Edwards, Hughes discuss short-term plan to ‘stop the rot’ at Liverpool with Slot under pressure
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot is under huge pressure with Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes holding a meeting this morning, according to reports.
The Reds suffered their seventh Premier League defeat of the season on Saturday when Bournemouth beat them 3-2 in the dying embers of the game.
Liverpool went 2-0 down inside 33 minutes when Evanilson and Alex Jimenez scored for the hosts but goals from Virgil van Dijk and Dominik Szoboszlai in the second half evened it up.
However, Amine Adli scored in the fifth minute of second-half injury time to give Bournemouth all three points with fourth-placed Liverpool now failing to win in their last five Premier League fixtures.
After the match, Slot – who described it as a “cruel game” – pointed to the tiredness of his players as an excuse for the defeat after Liverpool beat Marseille 3-0 in the Champions League in midweek.
Slot told reporters: “It is a cruel game if you lose in extra time after coming back from 2-0 down at half-time.
“I think it was only 5-10 minutes in the first half where we didn’t have total control.
“We played through them nicely a few times, but we conceded twice, and we went down to 10 men, so that doesn’t help.
“It felt to me that if we were able to make up the 2-1, we would have been back in the game.
“We were a lot of the time in promising positions but we were 2-0 down, and it did feel to me that we were going to score and get back in the game.
“It is fair to say that in the last 10 minutes it was more open, but I could see that my players were tired because we only had two days in between each game.”
There have been rumours that Slot is under pressure from the Liverpool hierarchy to turn around their form and make sure they secure a Champions League qualification place.
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And now a reliable X account made up of ‘five elite reporters’ insists that Fenway Sports Group’s CEO of Football Edwards and Liverpool sporting director Hughes are holding a meeting today to discuss a short-term plan to stop the rot.
In a vague update, hinting that Slot could be replaced soon, the account wrote on X:Â ‘Exclusive. Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes are leading Liverpool FC’s football operations. Our sources say they are fully aware of the crisis at @LFC and plans are being put in place to stop the rot. A short-term plan is being discussed this morning.’
Previously, reliable journalist David Lynch, who has been reporting on Liverpool for years, insisted that the Reds prefer to get to the end of the season before replacing Slot.
Lynch told Anfield Index earlier this week: “They clearly, clearly want to get to the end of the season with Slot if they can. They don’t want to make a mid-season managerial change because who do you get as the interim? It would clearly be better to make the managerial change in the summer.
“I think his future’s already set, to be honest. It’s been so pronounced, the decline, for such a long time. It is only a case of getting to the summer, albeit if he starts to lose six, seven on the bounce again, he will get bulleted because they’ll feel forced to go for an interim. They don’t want to change; they really would prefer not to.
“Then it’s kind of go for a manager then in the summer. People are talking about ‘go and get Xabi Alonso’, but he’s not gonna want to walk into a job now, so it’d have to be an interim, and I don’t think there’s a great deal out there.”
