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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/11/27/arne-slot-has-a-week-to-save-his-job/

Jamie Carragher
Arne Slot has a week to save his Liverpool job
Anfield club do not willingly sack managers, but unless Dutchman can find answers to malaise they will have to find someone who can



Arne Slot's Liverpool side have lost nine of their last 12 matches Credit: Getty Images/Carl Recine
Jamie Carragher
Jamie Carragher
27 November 2025 3:00pm GMT
Arne Slot has a week to save his job. It is hard to believe that sentence is being written, but Liverpool's next three games are against West Ham United, Sunderland and Leeds United. Anything fewer than seven points will make an already unacceptable situation untenable.

No matter how much goodwill the manager has, Liverpool Football Club cannot sustain the drop in standards witnessed over the past three months.

No one knows better than me how much that reality will be hurting everyone connected with my old club. Liverpool do not willingly sack coaches, especially those who bring great success.

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Since Bill Shankly arrived in 1959, there has been a union between the manager and supporters which feels unbreakable once a league title is delivered. Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Sir Kenny Dalglish and Jurgen Klopp left on their own terms. They earned that right.

After Slot won the Premier League in his first season, he seemed destined for a long stay on Merseyside too. Now, just six months later, he is hanging on.

Arne Slot with Premier League trophy
Having won the title in his first season, it seemed as though Slot would be Liverpool manager for as long as he wanted Credit: AFP/Paul Ellis
Nobody saw this drop-off coming, and there must always be caution about making statements with the benefit of hindsight. However, there were hints that the team were going in the wrong direction from March last season onwards, most notably in the performance away to Paris St-Germain and in the Carabao Cup final loss to Newcastle United.

The Wembley display was abysmal. Liverpool did not just lose to Newcastle, they were comprehensively outplayed and physically overpowered.

Supporters were leaving London that day with the same thought: "That was not Liverpool." Games can be lost, but not in that manner. Especially finals.

Liverpool beat PSG in France, but only because Alisson had the game of his life. Had they lost 5-1 that night there would have been no complaints. Slot and the players were given a free pass because the Premier League title was in their sights, winning it with four games to spare. Nagging doubts about whether the overall performances were deteriorating were banished.

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Since Wembley, the falling standards have become increasingly obvious. Liverpool have won fewer than half of their 30 games in all competitions.

Many will argue in mitigation that those fixtures absorb the final few matches of last season, when there was nothing left to play for. For me, those games before the trophy presentation sent the wrong message, too.

The immediate response to the victory over Tottenham Hotspur on April 27 was justified and understandable. The supporters were always going to start the biggest party for 35 years after being able to witness their side become champions.

But for the manager and players, there were still four games left. No one wants to sound like a killjoy, but the time to arrange parties in Ibiza and Dubai was after the final game against Crystal Palace, not before. It may have seemed good fun seeing all the party videos and photographs on social media, but as the team failed to win any of their final four games, losing twice, accusations of it being a bad look had merit.

When Liverpool lost 3-2 at Brighton in their penultimate game, the away fans were enjoying themselves so much they brushed off how bad the team were playing. No matter what the circumstances, it did not feel right.

Danny Welbeck of Brighton heads towards goal against Liverpool
Liverpool's poor form at the end of last season, such as the defeat at Brighton, has continued into this campaign Credit: Getty Images/Julian Finney
Liverpool behaved like a small club
This was the club's 20th league championship, taking them level with Manchester United. Even without league titles, Liverpool have been a winning machine. They have won 20 trophies in the past 24 years because no sooner is one more honour on the board, the work begins to get the next.

At best, the downing of tools before the season was over was wilfully unprofessional. At worst, Liverpool behaved like a small club winning the title for the first time.

During pre-season, there were tactical changes which worried me. Many have pointed to my on-field interview with Slot after the first game of this season against Bournemouth, when the concern was obvious. That was based on how the team was set up against AC Milan in a pre-season friendly, and Crystal Palace in the Community Shield.

For some reason, a myth has developed whereby Liverpool are supposed to be an all-out attacking team, risking all to win without fear of the consequences of going gung ho.

Arne Slot celebrates a goal with gusto
Slot's Liverpool have been more gung ho this season, but it has not worked  Credit: Reuters/Peter Powell
This has never been the Anfield tradition. The greatest teams of the 70s and 80s had balance. They were brilliant in attack, and mean in defence. They could blitz teams at Anfield, and bore the crowd to submission in Europe to get a 0-0 or narrow victory.

