Is Arne Slot’s Time Up? Winners, Losers After Man City’s FA Cup Rout of Liverpool

Pep Guardiola insisted last month that Real Madrid were not his biggest rivals during his time at Manchester City, instead giving that particular honor to Liverpool. He did at least clarify that he meant Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, which is just as well after Arne Slot’s Reds failed to cause Guardiola any stress while he watched his side run out 4-0 winners in Saturday’s FA Cup quarter-final from the comfort of his seat in the stands. Sat next to his daughter Maria, Guardiola was an animated figure during an even first half. But once Erling Haaland scored the first goal of his eventual hat-trick, Guardiola could just sit back and enjoy the view of his side booking their place in the semi-finals for the ninth time in his decade-long reign in Manchester. But there was no relaxing for his counterpart Slot, who must have felt a deep sense of torment as his side conceded four times in the space of 19 minutes to crash out of the cup. The Dutch coach was the subject of April Fools Day jokes earlier in the week, but watching his side perform in Manchester, with Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk among the main culprits, it was tempting to think that the most foolish thing for Liverpool’s hierarchy to do would be to keep Slot in charge next season. Indeed, there is a growing case to make a change right now, especially with Paris Saint-Germain lying in wait as their opponents in the Champions League quarter-finals on Wednesday. GOAL breaks down the winners & losers from the Etihad Stadium. WINNER: Erling Haaland Haaland had only scored twice in his eight games since he last faced Liverpool in February, but he ended his barren spell in emphatic fashion with his most prolific outing against the Reds to date. It capped an incredible run of matches this season against City’s biggest rivals of the last decade, with Haaland having also scored in the 3-0 rout of Slot’s side in November before netting his first goal at Anfield in the frantic comeback of two months back. Haaland became the first player to score five goals against Liverpool in a single season since Matt Le Tissier in 1993-94, six years before the Norwegian was born. Haaland had been quiet before City earned the penalty, but he took his spot-kick without a hint of nerves, in total contrast to how Salah would bungle his effort from 12 yards later in the game. From then on, Haaland was in demolition mode. He bullied Ibrahima Konate in the air to head in his second in first-half stoppage time and then made no mistake from Nico O’Reilly’s lay-off after the break, completing his hat-trick with an effort that bounced in via the crossbar. LOSER: Mohamed Salah A casual observer with no knowledge of this fixture would have found it hard to believe that Salah had scored 13 times and set up eight goals in his career against City. Rather, he looked a shadow of his former self from start to finish. Salah shrunk in confidence early in the game after Abdukodir Khusanov chased him down and forced the Egyptian star into miscuing his shot out for a throw-in. Salah missed two more chances in the second half – but then came the real low point, when his half-hearted penalty was kept out by James Trafford. TNT Sports’ commentators speculated that Arne Slot opted against taking Salah off so soon after the penalty miss because he did not want him to be humiliated by City fans when he left the pitch. He was ultimately put out of his misery 10 minutes later, bringing a sad, sad end to Salah’s career in a fixture that he dominated over the last decade, but will never grace again. WINNER: Antoine Semenyo & Rayan Cherki This was a tremendous advert for City’s recruitment team as signings from the two previous transfer windows made their mark. Rayan Cherki might have seemed like a gamble when City unveiled him as their successor to Kevin De Bruyne in June after losing out on Florian Wirtz to Liverpool. City fans online vented their fury at the club not signing Wirtz, but new sporting director Hugo Viana’s decision to swerve a £100 million-plus bonuses move for the Germany playmaker in favour of bagging Cherki for just £34m now looks like a stroke of genius. The Frenchman worked in tandem on Saturday with Antoine Semenyo, who arrived seven months later and for almost double the price but who is proving an equally astute signing. Cherki fed Semenyo for the cross that led to Haaland’s second goal, and their telepathic understanding was on display again in the second half when Ghana international Semenyo latched onto another pass from the former Lyon star to chip in the third goal. Semenyo now has a stunning eight goals and two assists in less than three months with City, while Cherki has 10 goals and 11 assists for the season. City got two brilliant playmakers for less than the price of one, with Wirtz having returned only six goals and five assists in all competitions in a red shirt thus far. LOSER: Virgil van Dijk If Van Dijk rolled back the years last season to lead Liverpool to the title, his age has well and truly caught up with him this term. The 34-year-old clumsily tripped Nico O’Reilly to give away the penalty which changed the tide of the game. It was the fourth penalty Van Dijk has conceded this season, as many as in his previous eight years with Liverpool. He was then caught out both by Cherki’s perfectly weighted pass and by the pace of Semenyo as City scored again early in the second half, before being left for dead by Haaland’s movement for the hosts’ fourt. Like Salah, Van Dijk signed a new Liverpool contract last summer to tie him to the club until 2027, but given how off the pace he looked here, and has all season, some fans will be encouraging him to follow the Egyptian’s lead and also end his long and glittering career with the Reds one year early. WINNER: James Trafford Trafford was understandably upset when he learned that City had signed Gianluigi Donnarumma and that he was not going to be No.1 after all following his return to his boyhood club from Burnley last summer. But being City’s cup goalkeeper is arguably more rewarding than being the No.1 at most Premier League clubs, and Trafford now has another Wembley trip to look forward to after his heroics in the Carabao Cup final last month. Trafford might not have the same gigantic presence as Donnarumma, but he had the measure of Salah here, and his penalty save from the Egyptian added to his collection of spot-kick heroics, which includes saving two in one game for Burnley last season against Sunderland and keeping out a kick in the final minute of the Under-21 European Championship final in 2023. Trafford is within his rights to search for a new club next season where he can play every week, but he could still look back on his likely sole season back at City very fondly, with two more trips to Wembley and another piece of silverware still within his grasp. LOSER: Arne Slot It has long been felt, as Liverpool have lurched from one disastrous result to the next, that the only thing keeping Slot in the Anfield hotseat is Xabi Alonso’s insistence on taking a break before making his next move in management. Alonso’s return to Liverpool as manager has felt like a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ ever since he proved to be just as talented a coach as he was a midfielder by guiding Bayer Leverkusen to their first Bundesliga title while remaining unbeaten in 2024. As Jamie Carragher pointed out in his Daily Telegraph column on Saturday, there are plenty of parallels between the current situation and when Liverpool were courting Jurgen Klopp in 2015 while Brendan Rodgers was still in charge. To make matters worse for Slot, the emphatic result at the Etihad Stadium clocked up an unwanted 15 defeats for Liverpool in a single season for the first time since Rodgers’ final campaign on Merseyside. If Liverpool’s owners were as ruthless as Bayern Munich, who sacked Julian Nagelsmann in the March international break in 2023 and replaced him with Thomas Tuchel, they would make the change now. It seems, though, that they are just waiting to make a smooth transition in the summer. It means that Liverpool are going to endure more resounding defeats from now until the end of the campaign, with their pain highly likely to continue on Wednesday in the French capital.