The ongoing plight of Liverpool needs to be studied. The Reds romped to the Premier League title last season, finishing a mighty ten points clear of nearest rivals Arsenal to claim the crown for the second time in five years. A summer spending spree of over £450 million on the likes of Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz was supposed to make that already huge gap grow even larger. And for a month or so, it did.
Arne Slot’s men began the 2025/26 season with five straight victories, opening up an early lead in the title race and leaving many thinking that they would run away with the title for the second straight year. What a difference a month makes.
Liverpool Suffer Fourth Straight League Defeat
Since the fifth consecutive victory, a 2-1 home triumph in the Merseyside Derby against Everton at Anfield, things have fallen apart. The Reds have inexplicably lost four straight games in their worst run of form since February 2021, with their recent 3-2 reverse at Brentford setting alarm bells ringing. The dismal run marks just the fourth time in history that a defending champion has lost four games on the spin, and to make matters worse, online gambling sites are now writing off their chances of a successful title defense.
The run has left Liverpool down in seventh place in the table, seven points behind table-topping Arsenal. As such, the latest real money gambling at Bovada odds now make the reigning champions a 13/2 outsider to win the league, well behind the aforementioned Gunners, who are now the 22/50 outright favorites. But as these two teams will prove to you, all hope is not lost just yet.
Over the years, other teams from at home and overseas have managed to negate disastrous runs of form to still emerge victorious. Here are two that Arne Slot can look toward for inspiration.
Manchester City
The season before last, Manchester City looked to be storming toward a fourth straight title when they reeled off six straight victories to begin the campaign. Then, disaster struck.
Pep Guardiola’s Blues were stunned away at Wolves on matchday seven, before then losing out against the previous year’s runners-up Arsenal thanks to Gabriel Martinelli’s late winner. While they would recover with three straight victories, the worst was yet to come.
With City looking a million miles away from the team that had claimed the previous three titles, the defending champions would embark upon arguably the worst run of their iconic Spanish manager’s tenure, winning just one of their next six games, including four draws and one defeat. Michael Olise’s 96th-minute equalizer for Crystal Palace in the sixth of those games left City down in fourth place in the title race, three points off the pace-setting Arsenal. They wouldn’t slip up again.
Across the next 21 games, the Blues won all but three of them, drawing the others. They would go on to claim a record-breaking fourth straight title on the final day of the season with a 3-1 victory at home to West Ham, breaking the Gunners’ hearts in the process.
Man City win the Premier League title! 🏆
The first team ever to win 4 years in a row!
pic.twitter.com/R0JE9o6bMC https://t.co/HOcZricsEo
— Bovada (@BovadaOfficial) May 19, 2024
Barcelona
Title races aren’t just a Premier League thing. Over in Spain, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and occasionally Atletico Madrid battle it out for the title each and every year. Back in 2015/16, however, it seemed as though the race for the La Liga crown was a foregone conclusion.
Heading into the penultimate month of the campaign, it was Barca who held a whopping nine-point lead at the division’s summit with just eight games remaining. With Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, and Neymar forming one of the most fearsome attacking tridents ever assembled, the title seemed a formality. A 2-2 draw away at Villareal at the end of March was less than impressive, but it wasn’t enough to trigger any kind of panic around the Camp Nou.
What happened in April certainly did. With the title beckoning, the Blaugrana inexplicably lost three straight games, two of them at home, leaving the destination of the championship up in the air. Firstly, Real Madrid kept their faint title hopes alive courtesy of a 2-1 win in Catalonia after a late Cristiano Ronaldo winner. A week later, Mikel Oyarzabal netted the only goal of the game in a 1-0 defeat to Real Sociedad, before Valencia then rocked up to the Camp Nou and claimed a stunning 2-1 win.
Suddenly, Barcelona had lost three straight league games for the first time since 2003, and their championship advantage had evaporated. They headed into the month of May level on points with Atletico Madrid, with their capital city rivals Real just a point behind. Luckily, the miserable run of form woke a beast in the Blaugrana that wouldn’t be denied.
Barca went on to win all five of their remaining fixtures in devastating fashion. They scored a scarcely believable 24 goals in those fixtures without conceding a single strike in the opposite direction. Ultimately, that was enough to claim the title, with Real Madrid, who also won all five of their remaining games, finishing just one point behind.
