How bad must Liverpool's season get before Arne Slot is sacked?

Tom Werner was in attendance on Saturday, meaning the Liverpool chairman will now be acutely aware of the severity of the situation - if he wasn't already before. 

The American would have arrived hoping to see the Reds kickstart their campaign with the help of their £125 million ($165m) man, Alexander Isak, who was surprisingly selected to lead the line ahead of Hugo Ekitike. What he witnessed was a complete and collective "mess", as captain Virgil van Dijk admitted afterwards.

Isak was painfully poor, so utterly ineffective that some fans were left pining for Darwin Nunez, a wasteful finisher but a chaotic character always capable of making something happen. Isak, by complete contrast, offered absolutely nothing, touching the ball just 14 times before being mercifully withdrawn after 68 minutes of mediocrity.

There can, of course, be zero sympathy for the Sweden striker, who is paying a heavy price for arriving at Anfield in such poor physical condition. However, that only made Slot's decision to start him all the more inexplicable.

Isak was meant to have played at least twice for Sweden during the international break but, after making an appearance off the bench against Switzerland, he wasn't used at all against Slovenia because new coach Graham Potter didn't want to run the risk of him picking up a booking that would have ruled him out of next March's World Cup play-off semi-final against Ukraine.

So, why on earth was a ridiculously rusty Isak picked ahead of a fully-fit Ekitike, who had scored his first goal for France last Thursday week? Slot pretty much answered the question before the game by admitting that Liverpool are so desperate to get their club-record signing back up to speed that they're willing to give him game time ahead of more deserving team-mates.

"This morning I had a conversation with the performance staff about what is the best way for Alex – not for Liverpool – to get him as fast as we can to 100 per cent," Slot said in his pre-match press conference on Friday. "I always have to find the balance between what is the best for him as an individual and for us as a team.

"I do know that a 100% fit Alexander Isak is a big, big, big plus for this team. But for him to get there he might need to have minutes where you could argue that another player might be further ahead of him in terms of match fitness. Alex will end up being the player he was at Newcastle if we get him fit. That will take a little bit of time."

It was a remarkable revelation, given both time and patience are running out on Merseyside.

One can understand Liverpool's pressing need for the time, money and patience they've invested in Isak to start reaping dividends - but starting him only makes sense if he's capable of contributing. Liverpool are carrying enough passengers as it is at the moment, so they hardly need to burden themselves with one more.

The message it sends out is also awful. One can only imagine Ekitike's frustration when he learned that an immobile Isak would be starting ahead of him. Of course, Joe Gomez was probably feeling just as aggrieved on Saturday afternoon.

With injury-plagued duo Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong both unavailable, the presumption was that the versatile Gomez would be asked to fill in at right-back - not least because that would allow Dominik Szoboszlai, Liverpool's best player this season by some distance, to play in his preferred position in midfield. 

However, the Hungarian was once again asked to play in defence, while Gomez spent the entire afternoon on the bench. Consequently, the sum total of Gomez's Premier League game time this season remains 43 minutes spread across four matches - which is just staggering in light of Ibrahima Konate's consistently calamitous displays.

Slot alluded to Gomez's longstanding fitness issues on Friday. "I think he's only played 90 minutes twice throughout the whole of this year," the former Feyenoord coach said. "If we want to keep him available longer, it is maybe a risk to play him seven times in 22 days."

It definitely would be, but the point is that Gomez is barely playing at all - and we need to know why. Either the England international can no longer cope with the rigours of Premier League football or Slot simply doesn't feel he's even good enough to play ahead of the increasingly error-prone Konate, who gifted Forest the corner from which they opened the scoring on Saturday with a horrible touch under no meaningful pressure whatsoever.

Of course, the fact that giving away a corner is akin to giving away a goal these days is another major problem for Slot. 

