When Liverpool are playing well, the football can be great fun to watch but the buildup is often a stressful experience as one focuses on keeping track of rival results and worries about slipping up in the midst of a tense title race or push for cup silverware.
When Liverpool are playing poorly, well, the football itself can often be a downright miserable slumping experience. But the buildup, on the other hand, is less stress and more hope. Hope that this is the week, the match, the moment when everything turns around.
“Our reaction must start now,” is captain Virgil van Dijk’s rallying cry for an underperforming Liverpool this week as he and his teammates prepare to take on Crystal Palace in the fourth round of the League Cup that sees the Reds once again taking on the Eagles.
“I’ve said this many times previously, but everything starts with hard work, humility and togetherness. We are a team and we must show that in both the good times and not-so-good times. If we do, I am confident we have the quality to get ourselves out of this difficult period.”
There’s no doubting the talent of this Liverpool side, which is part of what makes the poor performances in 2025-26 and even going all the way back to Christmas of last year all the more frustrating. These are the defending champions. This is a rich, deep, talented squad.
Yet they’ve been slowly drifting in the wrong direction. Their press has degraded and become increasingly ineffective over the past year. Their passing has become less sharp. Patterns of play are more difficult to identify. There seems a rot, and it only seems to get worse.
The players, on the front lines of it all, tend to get blame during matches when things aren’t going well, but those trend lines and that we know how good they can be makes it hard between matches not to focus more closely on what role coaching must play in this crisis.
All of that, though, goes out the window as another match approaches. Another kickoff. Another chance to prove the struggles this season—struggles that seem to have their roots even further back—are a bad dream. Another chance for the real Liverpool to return.
“The good thing about top-level football, though, is that there is always another game coming around quickly,” van Dijk added, “another chance to put things right. There is no time to feel sorry for yourself, not when you are representing this football club.”