The news was delivered by Liverpool sporting director Richard Hughes to Arne Slot on Saturday morning.
The Dutchman was informed that, with a heavy heart, the decision had been taken to end his two-year reign as the club’s head coach.
Just 12 months after winning the Premier League title in his maiden season at Anfield, Slot paid the price for a torturous second campaign which saw Liverpool trail home in fifth place. They salvaged Champions League qualification but limped across the line with just 60 points, their lowest total for a decade.
Hughes and Fenway Sports Group CEO of football Michael Edwards had previously indicated that they were going to stand by Slot given the mitigating factors which had contributed to Liverpool’s fortunes nosediving. However, having taken stock in the week following the end of the season, they came to the conclusion that a change was required given the mood both within the dressing room and the fanbase.
Spanish coach Andoni Iraola, who left Bournemouth at the end of the season, is the clear frontrunner to take over with Liverpool keen to make a swift appointment.
The Athletic has spoken to a wide range of people, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, to explain why Slot was sacked, how players and staff reacted, and why Iraola is the man they want to lead a new era at Anfield.
Slot didn’t see it coming.
“I have every reason to believe I am the Liverpool manager next season,” he told reporters before the penultimate game of the season at Villa Park.
Behind the scenes, he remained fully involved in talks over pre-season and summer recruitment plans.
Slot had lined up Etienne Reijnen, his former assistant at Feyenoord, to join his backroom staff this summer. He had initially wanted to bring Reijnen with him when he took over from Jurgen Klopp two years ago but he couldn’t get a work permit. Now that was no longer an issue, Reijnen recently said his goodbyes at the Dutch club and expected to be reunited with Slot at Anfield. However, no contract was signed.
Eyebrows were raised when Slot didn’t take part in the traditional lap of appreciation following the final game of the season at home against Brentford. He sat alone in the dugout while departing legends Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson accepted the acclaim of Anfield.
People close to the Dutchman insist that was down to him wanting to ensure the spotlight remained on Salah and Robertson rather than a sign that he knew his days at the club were numbered.
Arne Slot kept a low profile after Mohamed Salah’s final game for Liverpool (Jack Thomas/Getty Images)
Slot had continued to speak to players about their summer plans and preparations for next season in the belief that he would get the opportunity to put right what had gone so wrong. On Saturday morning, those hopes lay in tatters.
In an open letter published in the Liverpool Echo on Monday morning, Slot spoke of his pride at what he and the team achieved in his first season in charge, and of the “indescribable” loss of Diogo Jota over the summer. He reflected, too, on his legacy. “I also leave knowing the club is exactly where it belongs: amongst Europe’s elite,” he wrote. “Securing Champions League football was an important responsibility and one that ensures Liverpool can continue competing at the highest level next season and beyond.
“I leave with complete confidence in what lies ahead. The players who have given so much to this club, who have upheld its values and helped create so many unforgettable moments, have built foundations that will endure. At the same time, a new generation is emerging, ready to write its own story and embrace the responsibility that comes with wearing this shirt.
“Change is part of football, but I know that this club will continue to make its people proud.”
It will cost Liverpool around £7million ($9.4m) in compensation to pay up the final year of Slot’s contract. No other exits have been confirmed, but assistants Sipke Hulshoff and Giovanni van Bronckhorst, as well as lead physical performance coach Ruben Peeters, are also expected to leave.
When the wheels came off during a desperate run of nine defeats in the space of 12 matches between late September and late November, the message from the club’s hierarchy was emphatic — Slot still enjoyed their full support.
It was repeated in April after chastening defeats by Manchester City in the FA Cup and Paris Saint-Germain in Europe consigned Liverpool to a season without a trophy and left them scrambling for the consolation prize of Champions League qualification.
There was sympathy for what Slot had been forced to contend with. The backdrop to the season had been one of tragedy following Diogo Jota’s death, along with his brother Andre Silva, in a car crash in Spain last July. Senior FSG figures had great admiration for the leadership Slot showed in the most difficult of circumstances.
Injuries did not help, either. Record signing Alexander Isak arrived unfit following his protracted £125m move from Newcastle United and then missed nearly four months with a broken left leg.
Giovanni Leoni and Conor Bradley both suffered season-ending knee injuries, while 17-goal top scorer Hugo Ekitike ruptured his right Achilles tendon. Alisson, Jeremie Frimpong and Wataru Endo also had significant spells on the sidelines.
