Arne Slot lost his FA Cup gamble against Plymouth Argyle, but the Liverpool manager might instead have edged closer to winning the trophies that really matter at Anfield this season by giving his star men the day off.
Make no mistake, Plymouth’s giant-killing 1-0 win — the bottom club in the Championship beating the Premier League leaders and ending all talk of a quadruple — will be in the FA Cup highlights reel for years to come (stream a replay on ESPN+ in the U.S.). But nobody at Liverpool will worry too much about being on the wrong end of a cup shock if they conclude the season with the Premier League and Champions League trophies. They might also win the Carabao Cup, having booked a place against Newcastle United in the final on March 16.
Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool almost achieved a quadruple in 2021-22, but the heroics of that season — Klopp’s side played the maximum number of games by reaching three finals — have already started to fade from memory because “almost” doesn’t count at the biggest clubs. Klopp’s side won the Carabao Cup and FA Cup, but Manchester City edged them to the Premier League title, and Real Madrid defeated them 1-0 in the Champions League final in Paris.
After an FA Cup fourth-round win against Cardiff City on Feb. 6 that season, Liverpool played 28 games up to and including the Champions League final against Real on May 28. Aside from the interruption of a March international break, Liverpool played a game every weekend and midweek from the beginning of February until the end of May. They won 21 of those games, losing two and drawing five.
Liverpool came close to winning everything. Indeed, a win against Madrid and a victory, rather than a 2-2 draw, against City in April would have ensured a clean sweep of trophies, but in the end the fatigue of pushing on all four fronts proved too much.
Slot’s team, who return to Premier League action with a rearranged Merseyside derby against Everton at Goodison Park on Wednesday, will not have that to worry about now that they are out of the FA Cup. In fact, the defeat at Home Park brings more respite than you would think.
Liverpool now have a free weekend when the FA Cup fifth round is played March 1-2 — there are no Premier League fixtures that weekend — so they will go into their Champions League round-of-16 tie March 4-5 not having played for a week after facing Newcastle in the league on Feb. 26. Liverpool will have another free weekend on March 29, when the FA Cup quarterfinals take place. This means their star players will be able rest after international duty and will be fresh for the Merseyside derby at Anfield, which is scheduled for the following midweek.
Their home game against Tottenham Hotspur — on semifinal weekend of April 26 — also won’t need to be moved to a vacant midweek. With Liverpool playing their match away to Aston Villa, which was displaced by the date of Carabao Cup final, next week, they are now sure to have a week off going into that game against Spurs. The midweek of May 13 will also be free, by which time, with two rounds to play, they may already have been crowned champions.
As a consequence of their fourth-round exit, Liverpool can now play a maximum of 23 games by the end of the season — 15 in the Premier League, one in the Carabao Cup and seven in the Champions League — so the benefits of losing at Plymouth are obvious. That is five games fewer than Klopp’s team had to play in the final weeks of the 2021-22 season, but Slot’s Liverpool could end up winning more trophies.
Slot made 10 changes to his starting lineup for the Plymouth tie and didn’t include Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister. The former Feyenoord coach said after the game that he had no regrets about his selection decision.
‘Most of the things we do, we do for a reason,” Slot said. “We just don’t do it all of a sudden.
“The last few weeks we have played every single week two times. The upcoming weeks we have to play every single time two games. Therefore, it’s not only for them good to once in a while have a week where they only play one game, but also for the ones that were here [at Plymouth,] they need the intensity of the game because you can keep on training with them, but once in a while they need a game as well.
“They had that as well against PSV [a 3-2 Champions League loss in Eindhoven on Jan. 29,] unfortunately we lost that one, and they had that today, and unfortunately we lost this one again as well.”
Slot’s reference to his fringe players losing both of the games in which they were selected to play also points to the reality that, beyond the first 14-15 names on his squad list, the Liverpool manager cannot rely on the club’s second string to deliver when the star players are unavailable. But after being dumped out of the FA Cup, Slot and Liverpool now have the breathing space to take on the challenge of achieving a treble.
They are one win away from lifting the Carabao Cup and six points clear at the top of the Premier League, having played one game fewer than the chasing pack, so the path is clear for success in both competitions. And without the distraction of the FA Cup, success in the Champions League has become more attainable.
As embarrassing as it looks at first glance, losing against Plymouth could turn out to be Liverpool’s best result of the season.