The jury should still be out on whether Liverpool have got any better at all after replacing Arne Slot with Andoni Iraola over the summer.

Slot was sacked by the Reds despite leading them to the Premier League title in 2025, with his follow-up season falling well short of the expectations at Anfield.

Having beaten Crystal Palace 3-1 on Sunday, the Reds head into the November international break sitting in fourth position with 18 points. Not bad, but not exactly good given they lag nine points behind leaders Arsenal.

And after already suffering a defeat against the Gunners – as well as Manchester City – fans will be interested to note that the Reds have accrued exactly the same points total as Slot’s haul after 10 games of the fateful 2025/26 campaign.

Iraola has not bettered Slot so far

Liverpool lurched from one extreme to the other during the first 10 games of last season, winning the first five before losing four on the bounce. They did win their 10th match of the campaign, beating Aston Villa 2-0 at Anfield, but their 18-point total was seen as being massively underwhelming for the reigning champions.

Despite that, by just about every basic metric, Liverpool were better off one year ago than they currently are.

They sat one place higher up in the Premier League table, were closer to the top – sitting seven behind Arsenal – and had scored more goals, 18 to 14.

Slot’s team, for all their failings, had also managed to beat Arsenal at Anfield, something they saw reversed at a similar stage of the campaign this time around.

The one area which Liverpool have seemingly improved under Iraola has been in terms of goals conceded. The Reds have been suspect defensively in Europe but better in the Premier League, conceding 10 this year opposed to 14 at the same stage last season.

In fairness to Iraola’s team they have also been harder to beat, losing only twice while Slot’s team lost four of their opening 10 games. They have won one less, but turning two defeats into draws could be read as a sign of some progress.

Have Liverpool improved under Iraola?

What is clear is that anyone who believed that Slot was the sole problem at Liverpool last year has been proven completely wrong by the Reds’ start under Iraola.

The 48-year-old could have done plenty of things differently during his second season in charge, and when he looks back on his time at Anfield he will surely realise that, if he has not already. But if he has cast his eye on Liverpool’s fixtures so far this term, then Slot would have a right to be angry at how things ended.

Obviously, the first 10 games do not tell the story of a whole season, and it is clear that things got much worse for Slot over the course of the next 28. Iraola will be hoping that things go in the opposite direction, and they well might.

But, we can only judge on what we’ve seen so far, and that tells us that if there has been improvement at Liverpool under Iraola, then it has been marginal at best.

It is worth asking whether Liverpool would have been better or worse off under Slot, and while things could easily have plummeted further under the former head coach, it could also have been that 25/26 was just an anomaly, and the Reds would be back to their usual selves under his leadership.

Ultimately, that is a question that will never be answered, but at the very least Slot should feel even more annoyed at having the rug pulled from under him at Anfield after seeing the way things have gone since.