There was an acceptance that a lot of the £450m invested in the squad last summer hadn’t been on the field often enough. Florian Wirtz, who needed a lengthy period of adaptation to English football, Isak and Ekitike played just 118 minutes of football together.
Liverpool’s new signings did not get enough chances to play together (Matt McNulty/Getty Images)
Slot’s job had also been made harder by the downturn in form of established stars such as Salah, Alexis Mac Allister, Ibrahima Konate and Cody Gakpo.
The breakdown in the relationship between Salah and Slot was one of the sub plots of the season with the Egyptian forward adamant that he had been made a scapegoat for the team’s struggles when he was dropped in November, telling reporters in December he had been “thrown under the bus”.
However, Hughes and Edwards backed Slot’s handling of Salah and then agreed in March to the player’s request for the final year of his contract to be effectively ripped up following his declining output.
That spat didn’t cost Slot his job. Much more significant in the final decision was his inability to find solutions to the team’s glaring weaknesses as a blanket of negativity descended during the run-in with performances so lifeless and disjointed.
His complaints about facing “low blocks” and being faced with “negative set-piece balances” started to wear thin with the most damning assessment from fans that they felt bored by the slow brand of football.
When Liverpool enjoyed back-to-back wins over Everton and Crystal Palace in late April, there were aspirations of leapfrogging Manchester United into third place. They only needed four points from their remaining four matches to be guaranteed a top-five finish.
But they took just two out of the last 12 points on offer. A chastening defeat at Old Trafford was followed by a home draw with Chelsea in which Slot was subjected to the kind of dissent a Liverpool manager hadn’t faced at Anfield since the final days of Roy Hodgson’s reign in 2010-11. His decision to substitute Rio Ngumoha was greeted with a torrent of boos. More followed at the final whistle. The noise would have been louder but for the thousands of empty seats.
Remarkably, it was also the first time all season that Chelsea had out-run their opponents in the top flight.
Hughes was sitting in the directors’ box that day when supporters vented their spleen at the sight of Slot’s side retreating and slowing the game down when they were 1-0 up rather than going for the jugular. The disconnect between what fans expected and what was being served up was stark.
“The emotion was just sucked out of Anfield,” says one senior FSG figure. “There was no intensity. We looked like a team without an identity.”
The 4-2 defeat at Aston Villa was equally damaging and the 1-1 draw with Brentford on the final day wasn’t much better. Rather than pinpointing one moment as the breaking point, senior club sources suggest that faith in Slot slowly ebbed away during those closing weeks.
And the data made for bleak reading given Liverpool’s slow starts and habit of conceding damaging late goals, which pointed to issues with both fitness and mentality.
Having gained 23 points from losing positions in 2024-25, they won just five this time around. Having started the season with five straight league victories, they won just 12 of the next 33.
Defensively, shipping 53 goals was their worst record across a 38-game Premier League season, while 63 goals scored was their most barren return for a decade. The tally of 20 defeats in all competitions (including the Community Shield) was the most since 1992-93.
At times the data was as bleak as the style of football under Arne Slot (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
It was telling in the wake of Slot’s sacking that club sources talked about the “next phase” for Liverpool requiring “a more front-foot, aggressive and urgent style of football”.
The decision was taken by Hughes and Edwards with sign off from the FSG board which includes principal owner John W. Henry, chairman Tom Werner and FSG president Mike Gordon.
There was a fear that if they stuck by Slot and then next season didn’t start well things would quickly turn toxic at Anfield. And if they were forced to make a change in the autumn finding a suitable successor would be harder than this summer given the candidates available.
“It’s a decision we didn’t want to make, but one we ultimately concluded we reluctantly had to,” the senior FSG figure adds.
It was nearly 24 hours after Saturday’s announcement before any Liverpool players publicly referenced Slot’s departure.
Captain Virgil van Dijk broke the silence on Sunday when he posted on Instagram: “We’ll never forget winning the Premier League in our first season together. Thank you trainer and best of luck to you and your family in the future.”
Others soon followed suit, including Ekitike: “Thank you for everything you taught me and for the time you gave me, both on and off the pitch. I wish you all the very best coach.”
The squad, like most club staff, had only learned about Slot’s sacking shortly before 12.30pm on Saturday, just four and a half hours before Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain kicked off in the Champions League final.