In my era, the balance shifted more towards the defence under Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez. Under Klopp, there was a more attacking theme. But Houllier and Benitez's best sides were more exciting going forward than they were credited with, and the peak Klopp team excelled at the back as much as the front. There is a reason why Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker are considered among the most important signings in Liverpool's history, and why Klopp favoured a midfield three of Fabinho, Jordan Henderson and Georginio Wijnaldum.

Since the start of this season, Slot has seemed intent on taking the team in a direction which is not in Liverpool's winning tradition. It felt wrong on day one of this season, and it has led to a mess right now.

Cody Gakpo scores Liverpool's second goal  against Bournemouth
Liverpool may have beaten Bournemouth on the opening day of the season, but the cracks were clear to see Credit: PA/Peter Byrne
Questions will also be asked of those above Slot. History should not be rewritten. When Klopp left, Fenway Sports Group's No 1 priority was to hire Michael Edwards. He recruited sporting director Richard Hughes, Slot followed and the Premier League was won. It was an extraordinary achievement in year one.

People will try to write off that first season as "Klopp's team". I am not having it. The team would have improved and may have won the title under Klopp – we will never know – but Slot used tactics that his predecessor never would, such as deploying Ryan Gravenberch as a No 6, and Luis Diaz as a No 9. He rejuvenated Mohamed Salah to have the season of his life. People were calling for the Egyptian talisman to be sold before Slot arrived.

But it is incredible that Liverpool have since spent £450m to create an unbalanced squad, lacking enough cover on the wings and at centre-back. After selling Diaz, Liverpool have come into this season without genuine competition for Salah and Cody Gakpo. It's all well and good asking for one or both to be left out, but who replaces them?

Signing two expensive No 9s was wrong, too. It is like betting on two horses in the same race. You do not buy a striker for £80m and then two weeks later another for £125m, because if they are competing for the same position, only one can win. It cannot work.

That error was compounded by the failure to pay whatever it took to sign Marc Guehi. For the sake of another £10m, Liverpool may lose over £100m because they will not be in next season's Champions League unless they sign at least one centre-back in January.

If Slot is still in charge by then, he will have started some kind of recovery.

With respect to the upcoming opponents, he could not have picked a better sequence of games to win back trust and save himself. But if it gets any worse and the manager cannot find the answers, the club will have no choice but to find someone else who can.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/11/26/liverpool-v-psv-eindhoven-live-score-champions-league-watch/

Talking on CBS after Liverpool's 4-1 defeat by PSV, former defender Jamie Carragher said: "Liverpool's not a sacking club. Liverpool, I think, are different from almost every club in European football where the manager is the king. The managers get time.

"Liverpool have never sacked a manager who's won the league. Never in their history. They all go after a few years. They've gone, they've resigned. I couldn't believe at the weekend that people were talking about the manager's job when I spoke to Liverpool supporters after losing at home to Nottingham Forest. It's only going to amplify now and I've always been in the camp of you stick with the manager."

He added: "I think what you see now is Liverpool in 2018 under Klopp starts this sort of journey of being a great team and then Slot comes in and we're now, what are we, seven or eight years later? The catalyst for Liverpool at the very start of that run was Alisson, [Virgil] van Dijk and [Mohamed] Salah. Alisson's injured a lot, now he doesn't play so much but you're watching Van Dijk now, not the same player and Mo Salah looks like his legs have gone."

What's the thoughts on Zack Polanski? See him popping up a fair bit now with a lot of sound bites. Comes across well from what I've seen and seems to be saying a lot of things that hit home imo. Seems to be keener on hitting the rich than most. But no doubt there'll be inconsistencies when you dig a little deeper.

Grade A bullshitter.

Get a hint of that alright, but being leader of the Green Party, he's going to have to over egg things to get screen time. Similar to Reform to a degree trying to make headlines. He talks well in any interviews I've seen.

Greens and Reform would always have been treated as the tails of a bell curve but that **** Farage seems to have Reform moving towards much greater popularity. Hopefully that doesn't transfer into votes in a GE when people wake up to the fact that he could be running the country. A hung parliament a very likely outcome.

Labour and the Tories are polling low. On current polling Reform would win 346 seats. Tories 14. Reform is unstable. Anything could happen in a GE.

The latest wheeze seems to be to reduce the threshold for the 40p and 45p rates thus bringing more people into the higher marginal rate bands while freezing the threshold for the 20p rate, ensuring that as wages rise most people pay more in tax.

