The Liverpool Offside 2024-25 Season Preview, Part 3: Expectations & Predictions

Photo by John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

With the 2024-25 Premier League campaign about to kick off, we set out our expectations for Liverpool’s first season under new manager Arne Slot.

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The Liverpool Offside 2024-45 Season Preview

Part 3: Expectations and Predictions

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Last season, a rebuilt Liverpool side exceeded expectations with a strong third-place finish in the Premier League, for a time challenging for the title, winning a League Cup, and in the end earning a return to the Champions League. That group of players mostly remains intact and will be expected to be a year older, wiser, and more effective in 2024-25. However, while the players remain mostly the same, there’s a new manager in charge.

The Liverpool Offside team wanted to figure out, then, what our realistic expectations are for the 2024-25 season under new head coach Arne Slot, digging into what we think will or might happen in the coming months for the Reds—as well as what we would consider the minimum to count 2024-25 a success at season’s end.

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Noel

Top four, I think, has to be the minimum target. Let’s get that out of the way up front, I guess. The squad might not be perfect, and there might be some concerns regarding what things start to look like at the club after the 2024-25 season depending on what happens the rest of the way in the transfer window and whether any or all of Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, and Trent Alexander-Arnold sign new contracts. But right now, this is clearly a top four calibre squad, probably battling it out with Arsenal for second best in England.

The question then becomes what Arne Slot can do with that. The signs in pre-season are promising at least, but some of our best years under Klopp came after stumbling pre-seasons and vice versa, so I’m not ready to pencil in a legit title challenge based on how good we looked against the Gunners in a pre-season friendly in Philadelphia a few weeks back. If he can get his new system to click with the players quickly and proves he has a knack for overachieving—a talent he showed at Feyenoord and a key part of why he was picked to replace Klopp—and gets a little lucky with injuries, well, the sky’s the limit.

There’s risk there, too, though. There always is with a big step up, whether you’re talking players or managers. As long as we get to top four in the end, though—no matter how we do get there and hopefully with a piece of silverware to show for it somewhere along the way as was the case last season—I’ll be feeling pretty good at the end of 2024-25, I think.

Zach

While I have high hopes for Slot, those hopes have to be tempered by the reality that almost every manager pales in comparison with the big German fella that just left. My hope for the season is simply to maintain our status as a Champions League team, beat United and the Blues at least once each, and make a good run in the Big Cup, quarters or better. That would be a phenomenal foundation for the new manager and his staff to build upon, and it’s worth remembering we’ve seen much worse drop offs than that from our rivals when their legendary managers retired.

Audun

As I’ve repeatedly stated here and elsewhere, based on the nature and scope of our playstyle changes in the past two years, I don’t think Jürgen Klopp actually did all that much hands-on coaching after the quadruple run ended, leaving large parts of that work to Pep Lijnders. As such, I propose that Arne Slot maybe just has to be a better coach than Pep to make the team look more coherent and perform better, and I suspect that he is.

This doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll win the league, or even finish on more points than we did last year, nor does it imply we won’t see growing pains along the way—I’m putting the over/under on stupid goals conceded by coughing up possession on the edge of our own box at five—but I do think we’ll look like a team with a clear idea on how we want to play both in and out of possession, and if it clicks, that identity combined with the collection of talent on hand could lead to great results as well.

Top four and thus continued Champions League participation is always the baseline goal, as is qualifying to the knockout stages of the new-look European competition, while a legitimate title charge and/or cup run would be fun but shouldn’t reasonably be expected.

Mostly, I want to see us to establish what the team will look like under the new manager and determine whether he really is the right man in the long-term, while staying competitive in the big competitions, playing some good football, and tonking Manchester United along the way.

Gabe

It’s going to be a season of change at Liverpool, though I think there will be less of a let up than some believe. I expect there to be a few wobbles along the way, especially this fall as the club settles into the new style, but it’s a strong team with a manager who seems to have a good sense of what he wants and how to communicate it (shove that in your pipe and smoke it, Man United). There’s also a new format in the Champions League that everyone will have to get used to and comfortable with, not just Liverpool.

I still think the Reds are in the hunt for the title with Manchester City and Arsenal based on the strength of the current squad and a reinvigoration from the new manager. Making the round of 16 in the Champions League is probably what I would put the expectation at for that competition as Slot figures out how to navigate the physical demands of the Premier League and squad rotation.

Jordan

I’m not gonna get too hung up on expectations this season. If we finish top four, awesome. If we go deep into one of the cup tournaments, all the better. This season is a brand new experiment though and while Slot will have to learn fast the tests of it, I just want to make sure that he acclimatises more than anything else. Being the new coach of Liverpool is pressure enough and of course it comes with the inherent pressures of the club. Let him figure it out. I’m just along for the ride.

Dexian

Based on the talent on hand, I didn’t think Liverpool were ever going to finish lower than third this season even earlier in the summer. However, encouraging signs from preseason have me thinking of loftier goals—though it’s difficult to imagine Liverpool making that leap without a world-class operator at defensive midfield.

To me, success will be pushing Arsenal and City in the title race, giving a good showing of ourselves by going deep in the Champions League, and perhaps a good domestic cup run. Last season was the first in a while that City’s underlying numbers weren’t overwhelmingly superior, and Arsenal are always due for an embarrassment in Europe, so I’d say we have as good a chance as any to have a better season than people expect.

As much as I loved Klopp’s style of football, there was a real lack of control in the last two seasons. Maybe reining it in a little will allow us to kill games and go into cruise control more, and help us ride the wave of games throughout the season better.