Too Big To Fail? How Do Liverpool 2025/26 Stack Up Against Man City 2024/25?

Too Big To Fail? How Do Liverpool 2025/26 Stack Up Against Man City 2024/25?

The Premier League is known as the best league in the world for a reason - every weekend features unlikely shocks, outrageous scorelines, and players making a name for themselves in what is arguably the highest-quality division in world football.

One increasingly frequent trend that has only added to the drama of the English top flight has been the frequent slumps suffered by the league's biggest sides in recent years. We’re talking about Chelsea’s horror 2022/23 campaign, Manchester City’s disastrous fall-off, and most recently, Liverpool’s unexpected losing run in defence of their 2024/25 title.

Liverpool trying to recreate Manchester City’s form🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/C0sA7SfBAh

— Burn Dollar (@BurnDollar_) October 19, 2025

Throughout the 2010s, to see big clubs underperforming was a rare event - Chelsea finished 10th in 2016, and United slowly slipped further and further from the juggernaut of days gone by, but apart from that, most of the usual suspects sat near to or at the top of the table.

So it is refreshing to see the biggest of big dogs show that they are human, with Liverpool and City’s collapses in particular coming the season after dominant title-winning runs. Though City eventually steadied the ship with a third-place finish, Liverpool’s rough patch shows no signs of relenting, with a poor showing in the Carabao Cup adding insult to the 3-0 defeat at home to Crystal Palace last night.

So, two giants falling off a cliff within a season of each other? You just know we had to see who is worse - from stats hidden deep in shadow to players failing to live up to sky-high expectations, here is how Liverpool’s rotten run compares to City’s slip-up last year.

The Starting Point

Arguably the most remarkable fact about both of these disastrous runs of form is how they both started.

In October of last year, Man City eked out a marginal 1-0 victory over Southampton, a win which saw their unbeaten run in all competitions stretch to 14 games. Many were tipping them for a record-extending fifth successive league title, and with the way Pep Guardiola’s men were playing, very few wrote off the prospect.

However, defeat to Tottenham in the Carabao Cup in their next fixture set the tone for what would prove to be a disastrous two-month period, which saw the Cityzen’s manage just one win in 13 games across all competitions, along with nine defeats.

Pep Guardiola has never finished a league season lower than 3rd in his top-flight managerial career.

His Premier League finishes with Man City:

◉ 16/17: 3rd
◉ 17/18: 🏆
◉ 18/19: 🏆
◉ 19/20: 2nd
◉ 20/21: 🏆
◉ 21/22: 🏆
◉ 22/23: 🏆
◉ 23/24: 🏆
◉ 24/25: 3rd

Can the… pic.twitter.com/XnNOwNQ0uW

— Squawka (@Squawka) August 8, 2025

It was the sort of form that shocked the football world. We all had these preconceived notions that Pep Guardiola was immune to such slumps, that he was a man that could squeeze trophies out of a stone.

But this shocking period saw him exposed as a human after all, the telltale scratches on his bald head an indicator of the sleepless nights his squad's performances were giving him.

In what has to be the strangest case of footballing déjà vu, Liverpool’s current run also started with a one-goal winning margin over Southampton - Arne Slot’s men edged past the Saints in an EFL Cup battle which saw Hugo Ekitike shown a second yellow card for taking his shirt off in the wake of his 85th-minute equaliser.

📸 - HUGE EKITIKE REMOVES HIS SHIRT BUT THEN REALIZES HE'S ALREADY ON A YELLOW!

HE HAS RECEIVED A RED CARD AND IS OFF! pic.twitter.com/s3PXrsiDAb

— The Touchline | 𝐓 (@TouchlineX) September 23, 2025

But it seemed not to matter - Liverpool, for the sixth time already this season, had scored a winner right at the death, and while the quality of their play left plenty to be desired, they were still tipped to defend their title, with fans and pundits alike citing the phrase “the best sides know how to win ugly.”

Since that mid-September evening, results have certainly been ugly, but now for all the wrong reasons. Defeats to Crystal Palace, Galatasaray, Chelsea and Man United would follow, and while they notched a much-needed 5-1 spanking of Eintracht Frankfurt, normality quickly resumed, with their last two results seeing them fall to defeats against Brentford and again to Crystal Palace.

Liverpool’s form though 😕#liverpool #eflcup #arneslot pic.twitter.com/OmFZHeT17M

— Football Fans Tribe 🇳🇬 ⚽ (@FansTribeHQ) October 29, 2025

Of course, wins over Southampton are completely unrelated to the form that followed in both examples, but the sheer chance of one particular opponent sparking a club crisis on both occasions is certainly worthy of mention.

The Numbers

Now, time to deep dive into the facts and figures behind the scenes at both clubs.

Nah man, I'm fully sucked back in again. Brought us a Premier League title in front of fans, revolutionised Gravenberch, gave Salah the best season of his career and handled the Jota situation with such class.