I think this will be popular with the public as most people don't know what tax thresholds are and a competent government would spin this as people who earn more pay more.

The rates of tax in the UK are mental.

A 50k threshold is not what it was 10 years ago.

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/northern-ireland/budget-2025-extra-370m-for-northern-ireland-far-short-of-what-is-needed-says-finance-minister/a2061171961.html

Over the past five years, the number of higher rate income taxpayers (40%) in Northern Ireland has doubled to 131,000.

"One in seven Northern Ireland income taxpayers are now paying the higher or additional rates and this will increase to close to one in five by 2030. It was one in 18 in 2000."

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/northern-ireland/budget-2025-extra-370m-for-northern-ireland-far-short-of-what-is-needed-says-finance-minister/a2061171961.html
An additional £370m allocated to Northern Ireland in the Budget "falls far short of what is needed", Finance Minister John O'Dowd has said.

He said the allocation meant that the Executive will receive only £18.8m in additional funding from Westminster this year.

https://www.ft.com/content/3742ca9e-a111-49e2-8e4f-756fe57049e9

Lavrov said he "welcomed" a 28-point US peace proposal drawn up with Russian input that called for Kyiv to give up territory and face other restrictions, which was presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday. However, a modified 19-point version drawn up with Ukrainian and European negotiators in Geneva earlier this week appears far less favourable to Russia. Rustem Umerov, a senior Ukrainian official, said his team had reached "a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement" with their US counterparts. Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, said there was "no way" Moscow would sign off on the plan amended by Kyiv and the Europeans. Instead, Russia was likely to spin out the negotiations in multiple formats and continue its slow grind on the battlefield, he said. "The tactic that Putin has consistently taken with Trump is to never close the door," said Charap. "They [Russia] are going to say: 'Yes, but . . .' or 'This is a good basis for discussion, but we'd like to talk about the details"

https://www.ft.com/content/8467569a-9d0d-4f71-9d11-230ddc5324b2

Donald Trump defended Steve Witkoff's role in efforts to end the war in Ukraine and dispatched him to Moscow for more talks next week, as he brushed off leaked transcripts that appeared to show his envoy advising a Kremlin official on how to court the White House. Speaking on board Air Force One late on Tuesday, Trump described as "standard negotiations" a leaked October call between Witkoff and Putin's top foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, in which the American referred to a need for Ukraine to give up Donetsk province in any peace deal, crossing a long-standing red line for Kyiv. "He's got to sell this to Ukraine. He's got to sell Ukraine to Russia. That's what a dealmaker does," Trump said of Witkoff, whom he said was set to go next week to Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, possibly along with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.


https://www.ft.com/content/8467569a-9d0d-4f71-9d11-230ddc5324b2

Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Witkoff had advised Ushakov in an October phone call on how to pitch a peace deal to Trump, suggesting that they emulate the approach used to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. "I would make the call and just reiterate that you congratulate the president on this achievement, that you supported it, you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you're just, you're really glad to have seen it happen. So I would say that," Witkoff told Ushakov, according to the transcript. Ushakov responded: "OK my friend . . . I agree with you that he will congratulate, he will say that Mr Trump is a real peace man and so and so," according to the transcript

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/2025/11/26/sean-moran-gaa-gather-to-decide-what-rules-cannot-be-wished-away/
It is expected, though, that some form of licensing, as floated by GAA president Jarlath Burns on taking office nearly two years ago, will be proposed in an attempt to get counties to conform with certain standards of governance, aimed at reducing the millions (estimated most recently at €44 million) spent every year on preparing county teams for competition.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/26/liverpool-parade-attack-trial-paul-doyle/

A former Royal Marine has admitted using his car as a weapon to deliberately drive into crowds celebrating Liverpool FC's Premier League title win.

Paul Doyle, 54, had been about to stand trial accused of injuring more than 100 people during the rampage in Liverpool city centre on May 26.

But as the prosecution was preparing to outline its case at Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday morning, the defendant, who had previously pleaded not guilty, indicated that he wanted all 31 charges to be put to him again.

Doyle's voice cracked and he removed his glasses to wipe away tears as he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, affray, 17 charges of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, nine counts of causing GBH with intent and three counts of wounding with intent.

The court heard that dashcam footage had shown Doyle, of Croxteth, Liverpool, becoming "increasingly agitated by crowds" before ramming through them in an act of "calculated violence".

