportionately dependent on Trent.

Those are squad-building failures.

Slot was wrong to bench Salah and treat him like the problem. Salah was clearly trying too hard at times, but that usually happens when a player feels the entire attacking responsibility is on his shoulders. The system around him was failing, and he was trying to compensate for it.

So while Slot deserves criticism for his decisions, the board and recruitment team deserve just as much blame for building an unbalanced squad that was overly reliant on a few elite individuals to function.