THEY SAY every picture tells a story and the one of Arne Slot sitting in his dug-out spoke a thousand words.
He had just witnessed Dominik Szoboszlai present Barnsley with hope of creating the second, seismic giant-killing of the FA Cup in this year’s final clash of the third round.
Former Liverpool academy player Adam Phillips had just scored from perhaps the worst mistake ever made by a Liverpool player in front of the Kop and boss Slot’s face was all thunder and disgust.
In the end Szoboszlai’s moment of madness didn’t signal humiliation – other than for himself.
Although, the Hungarian did dodge a second self-inflicted bullet, for had VAR been in operation he would have been found guilty of bringing down winger Reyes Cleary a dozen yards out with an hour gone.
And so there was hollow victory, finished off by Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike, but boss Slot will surely have been thinking that there is now something rotten within his side.
They have been stinking the place out for months, Prem champions too full of themselves, too sure that after last season’s triumph they had it cracked – backed by £426million of new, extra talent.
The Dutchman already seemed spooked from the start, the memory of last season’s 1-0 fourth round defeat against Plymouth Argyle had clearly lingered long in the mind of Slot.
Back then at Home Park he played an all-change team, insisting later that he needed to use the tie to rest most of his key players.
Not this time, not against a club who arrived having won both of their last two visits to Anfield, coming out tops in a 1997 Premier League clash then stunning the Kop elven years later with a 2-1 victory in the fifth round, then as a Championship side.
BEST FREE BETS AND BETTING SIGN UP OFFERS
Of course Liverpool, after that debacle against the Pilgrims, went on to lift the title in Slot’s first campaign but in the last few months so much has changed – none of it for the good.
Six front-liners were in Slot’s starting line-up including skipper Virgil van Dijk, while two of those big buys, Wirtz and Ekitike, were on the bench.
Slot clearly felt he needed the insurance of them plus those there at the first whistle like Alexis Mac Allister and Curtis Jones, too.
They were ten games unbeaten in all comps going into this tie – with Brighton awaiting the winners – but that Prem glory is already a distant memory with only three draws and just three goals scored in their last three.
His side are now nothing ike a domestic force, also going out 3 – 0 to Crystal Palace in the EFL Cup fourth round.
They did leave the Emirates with a creditable goalless point on Thursday but they never had a shot on target against Arsenal, the first time Liverpool had failed to do so in 16 years of football in any competition.
So imagine how Slot and everybody in The Kop felt as Phillips, once the young dreamer at Liverpool, delivered a cross in the 30th second and Davis Keilor-Dunn connected.
The striker’s header thumped against Giorgi Mamardashvilli’s left-hand post and Slot’s heart will also have been thumping.
Still, Liverpool were against a League One side 57 places below them having taken one point from their last four league games and by the ninth minute class did out, albeit only momentarily.
Szoboszlai may never have connected any sweeter with the right footer which goalkeeper Murphy Cooper never had a chance of stopping as the Hungarian celebrated his first-ever FA Cup goal.
The Tykes didn’t go into containment mode, however, for they will have sensed the nerves within opponents struggling desperately to rediscover the dominanet identy of last season.
Midfielder Jonathon Bland produced a stirring strike that demanded Mamardashvilli’s full attention, Keilor-Dunn made the goalkeeper work again.
Jeremie Frimpong then came up with a left-footer in the 36th minute that should have been game over, cutting inside to lash the shot that also gave him his first FA Cup goal.
Yet from being Prem killers in Slot’s debut campaign his side now have a kamikaze streak within them now – or maybe that triumph brought with it an arrogance that continues to embarrass them.
This is a side that too often have become too sloppy, too casual, too full of themselves and so it was that Philiips, eight years at his boyhood club before being let go in 2017, got to live his dream of scoring at Anfield.
Except the Garstang-born 27-year-old was doing so AGAINST the club he is still a massive fan of.
At that moment all Szoboszlai had to do was thump clear after forcing himself in front of Phillips but as the pair moved into the six yard box he stupidly tried to backheel to Mamardashvilli – horrendously mis-kicked.
Phillips couldn’t miss and from that point on the debunked champs became stress-balls, just like they have been so often in this campaign that has become a reality check.
So bad was it that Wirtz, Ekitike and Ibrahima Konate were sent on and Liverpool got away with it.
But if ever there was a mistake, and a performance, that showed how badly it has all fallen apart under Slot it came from Szoboszlai and his desperate team-mates.