Prosecutors planned to tell jurors: "Paul Doyle just lost his temper and, in a rage, drove into the crowd. When he did so, he intended to cause them serious harm. He was prepared to cause those in the crowd, even children, serious harm if necessary to achieve his aim of getting through. The truth is as simple as it is awful."


Sarah Hammond, the chief crown prosecutor for CPS Mersey-Cheshire, said: "Today's convictions bring a measure of justice for an act that caused unimaginable harm during what should have been a day of celebration for the city of Liverpool.

"Paul Doyle has been held responsible for his deliberate actions that endangered lives and brought chaos upon a community. A total of 134 people were injured, including children as young as six months.

"This attack did not just harm individuals – it struck at the heart of a city united in joy, leaving fear in its wake.

"By entering guilty pleas, Doyle has finally accepted that he intentionally drove into crowds of innocent people during Liverpool FC's victory parade.

"Dashcam footage from Doyle's vehicle shows that, as he approached Dale Street and Water Street, he became increasingly agitated by the crowds. Rather than wait for them to pass, he deliberately drove at them, forcing his way through.

"Driving a vehicle into a crowd is an act of calculated violence. This was not a momentary lapse by Paul Doyle – it was a choice he made that day, and it turned celebration into mayhem.

"I would like to commend the bravery of emergency services who acted swiftly at the scene. There can be no doubt that their actions saved lives. Liverpool as a city has shown resilience and unity in the face of this awful act, and I hope the victims, their families and anyone affected will feel that justice has been done."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/11/26/witkoff-putin-aide-call-leak-trump-diplomacy-analysis/

But Mr Witkoff's lack of experience may now have been badly exposed in the leak of an extraordinary phone call with a senior Kremlin official.

Who leaked it and why will have to wait for another day. (Although there are obvious suspects in a Russian administration that appears content to delay and prevaricate its way through peace talks while its bombs and drones fall on Ukrainian targets.)

And it is worth remembering that diplomacy is always best carried out far from the gaze of the media, where currying favour with thuggish leaders or making ugly promises with negotiators is the price of progress.

Even with those caveats, Mr Witkoff's apparent coaching of Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin's top foreign policy aide, on how to handle Mr Trump and the stop-start peace process is deeply embarrassing.

The EPL is about money.
Total value of West Ham players is £400m.
Total value of Nottingham Forest players is £640 million.
Total value of Leeds is £316.

Changing manager won't fix this. It's time in January to get the chequebook out. Parrott is avaiable at the right price.

https://www.transfermarkt.com/leeds-united/startseite/verein/399

Ronaldo is the biggest ticket in town. FIFA know that.

He is 40. He should be lining out for Junior C. Portugal shouldn't need to depend on a 40 year old. They won't go far in the competition.

https://www.ft.com/content/62f53191-72d2-43e8-8341-034bcacedb8b

US federal judge has thrown out the indictments against James Comey and Letitia James, dealing a blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to punish his perceived enemies using the Department of Justice. The court ruled that prosecutor Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally who brought the criminal cases, was unlawfully appointed and dismissed the charges against Comey and James. Federal judge Cameron McGowan Currie wrote the "attorney-general's attempt to install Ms Halligan . . . was invalid", adding that in her role as interim US attorney Halligan "had no lawful authority to present" the indictments against the defendants

You were saying.....


https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2025/1125/1545757-clondalkin-arson/

Meanwhile Enoch the Rhubarb pharisee is back in the Joy

Why doesn't he just get a job somewhere else?

https://www.ft.com/content/55a9f8cb-52fd-40f2-97ff-e0a13a17e5eb

US army secretary Dan Driscoll is holding talks in Abu Dhabi with Ukraine's military intelligence chief and a Russian delegation as Washington pushes for a deal to end the Kremlin's war.

The meeting in Abu Dhabi comes after progress over the weekend in talks between Ukrainian and US delegations in Geneva as officials from the two countries try to hammer out a text to take to their presidents. On Tuesday, one prominent member of Ukraine's peace talks delegation held out the prospect of an imminent White House meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to decide the most sensitive remaining issues. "We look forward to organising a visit of Ukraine's President to the US at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump," said Rustem Umerov, secretary of the country's national security and defence council. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said on Monday that there were no plans "at this moment" for Trump and Zelenskyy to meet in person. The talks in the UAE follow days of high-stakes meetings in Kyiv and Geneva during which Driscoll delivered the Trump administration's contentious 28-point peace plan to Zelenskyy.