The ends have not justified the means. Arne Slot was considering the various ways he has tried to protect leads this season. He brought on Joe Gomez against Fulham, he remembered. The result? “We conceded”. Then there was the method that worked last year, of using Wataru Endo “to have that midfielder that picks up all the second balls”. Yet, in each of the first two times he brought the Japanese on as a defensive impact substitute, they conceded. That ploy was abandoned.
Slot has gone for the counter-intuitive approach. “I’ve done attacker-for-attacker substitution, not to bring a defender in,” he said. “We’ve tried many things but the way we are conceding goals is also constantly different. It hasn’t led yet to us not conceding in the last minute.” Slot cited a deflection at Wolves. Others have been set-pieces. Tottenham scored in open play on Sunday. Liverpool dropped two points in the 90th minute, a third costly late equaliser to add to the five injury-time winners that have gone into their net.
The problem, as Slot ran through the things he has tried, is that it made him sound a manager struggling for solutions; if that is true in a wider sense, a lack of answers would bode badly for him and them.
But the broader issue of Liverpool concede late goals reflects a host of problems. The fact is that they do: 12 after the 80th minute of league games this season, the joint most in the division. Those conceded in the 90th or later have cost them 11 points. A theme is that even their supposed inferiors are empowered to attack, perhaps by a sense Liverpool’s fragility means they might concede.
Wolves, bottom of the league, scored in the 94th minute. Leeds, then deep in trouble, in the 96th. Tottenham, without a win in 2026, in the 90th. “That’s probably the belief teams have now when they play against us,” Slot said. “And I think we might be a bit anxious towards the end as well.”
Slot lamented an inability to get the second goal, to take the drama out of the closing stages. Too many of Liverpool’s games are too tight; one slip or one shot can change everything. They have only gone two goals ahead twice in the Premier League in 2026, against Newcastle and West Ham; that said, earlier in the season, they had an unfortunate habit of losing 2-0 leads.
Defensive personnel can be faulted. Alisson erred to concede the penalty for Manchester City’s crucial penalty and made another uncharacteristic mistake in the build-up to Andre’s winner for Wolves; at Molineux, Gomez’s attempt at a block was unconvincing. Against Tottenham, Virgil van Dijk was brushed aside too easily by Randal Kolo Muani, who found Richarlison. Dominik Szoboszlai gave the scorer too much room; positional sense can be a shortcoming of the Hungarian’s when he plays right-back but, in his defence, he is not a right-back.
And if there was a curiosity that two others started who have spent more of their careers at right-back – Gomez as a centre-half, Jeremie Frimpong on the right wing – Slot has a difficult balancing act with his imbalanced squad.
Liverpool’s poor finishes can be a sign of a lack of intensity which in turn can stem from a lack of available players, meaning those they do have are tiring. It was not a valid excuse against Tottenham, missing 13 players for various reasons, but has been in other matches.
It remains remarkable that the club who spent £450m seem to have too few footballers. Slot can be faulted for much else, and injuries have been the constant, but it feels that Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards, the transfer gurus in the hierarchy, left him short-staffed in several positions; right wing is one, even if no one fully foresaw the scale of Mohamed Salah’s decline. The failure to get a right-back in the January window is a reason why Szoboszlai ended up there. Since the breakdown of the 2024 move for Martin Zubimendi, they have not tried to get a defensive midfielder. While Ryan Gravenberch has been reinvented, a specialist nullifier may have helped prevent late concessions.
Then there is the question of game management. Earlier in the season, in particular, matches became too ragged as Liverpool chased them. Slot proved expert in changing games last year, with the players he inherited. Now he has proved less adept with those bought on his watch, albeit when some benches look weak. Liverpool only have seven Premier League goal contributions from substitutes. Arsenal have 22. Manchester United already have six in Michael Carrick’s brief reign. Igor Tudor got an assist from Kolo Muani. “The things you can try to do as influencers from the side is in the defensive substitution or offensive substitution,” said Slot. “I have tried many of them.” And too few have worked, as the ends to Liverpool’s games show.
