1. Good guts and bones.
In Klopp's final season in Liverpool, an all new-midfield force was dropped in immediately within a single window. With Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch, Wataru Endo and Dom Szoboszlai all arriving and even managed to integrated seamlessly under both managers without much tweaking and assimilating needed.
As a result, when it was time for him to call it, he left Slot a squad with proper guts and bones. Yes there were holes and STILL have some holes in the squad but not very gaping ones that really need a major look at.
Core-wise, the team has a solid pool of leaders and seniors at the core of LFC, Alisson, Trent, Robbo, Salah and Van Dijk. For Salah and Van Dijk, the two most senior of the squad members, still on top of their game. You expect them at this age to drop off, but noooooooo. They still can perform at the highest level, and they have been doing so brilliantly.
2. Squad Management
Going through a long and tough season in the Premier League always requires everyone to stay fresh and fit as best as possible. Keeping everyone available last season was a failure, with practically an entire first XI out at one point for a few weeks. So it was imperative for Slot's Physio team to tweak things when it comes to training.
According to reports, training rigor was scaled back slightly not to tire our guys early by not running the training courses all the way to the afternoon. Gym training and Spin training has always been a thing too.
There was way less of fatigue and risk to in-training injuries as a result, especially if we do get those 12.30pm lunchtime matches. That's why there was less long term injuries and none to ACL ruptures. There were still some muscle and hamstring issues, especially to Jota, Konate, and sometimes Trent and Alisson but their absences weren't as long.
3. Mohamed Salah, enough said.
Salah, best player, enough said. Our right winger legend gets an own section here for very obvious reasons. He has been available all season long and has been our most reliable source of goals, goals that won us games, goals that bailed us out of games that would have otherwise resulted in losses.... And you can tell, Mo just simply loves playing for us and has conditioned his body to be able to take the rigours this season. He simply knows how to get into pockets of space and just being there at the right place at the right time, spotting an opportune moment and launches attacks either scoring himself or assisting for others.
52 goal contributions and we're only just ended February and that equals his own record from his debut season.
4. Fortunes and Misfortunes in England.
While a lot of factors was needed internally in our team to help with the title charge, other events all start coming into play for us. There is for sure some immense luck. But I also believe in good karma for being patient with last year's injury crisis and battling PGMOL's corrupted referees.
To be honest, little did we know that other teams were facing some really bad spells of their own and believe me we have absolutely no part in this and we did not see this coming. And I'll only mention some teams only.
Manchester City had a hugely bad spell dated on the 31st October, crashing out of the EFL cup in the round of 16 against Tottenham. Following the loss, Pep Guardiola's team strung together an unneeded record of having only 1 win out of 13 matches. A lot of teams just wanted to go against them for a quick smash and grab job of points. They lost to Bournemouth (who has had an insanely good season to be fair), Sporting, Tottenham (4-0 thrashing at Home), us at LFC, and Man United, to name a few. And to be frank, they haven't really quite recovered from that bad spell even after signing heavily in January which is evident by their recent loss at their home ground against us. They CAN use the opportunity of Arsenal's current form to gain some ground for 2nd place but the PL title is definitely out of reach for them.
To be fair to Chelsea, they started well under their new manager Maresca and had a very strong start, at least in the league, not so for the EFL cup, getting dumped out by Newcastle, pushing to 4th place initially. But results didn't really go their way which made they fall behind. As you can see, in the 2025 form table above, excluding matches in 2024, Chelsea are 13th, grabbing the same amount of points as Manchester United did this calendar year as well.
Manchester United, bluntly put, are having a VERY shocking season to say the least, under both Erik Ten Hag and Ruben Amorim. We knew Man Utd's already in a downward spiral since before the end of last season. However little did we expect Manchester United to go this low in the Premier League table this season. Safe to say, on the pitch and off-the-pitch, they are suffering.... badly. HITC sport just did a video why Man United are extremely bad under the helm of INEOS ownership. Pound for pound they are the worst team this season. But how in the hell did we not win them at home? However that said, they are still in the Europa League, after the latest edit from me is that they just crashed out of the FA Cup on penalties.