Murillo's 33rd-minute opener at Anfield may have been shrouded in controversy due to the fact that it didn't appear very different to the goal that Virgil van Dijk had disallowed at Manchester City two weeks beforehand - but it exposed Liverpool's shocking inability to deal with crosses into their area. Indeed, they've now conceded nine times from set-piece situations this season - equalling their tally for the entire 2024-25 campaign - and what's really worrying is that nobody seems to know what's going on.

Statistically speaking, Van Dijk remains the dominant aerial force in the Premier League, while Konate also ranks among the top 10 for average headers won per game (3.5, alongside Dan Burn and Gabriel Magalhaes). However, on far too many occasions this season, Liverpool players have reacted too slowly to flick-ons or second balls, and the air of apprehension among the supporters every single time a corner, free-kick or throw-in is conceded is an inevitable reflection of lack of confidence they're seeing on the pitch.

"I don't think there is nervousness before a set-piece [among the players]," a visibly angry Van Dijk said on Saturday. "We cleared the ones before [Murillo's goal]. I think overall we were just not good in terms of the battles, the challenges, the second-ball fight. Too rushed. It's just a very, very difficult situation at the moment and we have to get out of this."

Long balls are being constantly used to get around Liverpool's initial press - and to great effect. Worryingly, Slot has openly admitted that he's yet to come up with a way of counteracting this rather simplistic but highly effective approach to beating the English champions. It's absolutely imperative he does so soon, though.

Anyone who doubted that the title defence was over after the Etihad knows it now. The Champions League is now the be-all and end-all as far as the current campaign is concerned, and the good news is that Slot's side looks far more suited to continental competition. Indeed, at the halfway point of the league phase, the Reds are reasonably well-placed to progress directly to the last 16, where they'll likely get an easier draw than they did last season!

Liverpool's decent Champions League prospects are one of the main sporting reasons why Slot's position is still quite secure despite their dreadful domestic form. The other, of course, is last season's title triumph.

The likes of Rio Ferdinand may be ludicrously trying to argue that Slot should be under as much pressure at the minute as Ruben Amorim, but there is a colossal difference between their respective situations: Slot won the title in his first year at Anfield; Amorim led United to their worst-ever Premier League finish and is providing little evidence of a serious revival this term.

There is no denying that Slot is under pressure, though. After being given so much money to spend during the summer, this is very much his team now and, even accounting for injuries, it's performing horrendously. What's more, the players don't just look lost, they're ominously listless too, showing little of the fighting spirit we saw last season. 

The way in which Nico Williams went through Alexis Mac Allister in the lead-up to Forest's second goal was genuinely alarming, as it was symptomatic of the way in which the Reds are constantly coming off second-best in duals all over the pitch in recent weeks and months.

Of course, as Andy Robertson's brave revelation after Scotland's qualification for the World Cup so poignantly underlined, we, on the outside, have no real idea of just how heavily the death of Diogo Jota is weighing on his team-mates, and Van Dijk pointed out before Liverpool went into complete freefall that this was always going to be a difficult season for a team not just in transition but also still in mourning.

At the same time, though, the skipper has acknowledged that the players are not only letting themselves down at the moment, but their manager too. Stars such as Mohamed Salah may be struggling to find their best form, but it's the general dip in work-rate that's really disturbing and damaging.

"You look at yourself first and then you help each other," Van Dijk said. "You help each other get out of this mess because at the moment it is a mess - that's just a fact."

What's just as undisputable is that football is a ruthless results business, and if Slot is unable to arrest his side's slump, thus putting qualification for next season's Champions League at risk, his position will become untenable. Money makes the world go around and the buck always stops with the manager.

We've not yet reached the point of no return, though. The rumours over possible replacements are already circulating, but there is still time for Slot to salvage the season with a good run of results - and performances - between now and the turn of the year.

However, unity all across the board is absolutely imperative and, as we saw at Anfield on Saturday, some supporters are starting to lose faith. Now, more than at any point during Slot's first season at Liverpool, the club's 'You'll Never Walk Alone' mantra is being put to the test.