‘Impossible’—Arne Slot’s Blunt Message for Area Liverpool Have Fallen Short

Liverpool manager Arne Slot has issued a stark warning that his side’s “impossible” set-piece balance is undermining their Premier League ambitions, declaring that the club’s dead-ball shortcomings have become a non-negotiable obstacle in the title race.

Speaking on Friday morning, two days after Virgil van Dijk’s towering header from a corner sealed a 1-0 victory over Sunderland, Slot conceded that the gap between Liverpool’s set-piece output at home and abroad has reached crisis levels. While the Reds sit top of the Champions League set-piece charts after finishing third in the 36-team league phase, they languish joint-bottom of the Premier League rankings alongside West Ham United with a balance of minus six.

“Set-piece balance is the number of set-piece goals scored compared to those conceded,” Slot explained. “A positive number is obviously desirable and demonstrates strength in dead-ball situations. Right now, ours is nowhere near where it needs to be.”

The Dutchman, who has overseen a marginal improvement from December’s minus-nine low, pointed to recent strikes—Van Dijk’s headers against Sunderland and Bournemouth, plus Dominik Szoboszlai’s free-kick versus Manchester City—as evidence of incremental progress. Yet he insisted the bar must rise dramatically if Liverpool are to re-enter the championship conversation.

“I cannot stop talking about the importance of set pieces. It’s every single day,” Slot said. “The current Premier League is so, so, so much more about set pieces than it was last season. Even though I already found it very important, it has now gone through the roof in terms of how important it is.

“It’s actually impossible to win the league if you have a set-piece balance like ours. You have to have plus five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, no matter what you do in open play, to have a chance to win the league.”

The numbers back up Slot’s blunt assessment. League leaders Arsenal boast a league-best plus-10 set-piece balance, while the bulk of the top-half—Manchester United, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton and Brentford—all operate in positive territory. Conversely, teams with negative balances, Liverpool included, predominantly populate the lower reaches of the table. Tottenham represent the lone high-placed outlier on the negative side, underscoring that the correlation, while not absolute, is striking.

Manchester City, meanwhile, offer a potential counterargument: their minus-one balance has not prevented them from remaining within striking distance of Arsenal. Still, Slot argues that relying on such an exception is a dangerous gamble.

With 12 matches remaining, Liverpool’s coaching staff face a tactical crossroads. Slot admitted he “might need to start thinking differently” about the hours allocated to rehearsing routines at both ends of the pitch. The manager’s daily emphasis on set pieces suggests further tweaks—be they personnel, delivery zones, or attacking schemes—are imminent.

For a club that prides itself on intensity and precision, the next phase of the campaign will test whether a renewed focus on corners and free-kicks can transform a glaring weakness into a late-season surge. Slot’s message is unequivocal: without a seismic swing in set-piece fortune, Liverpool’s title dream will remain mathematically, and perhaps psychologically, out of reach.