There had been friction behind the scenes with the mood repeatedly dragged down by setbacks over the course of the season. However, sources close to a number of senior players insist it’s not fair to suggest that Slot had “lost the dressing room”. A number of them are understood to have messaged him directly before Van Dijk’s social media post on Sunday.
It was more the case that a collective sense of frustration grew within the squad as the external negativity and criticism over performances and results cranked up.
When a dozen players liked Salah’s controversial social media post following the defeat by Villa, bemoaning Liverpool’s loss of identity and calling for the return of “heavy metal football”, a phrase synonymous with Klopp’s reign, it was widely viewed as them siding with their team-mate against Slot.
“No, nothing like that,” Wirtz insisted to The Athletic in the final week of the season. “I like Mo’s mentality in general — how he sees things, how he works. He’s a guy you can listen to, because he has seen a lot.
“He wasn’t attacking anyone. With the ‘likes’ players gave, I think it was made too big. For me, it was just a thing that he wanted to say because he’s leaving. He wanted to make everyone in the club alert that we have to work more and do better.
“We are all anything but happy with this season. The outside world is always trying to create something between the team and the manager. There is no thought about not being behind the manager.”
Some players sympathised with Salah when it came to assessments over the drop-off in his performances. They felt that game plans earlier in the season were shaped around Wirtz or Ekitike which meant the Egyptian was inevitably less involved.
They also privately questioned the wisdom of moving Dominik Szoboszlai, their most influential midfielder, to fill in the void at right-back in the absence of Bradley. Others felt that the new signings were given an easier ride and were more likely to retain their place if they under-performed.
Some players picked up on the fact that training, meetings and pre-match plans towards the end of the season contained fewer tactical details than before. That was viewed as a bonus by those who felt Slot had previously spoken for too long, but being more concise didn’t trigger any discernible improvement.
During the defeat at Villa Park, sources say there was uncertainty within the team over who was responsible for what when defending set pieces and the hosts were able to exploit that for their opening goal with the inquest continuing in the away dressing room.
Four days after that game, on May 19, there was a meeting at Kirkby which resulted in a number of players believing that Slot might be replaced. However, they only knew for sure when the news broke on Saturday.
Senior club sources are adamant that no players were consulted over whether a change should be made.
Both players and staff insist that Slot was also unfairly criticised externally for the amount of time off he granted to the squad. Club data shows that the squad had 47 days off across the 2023-24 season, Klopp’s final campaign, compared to 50 in 2024-25 and 45 in 2025-26.
“The powers-that-be never lost faith in Arne’s ability as a coach,” commented one senior Anfield figure. “They just stopped being able to see a way out of his problems at Liverpool.”
Andoni Iraola ticks a lot of boxes.
His record during his three-year spell at Bournemouth was exceptional with him guiding them to 12th, ninth and sixth-placed Premier League finishes. He announced in April that he would be stepping down when his contract expired at the end of the season and he left Bournemouth with European football for the first time in their history.
Iraola’s body of work is all the more impressive given the sale of players such as Milos Kerkez, Illia Zabarnyi, Dean Huijsen, Dango Ouattara and Antoine Semenyo during his tenure.
Andoni Iraola achieved unprecedented success for Bournemouth (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
Hughes knows him as well as anyone given that he appointed him at Bournemouth as Gary O’Neil’s successor in the summer of 2023. The 43-year-old Spaniard fits the bill in terms of the shift in style Liverpool are looking to implement. He’s available with no compensation required and is used to working as a head coach rather than manager.
In terms of other possible options, Stuttgart’s Sebastian Hoeness and Lens’ Pierre Sage are admired. Luis Enrique’s claims would be compelling but Liverpool don’t expect him to leave PSG following back-to-back Champions League triumphs.
There have been suggestions that delaying the sacking of Slot cost Liverpool the chance to bring in Xabi Alonso. However, the reality is that the new Chelsea boss wasn’t viewed as a serious contender by Edwards and Hughes.
Iraola has been a man in demand since it became clear that he was ready to embark on a new challenge. He’s been actively engaged in talks over the past fortnight with Crystal Palace, Bayer Leverkusen and Milan as he weighed up his options.
There was a meeting with representatives from Milan in London the week before last but a second round of discussions proved frustratingly difficult to organise. That adds weight to indications that it was only in recent days that Liverpool reached out to Iraola’s camp.
Now formal talks will follow with the growing expectation that the former Rayo Vallecano boss is Anfield bound.
