Anfield's Emotional Farewell: Bob Marley and Liverpool's Uncertain Future

They sang about everything being “alright” as the rain fell and another flat afternoon drifted to a close. It felt less like optimism and more like defiance. The Kop reached for Bob Marley on the final day of a miserable 2025/26 season, as if trying to drown out the creeping fear that Liverpool are stepping into something they’ve seen before – and never wanted to relive.

Two more pillars of the club’s greatest modern side have gone. Mo Salah and Andy Robertson walked away from Anfield having helped drag Liverpool back to the summit of European football over the last nine years. Now they join a growing exodus. Half of the squad Arne Slot inherited just two summers ago has already departed. Several more could follow.

For supporters who lived through the 1990s, the parallels are uncomfortable. Graeme Souness once dismantled Kenny Dalglish’s ageing but title-winning squad at speed. He didn’t survive the fallout. What followed was a decade of drift. That spectre now hangs over Anfield again, and Salah has not been shy in voicing his concerns as he leaves.

A season that failed on every front

The numbers don’t lie, and there’s no point dressing them up. Liverpool’s season has been an outright failure. They finished fifth on 60 points, limping over the line with a 1-1 draw at home to Brentford. Champions League qualification was secured, but only because the bar dropped around them, not because they cleared it with any conviction.

Sixty points would have left them ninth last season. The year before, it meant seventh and no Europe. Three seasons back, ninth again. This time, it’s enough for the Champions League – the lowest points total to make the competition since 2003/04, the season Gerard Houllier left in that strangely cordial parting, complete with a farewell photoshoot on the Anfield turf.

Liverpool failed to win any of their final four league games. Across their last 14 matches in all competitions, they managed just four victories. The lowest win percentage in a decade. Only 17 league wins all season. For a club that has spent the last few years measuring itself against Manchester City and Real Madrid, this is not a blip. It’s a crash.

And as the curtain fell, the disquiet wasn’t only about results. It was also about the man on the bench.

Slot’s distance from the crowd

Slot insists he can win the supporters over next season. He may need to start by simply standing with them.

As the players walked their post-match lap of appreciation, applauding the fans who had stuck with them through a bruising year, Slot stayed seated on the bench, expression fixed, shoulders tight. Perhaps he wanted the spotlight to stay on the departing players. Perhaps he was simply lost in thought. Either way, it jarred.

The lap is a ritual of shared acknowledgement. Players and staff say thank you; supporters say they’ll be back. On this of all seasons – one of the most joyless in years – it was a chance for the head coach to show he understood what the fans had endured. Instead, he sat alone, apart from it all. It did not go unnoticed.

Salah, by contrast, showed yet again why he is so deeply woven into the club’s fabric. Speaking to Sky Sports, he distilled the Liverpool support in a single line: the fans, he said, “don’t care that much about the result as long as you sweat and give your blood here, they’ll love you forever.”

It was a reminder of what the terrace demands: effort, connection, a willingness to walk through the storm together. This has been a season of grief and strain for the club, still living with the shock of Diogo Jota’s death in pre-season. The bond between pitch and stands mattered more than ever. Too often, it felt frayed.

Injuries, a thin squad – and a problem of Slot’s own making

Slot’s one-word verdict on the season was simple: “injury.” He’s not wrong that fitness problems have bitten hard. But the story doesn’t end there.

Back in October, with the campaign still young, Slot was clear about his preference. “This is a decision we have made together,” he said of the squad size. “I completely believe in this, because if you have 25 [players] it’s very hard to manage your squad.”

He cannot now point to a lack of depth as the defining explanation. You cannot choose to run light, then spend months lamenting injuries, the strain of midweek and weekend fixtures, the weakness of the bench and the late goals conceded when legs and minds are gone.

The modern Champions League is bigger, more intense, more draining. The Premier League never lets up. If you know some of your new signings are not ready to play every three days for 90 minutes, the decision to leave the squad so short becomes harder to defend.

Slot himself flagged the risk: “If we end up with two, three or four injuries, 15 or 16 players, where Rio and Trey are two of these 15 or 16, then need to play almost all the minutes and then things can become complicated.”

