Transfer window: closed. Right-back: still Frimpong. Liverpool: 2-2 with Forest at Anfield. Iraola: five games unbeaten, and quietly playing Szoboszlai at right-back after telling us he’d never do that.

The four of us sat down five hours after the window slammed shut to work out how bad this squad actually is — and ended up admitting the thing none of us wanted to say out loud: Slot might have been right about half the things we hammered him for.

The dead triangle

Forest didn’t stumble into their route in. They found the seam early and went back to it all game: Frimpong, Mac Allister, Jacquet — a triangle that never once looked like it belonged to each other. Every meaningful Forest move came through that channel, and by the second half you could see them checking whether it was still open. It was.

Jins brought the clip that made it undeniable: the 85th to 95th minute, seven Liverpool players standing in a flat horizontal line. Not pressing, not dropping — just standing, level with each other, inviting the ball through. A team holding a draw shouldn’t look like a screensaver.

The Frimpong verdict

Sheik’s numbers were blunt enough to stop the conversation: Frimpong is a net negative on ball value in offence and in defence. Not “still adapting”, not “needs a run of games” — negative at both ends, which is a hard thing to be for a full-back whose entire selling point was the attacking half.

Vivek got there faster and less politely: “A traffic cone would be better than Frimpong.” Harsh, and he didn’t take it back. The uncomfortable part is that nobody on the call could build the counter-argument.

Was Slot right about Szobo at right-back all along?

Here’s where it turned on us. We spent months mocking the Szoboszlai-at-right-back experiment. Two games into Iraola’s version of this team, and Szobo is back there — deployed by the manager who told us he’d never do it.

So either the personnel leaves you no choice, or it was a reasonable idea all along and we were arguing with the messenger. We landed closer to the second than any of us expected, and it stung on the way down.

£140M on Barcola while the right-back is broken

Which makes the window harder to defend. If the right side is the fault line, why does £140M go on Barcola? Nobody doubts the player. The objection is sequencing: you don’t buy a new front door for a house with a hole in the wall.

And Wirtz is already the case study. 13km covered against Forest — genuinely elite off-ball work — and almost nothing came back to him. You can sign availability and still not solve service, because service is a structural problem, not a shopping problem.

The Isak problem: 13 touches in 90 minutes

Thirteen touches. Ninety minutes. £125M striker.

That’s the number the episode kept circling, because it isn’t a finishing debate — you can’t finish what never reaches you. Vivek’s verdict was the harshest thing said all night: “Isak is worse than Ricky Lambert at stretching the defence.”

But the heat maps push it somewhere more awkward than a bad night. Isak’s Newcastle shape was never a runner pinning a back line; he came deep, drifted, linked. We watched a Firmino and paid for a Haaland. Which reframes the Barcola question: maybe he isn’t a luxury at all — maybe he’s the Gordon to Isak’s Isak, the runner who makes the profile work. Or maybe we’ve bought two players who both want the ball to come to them.

The winger pecking order

We ranked the right-hand side and it didn’t take long: Muñoz, then Gakpo, then Rio. On Rio the verdict was flat — “Rio is not Yamal”, and the right-wing experiment is over. Played out of position, never settled, and it’s time to stop pretending the reps are development.

We also spent a minute on the loan that didn’t happen: should Malo Gusto have been the panic buy? Given the right-back situation, “panic” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Ipswich preview + your predictions

Then the actual next game: Ipswich away, and everyone put a number on it. Those calls are live on the Predictions page now, waiting to be graded — including one host who has Liverpool winning by three.

So: was Slot right about Szobo all along? Give us the honest answer, and drop your Ipswich scoreline on YouTube or Instagram below. We tally the weekly leaderboard and read the wildest picks on the next pod, which drops straight after full time on Friday.

Watch the full episode above for the arguments behind every take — including the ten minutes where we tried, and failed, to defend the window.