MANCHESTER – Maybe it won’t click for Liverpool. At the very least, it is hard to see how it is not too late for this season to coalesce into a sustained defense of the Premier League crown. It isn’t just the eight-point deficit to the league leaders, a gap only one less than that which looked unbridgeable for Arsenal at this stage of last season. That isn’t even the half of it.

The profound problem for Arne Slot now, even after a 3-0 loss at Manchester City, is that the early-season skirmishes are over, the time to work oneself into the season long since past. Most of his squad will jet off to Europe and beyond for the final international window of 2025. When they return, they will do so to a team that has not addressed the issues that have been apparent since the Community Shield. This team cannot defend its flanks. If Mohamed Salah does not play well, neither do Liverpool, who spent $100 million-plus on three attacking players to ready themselves for a new era. From front to back, those who have kept to the standards established last season number in the minority.

It would be easy for Slot to point to the decisions that went against his side, chief among them the baffling decision to disallow Virgil van Dijk’s well-placed header because Andrew Robertson had been making what PGMOL termed “an obvious action” in Gianluigi Donnarumma’s vicinity. He might also ponder how different this game would have been if Cody Gakpo had turned in at the back post five minutes before Jeremy Doku got the goal this performance of the season deserved.

To do so would be to focus on the discolored leaves on one tree while around him the forest burns. This game might have been different if Liverpool scored their best chance or if Michael OIiver had had a different view of Robertson’s positioning. It might have been worse if Erling Haaland had taken a bit more time over an early penalty, if Doku’s leg had been a little longer to meet Nico O’Reilly’s peach of a cross. Four or more wouldn’t have flattered City, *even if the expected goals suggest otherwise. *

Scrub out the missed penalty and this game looks even in xG terms. It didn’t feel it in the slightest, even in a second half where Pep Guardiola was far less impressed. The hosts might not have padded out their shot stats with the Haaland and Nico Gonzalez goals, but they were breezing into the penalty box in the first half, 10 entries to Liverpool’s four. A late chance for Salah might have balanced out the xG but the game had long since tilted away from this shadow of their best selves.

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And yes, Liverpool had looked like the team of old on Tuesday night in a deserved win over Real Madrid. Perhaps, in retrospect, that game would have looked very different if Conor Bradley hadn’t played out of his skin or if Vinicius Junior had been a little more purposeful in his attacking. It was Bradley’s misfortune Sunday to run into Doku at his most devastating, the City No. 11 completing seven take-ons (it felt like more) in the 74 minutes before Guardiola opted to call time on the bully ball. Liverpool ended this match with four.

The problem wasn’t Bradley. There are maybe a handful of fullbacks in world football who could have dealt with Doku in his current form. Liverpool threw two at him, but Dominik Szoboszlai was no more effective a shield. On the rare occasions where Salah did track back, you could see why Slot was so prepared to let him shade the defending last season.

That came with a presumption of output that can probably be parked for now. Like Liverpool as a whole, he seemed to be whirring back into life with dribble-heavy games against Aston Villa and Real Madrid, but after this match, it is still worth asking if those are the exceptions rather than the norm. Salah wasn’t bad per se, he ended this game with a hand in six of Liverpool’s seven shots and 0.44 of a meager 0.71 xG. He just wasn’t the best footballer on the planet. That has been a problem for Slot ever since the Champions League elimination at Paris Saint-Germain’s hands.

He is not the only one to have dropped off. It was clear on Tuesday how effective the old midfield of Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister can be when all three were humming, but it only took Mac Allister looking leggy again for the center to lose its hold on proceedings. Meanwhile, Ibrahima Konate is not exactly having a Salah-esque contract year. If his mind has already begun drifting to the Bernabeu, he might want to consider that Real Madrid will be watching his performances this season.

This, then, was a lot. And it was a lot that should be familiar to Liverpool. Opponents flying in behind their fullbacks had been a game-by-game occurrence before those back-to-back wins. Eighteen games into the season, though, those controlled and authoritative performances look like the exception, rather than the rule. They are a sign that this team can reach heights to match the best in Europe, as they could last year. What has changed in their title defense season is their ability to plumb depths no contender should be able to reach. If they are to have even a scintilla of a shot at the Premier League, this cannot happen again. The problem is, however, that it keeps on happening right now.