And yet those young players barely featured. Trey Nyoni, the gifted midfielder who debuted under Jurgen Klopp at 16, finished the league season with just 21 minutes. Federico Chiesa, frozen out again, played only 318 league minutes. Wataru Endo managed 170.

Kieran Morrison, captain of the Under-21s and their standout performer, made the bench 13 times. He was used once – five minutes at Wolves in the FA Cup.

On paper, Liverpool had options. In reality, Slot trusted very few of them. The squad became even smaller by choice, not just by circumstance. Then there was the baffling Harvey Elliott saga: no agreement to bring him back in January, even as the bench cried out for quality in the second half of the season.

When you add all that up, “injury” only tells half the story. The rest belongs to planning, selection and a coach who preferred a tight group, then watched it buckle.

Heavy defeats and heavier standards

Slot has tried to contextualise the cup exits. Both the FA Cup and Champions League campaigns ended in 4-0 defeats, to Manchester City and PSG respectively. City went on to lift the FA Cup. PSG have not lost a two-legged European tie in two seasons.

None of that will soften the blow on the Kop. This is a fan base that has grown used to demanding the biggest prizes, not applauding the teams that knock them out.

It hasn’t sat comfortably in the dressing room either. Virgil van Dijk, Robertson, Salah and Curtis Jones have all made it clear the season fell short of what Liverpool should expect of themselves.

Salah’s parting words to his team-mates at the AXA Training Centre cut through the noise: “Being in Liverpool, winning something for Liverpool and winning games is the best thing that could happen to you all.” That is the standard. Not qualification. Not “minimum targets.” Winning.

Slot, for his part, has described Champions League qualification as “our lowest base,” and pointed to Chelsea and Tottenham missing out on Europe entirely as evidence of how volatile the landscape has become. Some supporters will hear that and see a manager lowering the bar. Liverpool’s great modern sides were built on the idea that anything short of a title challenge was failure. Losing 4-0, even to eventual winners, in the middle of a run of four defeats in five, is not something they are inclined to shrug off.

Even the season’s best spell carried asterisks. A 13-game unbeaten run followed a 4-1 home humiliation by PSV, the campaign’s nadir. On the surface, it hinted at recovery. Look closer and the cracks show: draws with Leeds (twice), Burnley and Fulham, and seven wins padded by victories over Barnsley in the FA Cup and a West Ham side that would later be relegated.

This was not a team surging. It was one stumbling, occasionally catching its balance, never fully in control.

A summer of questions, not answers

The uncertainty around Anfield is not limited to the pitch. Slot has just one year left on his contract. So do Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards, the key figures in the club’s recruitment and football structure. The men who are supposed to shape the rebuild are themselves approaching decision points.

On the playing side, the churn could be brutal. Up to nine first-team players might depart. Salah and Robertson are already gone. Ibrahima Konate is out of contract. Chiesa and Endo could move on. Curtis Jones, wanted by Inter Milan and with only a year left on his deal, is widely expected to leave. Alisson is on Juventus’ radar. Joe Gomez, another with a year remaining, could be sold. Alexis Mac Allister might also be available for the right offer.

If that exodus materialises, Liverpool will start next season with Cody Gakpo as their top current goalscorer for the club. Van Dijk, a centre-back, would be next on the list. For a team that once terrified defences from every angle, it is a stark picture.

Slot has spoken of another summer of “a little transition,” though he insists it will not be as drastic as last year’s overhaul. The reality suggests otherwise. The spine is ageing or leaving. The dressing room’s strongest voices are thinning out. The squad needs not just fine-tuning, but surgery.

As the Kop belted out “don’t worry about a thing,” many in the stands were already thinking about everything that can go wrong. A manager under pressure. A squad in flux. Decision-makers with contracts ticking down. A club that once set the pace now clinging to the pack.

The song said one thing. The mood said another. The question now is simple: is this a painful reset on the way back to the top, or the first steps into another long, grey era Liverpool thought they had left behind?