Slot has no clear answers to Liverpool's wretched form

These are abnormal times at Anfield, and so Arne Slot reached for a semblance of normality.

- RICHARD JOLLY SENIOR FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT

A manager who can be at his most rational after defeats said it was normal that, in such circumstances, there would be talk about his position.

Nine weeks ago, there were none, and for obvious reasons. Liverpool had a five-point lead at the Premier League summit. Slot had won the title in his maiden season. He seemed the seamless successor, the Bob Paisley to Jurgen Klopp's Bill Shankly. Now there are other flashbacks to Liverpool's past: by losing three successive matches by at least three goals, Slot has done something no one accomplished since the long-forgotten Don Welsh in the relegation season of 1953-54.

A more recent appointment has pertinence now. Liverpool lost at Chelsea on 4 October, a decade to the day since they last sacked a manager in Brendan Rodgers. Since then, they have hardly had to consider the question. Klopp's charisma and force of personality were reasons he was clearly a wonderful fit, and while progress was not always smooth in the three-and-a-half years before he first won silverware, it was evident. He then had the cachet of being a Champions League winner, an Anfield great.