Arsenal are genuinely the only team left still trying to keep pace with us and I respect them for trying. However partly on them is when all their forwards went down to injury starting with Saka, then Jesus, Havertz and Martinelli, they failed to bring in a forward in January to really supplement whatever they have left. And since they have failed to score the last 3 games. Now even if Saka and the rest of their forwards do recover, they need to be re-assimilated and get back to fitness again.
5. Tactical Genius of Arne Slot
A lot of the wins ultimately came down to the tactical adaptability of Arne Slot depending on squad fitness and who is available for each match day. Slot uses a 4-2-3-1 formation, a derivative and attacking version of the 4-3-3 by bringing a 10 further forward. The 10 still will have to act as a glue and a box-to-box midfielder but also bringing an extra man to the offensive line. If strikers are not fit, he will further tweak this formation. Like the recent 2-0 away win at Manchester City, he used 2 10s to make it a 4-2-4 or 4-4-2 thingy. Szoboszlai was very effective there, more so than Curtis Jones.
Through the mastery of Slot, he has also brought out the best in Szoboszlai and complete a full conversion of Ryan Gravenberch into LFC's full time defensive midfielder where he has been putting consistent world class performances ever since.
It's not all 100% win rate though. Lapses in bringing subs on too late or the wrong subs still prevail once a while. However, to be fair to Slot, he has started timing his substitutions as best he could, like bringing in Endo in the last 20-30 minutes to help see wins out which has been very effective to bring in that defense solidarity in and preserving clean sheets.
Ultimately for Slot, he will be ruthless with his subs when the situation calls for it.
6. Consistency, grit and strong away performances.
The thing which kept our march on the right direction is downright pure consistency in the league and stepped up most of the time when we needed to. Even if we down a goal or two, we try to ensure that we didn't lose. Only 1 loss in the league to Nottingham Forest is remarkable and we still remain unbeaten away from home.
10 wins and 5 draws without losses is far ahead of the next in the Away form, Arsenal with 7 wins, 5 draws and 2 losses. Of these 10 wins, we scored crushing yet crucial wins against Tottenham and both clubs of Manchester. In fact, we actually scored way more away from home, 38 goals than we did in Anfield at 28 and 35 points away vs 32 at home at the time of writing. Partly because we have played more away games, 15 away vs 13 home. Still a frightening stat.
The title run in will be more favorable for us as a result with 6 more home games to play vs 4 away games.
CONCLUSION
As of now, Liverpool need 7 wins in the league to be crowned champions. This number can be potentially be lower if Arsenal and any one else vying for the number 2 spot drop points. It's not really quite safe to say we are champions elect as anything can happen in football. However, the way that current trajectory is going, April would be the earliest month.
As it stands, the most points that Arsenal can get is 87, which will be a tall order as their forwards are not back yet. Again this number can be lower as they do have some tricky opponents. As far as the rest goes, Tottenham and Manchester United are mathematically out of the race as with Everton and the rest of the relegation strugglers.
Manchester City as I mentioned, can still try and claw back 2nd or 3rd place though the sheer number of losses they have got means the title is definitely out of reach.
Huge surprise is Nottingham Forest in 3rd. However the range of points from 3rd to 10th is basically 7th points. So any team within this range can still have a shot to get some form of European football.
TITLE RUN IN
LFC vs:
Home vs Southampton
Home vs Everton
Away vs Fulham
Home vs West Ham
Away vs Leicester
Home vs Tottenham
Away vs Chelsea
Home vs Arsenal
Away vs Brighton
Home vs Crystal Palace
ARSENAL vs:
Away vs Man United
Home vs Chelsea
Home vs Fulham
Away vs Everton
Home vs Brentford
Away vs Ipswich
Home vs Crystal Palace
Home vs Bournemouth
Away vs Liverpool
Home vs Newcastle
Away vs Southampton
PREMIER LEAGUE TABLE AS IT STANDS AS AT 03 MARCH 2025 8:30AM GMT +8
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