Liverpool FC 2024-2025 Season Review: Champions For 20th Time | OneFootball

Liverpool Football Club exists to win trophies. That is an oft-trotted-out line that you will hear from people, often in response to a failure in the transfer market or because the Reds have underperformed in one of the major competitions. It is often used as a stick to beat the club or owners with, but there is also a grain of truth in it.

This season, the players and management understood the assignment and approached it with zeal, giving the supporters the right to celebrate the title win that they missed out on in 2019-2020, which was accepted with grace and a good deal of partying.

Here’s how the season panned out:

Defying Pre-Season Predictions

It is easy to look back on the season now and imagine that everyone thought the Reds would be in with a chance of winning the title prior to a ball being kicked. In actual fact, however, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Pre-season, 30 BBC pundits were asked for their predictions for the top four and not one of them said that Liverpool would win the title. Instead, they all had Arsenal and Manchester City as their likely candidates for the win, with only two saying that the Reds would finish as high as second. That is one fewer than said Liverpool wouldn’t even make the top four.

It goes without saying, therefore, that the Reds were not well fancied. Having duked it out for the title over the previous two campaigns, it is perhaps no surprise that those involved in the world of sports media were not quick to point to Liverpool as possible dark horses. Far too many people thought that Jürgen Klopp had been holding things together at Anfield by sheer force of will, rather than realising that the German stayed on for a season more than he wanted to in order to ensure that things were as good as they could be for whoever it was that ended up taking over from him.

What many didn’t realise was that Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards had been working wonders behind the scenes, doing the necessary research to ensure that the right man was brought in to replace Klopp. If the German had been Bill Shankly, restoring the club to its former glory, they were looking to appoint the Bob Paisley figure who could continue the success. In Arne Slot, they achieved just that. The Dutchman arrived as the ‘head coach’, aware of how good the players he had at his disposal were and keen to do what he could to get the best out of them. He did that and then some.

Disappointment in the Cups

For Liverpool, the likes of the FA Cup and League Cup have taken a backseat to the Premier League and the Champions League in terms of importance. Of course it’s nice to win one of the domestic cups, but if that comes at the expense of one of the big two, then it probably isn’t really worth it. That is why the FA Cup exit to Plymouth Argyle won’t have been seen as a bad thing by Slot and his management team, even if there was a sense of disappointment in the fanbase and a weird kind of anger from the wider media over the way in which we departed the competition in the fourth round.

The League Cup was a different matter. Having defeated West Ham United, Brighton & Hove Albion and Southampton, the Reds set up a semi-final match against Tottenham Hotspur. In spite of a defeat in the first-leg, Liverpool responded in style and hit Spurs for four in the return leg in order to move on to their third final in four years. Standing in our way was Newcastle United, looking to win their first trophy under the sports-washing regime of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and, ultimately, doing just that thanks to a 2-1 victory at a packed-out Wembley.

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It was another sports-washing outfit that the Reds went up against in the Champions League, in spite of the fact that we won all but one of our games in the new-look Swiss system. That included impressive wins over Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid, as well as goals in each of the matches that we played. Paris Saint-Germain, meanwhile, struggled and stumbled, only making it through to the knockout phase of the competition courtesy of a play-off win against Brest. The fact that we won in Paris perhaps papered over some cracks, so it was probably justified that they won over the two legs.

Winning the Title

There is, of course, an extent to which Manchester City’s fall-off has aided Liverpool’s title win this season. The side, which has 130 charges against it for financial irregularities, failed to live up to the pre-season hype, having dominated the Premier League since the Reds last won the competition at the end of the 2019-2020 season. Even so, Liverpool went at a great pace from the start of the season, with the only defeat coming against Nottingham Forest on the 14th of September. That, incidentally, was Arne Slot’s only league defeat in the calendar year of 2024 across both Liverpool and Feyenoord.

We won three games before that loss and nine of the ten that followed, with the only dropped points coming against Arsenal. They were meant to be our closest challengers given the drop-off of City, but the Reds were four points clear of them after that result and never looked back. Another four-match winning run came after that, then two draws were followed by three more wins. Draws against Nottingham Forest and Manchester United were frustrating, but three more victories ensured that the title was beginning to look like a procession from the start of February onwards.

It was always in our own hands, though, and although a 2-2 draw with Everton was frustrating, mainly thanks to Michael Oliver deciding to make himself the centre of attention and not give a blatant foul on Mo Salah before playing well above the added time, we won eight of the ten games that came after in order to win the title with room to spare. The 5-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur that handed us the title was a joyous day for all, filled with the smoke of red flares and the tears of people that had waited decades to be able to celebrate such a win together and in person after the pain of 2020.

Holidays & Trophy Lifts

It will not please some that Liverpool’s form fell off a cliff in the wake of the 5-1 win over Spurs. There will always be some people quick to criticise players and the management team for not being focussed and serious until the final moment of the season. In reality, however, Arne Slot’s decision to allow his players to go on holiday with each other and their families may well prove to be a stroke of genius. Whilst all of the other teams are battling it out for who will finish where in the Premier League, our players are in the likes of Dubai, sunbathing and partying in a joyous manner.

Footballers almost never get a break from the relentlessness of the calendar. This summer, for example, Manchester City and Chelsea have to take part in the ridiculous FIFA Club World Cup. Arsenal have had to keep battling until the end in order to ensure they finish second. For Liverpool to be able to down tools and get some proper rest into the players, rather than putting more miles into their legs in training sessions for dead rubber matches, might well be the difference when it comes to defending their title win next season. Yes, we lost to Chelsea and Brighton, but who cares?