Arne Slot under huge pressure at Liverpool after a transfer window which has flattered to deceive

We all spent the majority of last season wondering if it was possible to ruffle the feathers of Arne Slot. The man who replaced Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool didn’t just take The Impossible Job in his stride, but skipped through his first Premier League season unscathed while shrugging his shoulders and asking what everyone was worried about.

Champions League qualification was the widely accepted target for Slot in his debut campaign, but fast-forward 12 months, after winning the title by a 10-point margin and with four games to spare having sewn it up by Christmas, and the landscape has shifted dramatically to the point where the majority don’t merely expect Liverpool to win the title, but walk it.

That feeling is predicated on the idea that spending money in the transfer market directly translates to improvement on the pitch, which is a particularly strange assumption when it pertains to Liverpool after they spent next-to-nothing last summer, with that stability and cohesion in the squad arguably key to their success.

Slot is understandably eager to point out that Liverpool’s label as title favourites has little to do with their transfer market activity.

“Every team in the Premier League is spending money. So if we are only favourites because we’ve spent a bit, I would see that as weird because we’ve lost a lot as well. But that we are favourites because we won it last season and we played so well, that’s clear,” Slot said.

It’s of course a combination being reigning champions and a big summer outlay that’s got everyone so giddy ahead of the new season. But they have spent more than anyone else as things stand and will likely end the transfer window in that top spot having agreed a £26m fee with Parma for Giovanni Leoni as they reportedly close in on a second centre-back in £35m Marc Guehi.

Those completed deals would make this the second-biggest transfer window spend ever, behind Chelsea in 2023/2024. And yet, having sung the praises of Richard Hughes and Liverpool’s transfer team for much of the window, ahead of the season opener against Bournemouth on Friday, we’re now wondering whether we all got a bit carried away.

They needed a couple of full-backs and got their preferred targets in Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez – no problems there. Then came their £100m-plus signing of Florian Wirtz, which was quite the statement not just because they beat Bayern Munich and Manchester City to his signature, but also because there will have been very few people watching Liverpool last season thinking what they needed was a world-class playmaker.

We all assumed at that point, and we’re still in June here, that what was something of a luxury signing in Wirtz – a player they just felt they couldn’t miss out on rather than someone they really needed – was a tangential move before Liverpool refocused on their absolute priorities of signing two centre-backs, a defensive midfielder, a new striker and a number of new forwards to be determined by outgoings.

MORE LIVERPOOL COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Mailbox: Newcastle have ‘deluded fanbase’ as Alexander Isak ‘deserves’ Liverpool move
👉 Big Weekend: Man Utd v Arsenal, Chelsea, Florian Wirtz and Eddie Howe
👉 Wirtz, Gyokeres, Mbeumo: Top 10 Premier League signings of the 2025 summer transfer window

As things stand they’ve signed a striker who was at best their second choice, the two centre-backs they look set to sign aren’t yet through the door, 33-year-old Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo are the only wide forwards that will definitely be in the squad come September 2 and they look set to line up against Bournemouth either without a defensive midfielder or with Wataru Endo, who is too dramatically inferior to the injured Ryan Gravenberch for him to be a viable back-up for the season.

READ MORE: Liverpool new boys show their worth but Palace may regret exposing problems Isak cannot solve

We’ve heard tales of Liverpool’s seemingly endless pot of cash this summer and their net spend is currently around £100m, but we would question why, having done such excellent business so early in the transfer window, their only addition in the last 50 days since Kerkez was announced at the end of June has been Hugo Ekitike, when they’ve known all along what else was required.

And while they may sign the players they need before the end of the transfer window, it’s a) too late; the season’s starting now, and b) we really don’t think they will; that’s an awful lot of business to do in two weeks when you’ve made one signing in the last seven.

It’s put Slot in this unenviable position of having a squad that’s not fit for purpose ahead of a Premier League season in which anything but the ultimate prize will be seen as failure after a transfer window which has flattered to deceive. We might just be about to see how unflappable he really is.