Colin Sheridan: Arne Slot's firing means Liverpool has done exactly what everybody else does

Football clubs no longer ask whether a manager can recover a dressing room. They ask whether it is worth trying.

SACKED: Departing Liverpool head coach Arne Slot. Pic: Jacob King/PA Wire.

Mon, 01 Jun, 2026 - 10:39

Colin Sheridan is a writer and columnist. A former officer in the Irish Defence Forces he has extensive deployment experience as a peacekeeper with the United Nations, having lived and worked in the former Yugoslavia, West Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.

It will go down as one of the strangest managerial spells in Liverpool Football Club’s rich history. Arne Slot arrived at Anfield carrying perhaps the most impossible brief in modern football: succeeding Jürgen Klopp.

He inherited not merely a football team but a cultural phenomenon. Klopp was more than a manager — he was the club’s emotional compass, its public conscience and, for many supporters, the living embodiment of Liverpool itself.