So, it was not the beginning of a new Liverpool dynasty after all. Following their Premier League triumph in the first year post-Jurgen Klopp, the club spent huge money and looked set to take the world by storm once again.
Unfortunately, the Reds did not come close to those heights, not even once. A pedestrian fifth place finish in the league, no deep domestic cup runs and another Champions League exit to PSG meant this was a harsh reality check for everyone associated with the club.
Nearly 20 defeats across all competitions is a truly horrifying number to look at, and in combination with the meek 60 points picked up in the league, it would be fair to be more than a little upset.
So, with that miserable setting in place, we're going to sort through the biggest issues that faced the club this season and how they contributed to the disaster of a campaign we all suffered through.
Injuries
We'll start with one of the biggest ones right away. Fitness issues hampered the club all season ranging from short-term nuisances to long-term hardships.
Alexander Isak, Conor Bradley, Giovanni Leoni, Wataru Endo, Jeremie Frimpong, Hugo Ekitike and Alisson Becker are just some of the names that suffered lengthy spells on the sidelines, with some not returning at all.
That's to say nothing of the games missed by Florian Wirtz, Mohamed Salah and others throughout the campaign.
We all know injuries are just part of it, especially at a club like Liverpool where they're sometimes playing three matches a week across different competitions. However, the impactful depth was not there this season as Arne Slot was not able to call on many options in these rough times.
We all would have liked to see more chances for Federico Chiesa, Rio Ngumoha (More consistently) and other fringe players to have a proper run of games, but that never really happened.
Rio was the only exception as his exciting skills made him impossible to ignore towards the end of the season.
We never really got to see the 2025/26 full-strength version of Liverpool at anytime as Isak was battling fitness concerns the moment he walked in the door at Anfield. It wasn't the sole reason for the club struggling so much this season, but it absolutely did not help anyone.
New arrivals never fully settling
When you spend as much money as Liverpool did during last summer's transfer window, you expect that some of those players will hit the ground running and have lasting impacts at the club.
Ekitike was about the only new arrival to fall into that category, and even his goals had become further and further between games, before his season ended with a ruptured achilles.
Isak's struggles have been well-documented as he came over without a preseason and never truly looked like himself at Liverpool. The club brought him along slowly, and just when he would score a goal or show something, he was gone again.
Even when fit, he was often invisible getting almost no looks for long periods of games.
I felt that Wirtz was getting too much vitriol early on for his lack of counting stats, but let's be real. On past iterations of Liverpool, the German would have had nearly 10+ assists before the Christmas holiday.
However, he did see is effectiveness dip as the season wore on and he never got a chance to be the true maestro we all know he can be.
Frimpong and Kerkez had flashes of quality play, but other times they looked very out of place. The Hungarian particularly took longer to adjust to the pressure cooker that is Liverpool FC.
Overall, there were too many inconsistences among the new signings and they could not lift the club out of the porous form we saw for long stretches during the season.
A tactical failure
I don't think if you watched a Liverpool game from October, December, February and May; you'd have an idea of Arne Slot wanted his side to do.
The players certainly didn't at times, and it often felt like the Dutch coach had put the shackles on a side that was built for expressionism, flair and intensity. However, that is not how Slot operates, and we at least know what an ideal dream for him is.
When you have a squad of players that have been playing one way for nearly a decade to maximum success, it's hard to change their entire mindset overnight.
What made last season's success easier, was Slot understood that, and while he made some tweaks, we largely played the same way we've seen for years. This time around though, with a bevvy of new faces, we shifted hard away from what Salah recently asked for a return to; heavy metal football.
Playing players out of position (Wirtz, Gakpo, Frimpong, Curtis Jones and Dominik Szoboszlai to name a few) meant a lot of players could not get a rhythm going.
The weakness and inferiority that Liverpool played with at times this season was just hard to watch. That falls on both the player and coaching staff, but as a whole, no clear identity hurt this team week after week.
A perfect mix of misery
When you highlight those three areas, in combination with a myriad of smaller concerns, you get the season we just endured as the outcome.
Slot looked lost at times this season and had no answers tactically or inspirationally for the lads. Players that are normally so poised showed a concerning lack of gumption in the toughest moments.
Key players could not stay fit and players regressed in the system and as a whole. Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch, Ibrahima Konate and Gakpo are some names that did not touch last season's levels.
So a team with players in and out of the training room, with several new faces failing to make an impact, a side without a clear goal on the pitch, and no cohesion anywhere, it's no wonder 5th is how it all ended, and it could have been worse.
There are many lessons to be gleaned from this campaign as we move forward, but for now, sifting through the mess that was 2025/26 is hard enough.
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