Less than a year on from the day Liverpool won the Premier League title, Arne Slot’s side find themselves in a position where their season rests on qualifying for the Champions League.
For Slot, perhaps his future does too. There will be no silverware and the Dutchman has already said failing to have Champions League football next season would mean this would “definitely not be an acceptable season”.
This was Liverpool’s 17th defeat of the campaign but it came after arguably one of their better performances. Until Ousmane Dembele’s 72nd-minute strike for Paris St-Germain, Liverpool battled admirably against the champions of Europe.
“It was an intense match between two teams who played really good football,” said PSG head coach Luis Enrique.
For Liverpool, there is no shame in getting knocked out by this PSG side. Enrique’s side are a joy to watch and play with such confidence when in possession.
But the worry for Liverpool is they have gone backwards.
When these two sides met in the Champions League last 16 last season, PSG were the better side across the two legs but they needed a penalty shootout to knock Liverpool out.
This time around, they outclassed Slot’s side in Paris and, while there were spells on Tuesday night when Liverpool threatened, the final scoreline of 4-0 across two legs was fair.
“Of course we are very disappointed because I think there were parts of the second half where you could feel ‘if we could just score now, this could become a very special night’,” said Slot.
“But the future looks very bright for this team, for this club. We have showed we can compete with the champions of Europe in our stadium. To be the dominant team, not many teams can be dominant against PSG and create as many chances as we did,” he added.
At Anfield, Liverpool’s xG was 1.94 compared with the 0.18 at the Parc des Princes last week.
So there were positives to take, but there is still plenty to be done before they can be considered serious contenders on the European stage again.
After the match, Mohamed Salah waved goodbye to the Anfield crowd after playing his last game for Liverpool in the Champions League.
Now the question is whether Slot and Liverpool will be back in the Champions League next season.
Slot made the bold call to start Alexander Isak for the first time since December after his ankle injury, and revealed before the match that the striker was only fit to play for one half.
With hindsight, it didn’t work. Isak managed just five touches in the 45 minutes before he was replaced by Cody Gakpo at the break. But Slot defended his decision.
“He [Isak] was twice close to a goal and that’s why you play a striker of his level. There was one header from a set-piece and one great run in behind [Willian] Pacho where he was really close to scoring, which was eventually offside,” he said.
“It’s good to have him back. He was ready and if I thought he wasn’t ready then I wouldn’t have played him.”
But the Liverpool boss’ decision was questionable, particularly given the way Liverpool threatened after the break once Gakpo came on and Salah was also on the pitch.
“That line-up to start was complete nonsense,” said Julien Laurens on 5 Live. “That second half should have been how Liverpool started this game tonight to get the crowd going. It should not have been Alexander Isak to start.
“Arne Slot made errors in that first leg in his line-up in the way they set up. Tonight he cannot get it wrong. Tonight is not the night to get it wrong. He had to get it right from the beginning. Again, for me, he let the club down, the team down and the fans down.”
Former Liverpool player Stephen Warnock added: “I don’t know what to say about Alexander Isak. I watched him here against Fulham and he was awful.
“He was non-existent here tonight. He didn’t want to get any physical contact alongside Marquinhos. He was sort of wanting to bump into him. There was no wanting to build a platform for his team to get on to the ball.
“Cody Gakpo did more in five minutes than Isak did in the whole first half. He is not fit. He is nowhere near fit. That’s partly due to the injury he sustained against Tottenham, but sitting out pre-season, he has not got one ounce of fitness in him this season and it tells.
“And you think you can put him against PSG, in your biggest game of the season against the best team in Europe, and think you get a performance in 45 minutes? You can’t just switch it on and off.”
