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Hello! How many cuts can Arne Slot survive? Because Saturday’s FA Cup defeat to Manchester City ran deep.
On the way:
Is Slot spent? Liverpool boss on edge after transfer splurge and Man City loss
Arne Slot looks dejected against Manchester City (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Liverpool aren’t the first club to spend a fortune on players and make themselves worse. Stockpiling talent is only half the battle of creating synergy or identity — neither of which they presently possess.
Nonetheless, achieving so little by going wild in the transfer market last summer has been an achievement in itself. The club couldn’t point to any marginal gains, let alone substantial ones. They’re in a revolving cycle where each result edges head coach Arne Slot up and down the ‘likely to be sacked’ scale. And his job hasn’t hung by a thinner thread than it does now.
When it clicked for him last season, culminating in Liverpool cruising to the Premier League title, he made the most of a squad inherited from Jurgen Klopp (high-performing, finely tuned and full of running). It was broadly agreed that Slot had harnessed those players’ strengths, while also implementing higher levels of control, making them incredibly difficult to beat.
The extent to which it’s been lost since then was summed up by their thrashing in the FA Cup quarter-finals on Saturday, 4-0 at Manchester City. True, it was a difficult tie and City are on a streak of 18 home wins in the FA Cup. Their run broke a 145-year-old record over the weekend. But punching their way through Liverpool was like punching through cardboard cutouts.
Paris Saint-Germain are next for Slot in the Champions League, and it’s hard to see them offering him much respite. James Pearce’s reading of the situation, based on his experience of Liverpool owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG), is that qualifying for next season’s Champions League is priority one, and missing out on it would be a failure that Slot would struggle to survive. The finances only stack up at Anfield if they are competing at the top level in Europe — and Liverpool are fifth in the Premier League, just a point ahead of Chelsea.
But is Slot a busted flush regardless? He bemoaned City exceeding their expected goals (xG) figure on Saturday, but City weren’t asked to hit top gear. It sounded like a man clutching at straws. Perhaps he needs the close season to take stock and reset. Or perhaps the Liverpool project needs an entirely fresh pair of eyes.
Arsenal agony
The Premier League and the Champions League are looming large for Arsenal — in the space of a fortnight, two other trophies have slipped through their fingers.
We’ll say it again: expecting a quadruple from any English team is asking too much. But defeat in the Carabao Cup final last month, immediately followed by defeat to Southampton in the FA Cup on Saturday, exposed a certain weakness in their hide. Mikel Arteta was already down on numbers before an injury to defender Gabriel.
Forward Gabriel Martinelli got a late booking for pushing the referee — never a wise idea — and this is famously the time of year when the heat can get to Arsenal. They should be too good to finish with nothing, but their backbone’s about to be tested again.
While City and Southampton will meet in one FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, Chelsea and Leeds United will go at it in the other. Chelsea had the gimme in the last eight, drawn at home to League One Port Vale, and mercilessly stuck seven unanswered goals past them.
West Ham United, however, scored twice in stoppage time to force extra time against Leeds, threw Finlay Herrick, a 20-year-old debutant goalkeeper, into the fray after an injury to Alphonse Areola, watched him save a penalty with his first meaningful touch in a shootout, and then lost anyway. Not their day.
News round-up
Golden touch: Yamal’s perfect pass, Dembele’s top volley, a Ballon d’Or rundown
But for a sharper finish from Fermin Lopez, we’d have given over the top section of TAFC to the greatest assist seen in yonks. If it passed you by, check out the touch, nutmeg, and ‘trivela’ pass from Lamine Yamal, above, in Barcelona’s 2-1 win at Atletico Madrid on Saturday. It’s poetry in motion.
Lopez punched the ground after his shot went wide, as well he might. Yamal putting the ball on a plate from wide on the touchline inside his own half, with an Atletico marker in his face, was the forward’s skill in technicolour. He took the miss with good grace, to be fair, throwing Lopez a little thumbs-up.
While watching the footage of it on repeat, I’ve also been glued to replays of Ousmane Dembele’s first-time volley for PSG against Toulouse on Friday night (below): Ligue 1’s goal of the season right there. The connection gets sweeter every time you see it, and the strike more vicious.
Dembele and Yamal ranked one and two in the Ballon d’Or vote last year. These moments are early plays for the 2026 prize, although The Athletic’s Sukhman Singh reckons that if the voting took place today (rather than in October), Yamal and Dembele would have ground to make up on Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane. There’s time yet to turn the dial their way.
A 44-year break: Hodgson returns to Bristol aged 78… and makes winning start
“I’ve no intention of dying on the bench.” The words of Roy Hodgson who, now 78 and somewhat grey of hair, has no intention of retiring to the countryside either.
Bristol City named the former England boss as their interim head coach last week, his second stint in charge of the Championship club. Just to underline Hodgson’s longevity, that previous spell came in 1982 — his break as a coach in English football.
He tipped up for his first game back on Friday wearing sunglasses in the style of a London gangster (better that than looking like a pushover). And fate smiled on him when this abomination of a goal from Noah Eile, below, banked a 2-1 win at Charlton Athletic. A Puskas Award contender it wasn’t but as Hodgson has learned time and time again, they all count.
Puskás Award 2026. pic.twitter.com/9uWY43Vu8T
— Bristol City FC (@BristolCity) April 3, 2026
Around TAFC
- The Premier League, surprisingly, has no centralised campaign for tackling violence against women and girls; this despite the problem being declared a “national emergency” by UK police two years ago. Cerys Jones heard from people who hope football will make the issue front and centre.
- Our Monday MLS column is running the rule over the weekend’s winners and losers in the race to bag a spot in Mauricio Pochettino’s World Cup squad. Oh, and while you’re there, enjoy the sensual chip from Folarin Balogun for Monaco. His call-up is in zero doubt.
- FIFA president Gianni Infantino estimates that football wouldn’t exist in 150 countries without the world governing body’s support and revenue. Dan Sheldon thought a fact-check was in order.
- Quiz question: this is a good one — can you name the biggest nation by population in each of FIFA’s six confederations (Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, South America and North America/Central America/Caribbean) who have never reached a World Cup? The answers are here.
- Most clicked in Friday’s TAFC: Mykhailo Mudryk in limbo.
Catch a match
Selected games (kick-offs ET/UK time)
English Championship: Portsmouth vs Oxford United, 7.30am/12.30pm; Millwall vs Norwich City, 8am/1pm — both Paramount+/Sky Sports; Ipswich Town vs Birmingham City, 10am/3pm; Swansea City vs Middlesbrough, 12.30pm/5.30pm; Hull City vs Coventry City, 3pm/8pm — all CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime/Sky Sports.
Serie A: Napoli vs Milan, 2.45pm/7.45pm — Paramount+, DAZN/TNT Sports, DAZN, HBO Max.
La Liga: Girona vs Villarreal, 3pm/8pm — ESPN, Fubo/Premier Sports.
And finally…
The evidence that Son Heung-min is a class apart in Major League Soccer came flooding through during LAFC’s 6-0 rout of Orlando City on Saturday. The South Korean registered four assists in 19 minutes before half-time, three of them for Denis Bouanga in the space of just eight minutes (take a look at their nifty play for 4-0, above).
Son called it a night before an hour was out, making way for David Martinez and ending his walk in the park. The club might as well book their post-season slot now.