I'm still convinced he's the one. I beg he turns this around. https://t.co/wjq3onQm7p

— Laurie (@LFCLaurie) October 29, 2025

Interestingly, Manchester City led the possession stats for Premier League sides last year with 61.6% of the ball, and Liverpool tops that metric this season with 62.6%, so having the ball at their feet clearly isn’t the issue in either case.

What really started the fall from grace for the two sides was what they did with the ball. Everyone remembers Man City during their … What’s the opposite of a purple patch? They were fine in possession, keeping the ball safe as usual, but as soon as they got to the opposition area, they suddenly looked timid and unsure and totally unwilling to take any sort of chance. It’s amazing the difference a shift in momentum can make.

Liverpool have still managed to keep their goalscoring at a similar rate to last season, but the issue for them is in defence - every time their opponent forces a turnover, the Reds are at sixes and sevens, with no idea who to mark or what position to take, and more often than not, the other team creates a half-decent chance at goal, something that in recent weeks tends to find the back of the net more often than not.

Star players also stopped firing for both sides - during the height of City’s struggles, Haaland fired a blank in nine of the 13 matches mentioned earlier, missing two penalties in the process. Looking at his form this season, it is hard to believe he failed to find the net on such a frequent basis.

Mo Salah is experiencing a very similar drought this campaign - prior to his late consolation goal against Brentford at the weekend, the Egyptian had gone five club games without a goal or assist - notching 34 goals and 23 assists across all competitions last season, nobody could have forecasted that.

Most goals and assists in the Premier League this season:

44 - Mohamed Salah
43
42
41
40
39
38
37
36
35
34
33
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
24 - Alexander Isak
23 - Erling Haaland

TWENTY clear. 😮‍💨 pic.twitter.com/GHtf9sTTWv

— WhoScored (@WhoScored) March 14, 2025

Liverpool’s finishing has also been noticeably poor - while new signing Ekitike has hit the ground running, the same cannot be said for fellow attackers Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak, who between them have just a singular goal for the club.

This observation is underlined by the fact that Liverpool’s shots on target percentage sits at just 28.8%, making them just one of five teams in the league to hit the target with less than 30% of their attempts.

City had no such problem last season, testing the keeper 34.5% of the time, but their finishing was equally profligate - notching just 36 fewer shots than Liverpool (who took 639 shots overall) last season, the Manchester outfit scored 14 fewer goals, illustrating their wastefulness in the opposition penalty area.

Transfer business also clearly played its part - City brought in five players last season that regularly competed in the first team, and out of Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez, Vitor Reis, Abdukodir Khusanov and Savinho, only Marmoush proved to perform anywhere close to the level expected of him.

In all, these moves cost €237 million, a huge outlay on just five players. However, Liverpool saw that and said, “Hold my beer.” Their spending over the summer was well-publicised, but even the endless talk over whether they were breaking the transfer market couldn’t take away from the sheer enormity of their eye-watering €483 million total outlay.

Bringing in Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, Isak, Wirtz, Ekitike, and Geovanni Leoni, people quickly labelled it the best summer transfer window of all time. However, these so-called experts forgot one crucial thing from their consideration - the adjustment period.

As I said earlier, only Ekitike has had a positive impact from the start - Kerkez has looked shaky at best, Frimpong got injured early on and has been reduced to appearances from the bench, Leoni is out for the season, Wirtz has looked off the pace, and most inexplicably of all, Isak is failing to look comfortable in a league which he made to look easy last season with Newcastle.

Joined City, scored a goal before Wirtz, was out for 2 months, came back and scored another goal before Wirtz 😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/ECy46HSOKp

— 𝐄 🇧🇻 (@ErlingProp) October 29, 2025

Clearly, such a significant and expensive overhaul does not guarantee immediate results, and the best Liverpool can do is weather the storm while their new boys seek to find their niche within the side.

The fact that two of England's biggest clubs can undergo such a similar drop in form in consecutive seasons is evidence that money, success, and world-class talent both on and off the field do not simply mean an easy waltz to success - in fact, it makes it less likely.

Final Whistle

It is, of course, only October, and with the way Liverpool played under Slot in his debut season last year, I find it hard to believe that the Reds will go on an equally catastrophic run to City’s dark two-month period last year.

However, that was what people were saying about City seven games into their slump, and to see them suffer defeat after defeat eventually became the norm. The form will bounce back eventually - it always does with the best in the country - but what we can’t predict is the damage it will do to Liverpool’s hopes of silverware and, perhaps more pressingly, Arne Slot’s job security.

Arne Slot’s second season at Liverpool. pic.twitter.com/06VKxc92Hx

— Footy Humour (@FootyHumour) October 29, 2025

Guardiola survived last year by the skin of his teeth, managing to do so more thanks to his past accomplishments than anything else - with a distinct lack of past success in major leagues, Arne Slot needs to be a lot more diligent with his approach, or he will soon start to be looking over his shoulder.