IT’S a strange thing to say about a team cantering towards the Premier League title — but Liverpool are reaching the end of an era.
Five players remain from the team which secured the club’s sixth European Cup against Tottenham in 2019.
And all of them might have played their final Champions League match at Anfield in Tuesday’s defeat by Paris Saint-Germain.
Boss Arne Slot did not appreciate being asked about that on TV immediately after the penalty shootout loss to the French champions.
But skipper Virgil van Dijk admits he has “no idea” where he will be playing next season, while fellow out-of-contract stars Mo Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold are also tight-lipped on their futures.
The form of Andy Robertson, another of Klopp’s 2019 winners, has fallen off a cliff, with Slot prioritising a left-back upgrade this summer.
And Alisson — who kept Liverpool in the PSG tie with an extraordinary display in his team’s 1-0 first-leg win — is also under threat.
Georgian keeper Giorgi Mamardashvili, who arrives from Valencia this summer, is regarded as his eventual replacement.
It means the last vestiges of Jurgen Klopp’s 2019 European champions could soon be swept away.
It would be ludicrous to suggest too much doom and gloom at Anfield as Slot’s side romp towards only their second Premier League title and with Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Newcastle up next.
Klopp’s midfield revamp worked a treat the summer before last — with Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai all tearing it up in the Premier League.
Now similar overhauls may be needed in defence and attack — with two key defenders out of contract, along with goal-machine Salah.
Meanwhile, Darwin Nunez’s shootout miss accentuated the fact the Uruguayan isn’t good enough at the highest level.
Liverpool have been awarded nine penalties in the league this season — no other club besides Bournemouth has had more than four.
And yet spot-kicks proved their undoing against Luis Enrique’s impressive side.
PSG’s superiority over two legs showed the Premier League isn’t as mighty as we like to think.
There is now a high probability of no English club in the Champions League semi-finals for a second straight season.
The fact Liverpool are poised to win the title by a double-figure points margin yet were outplayed for three-quarters of the PSG tie was a wake-up call for the domestic game.
This after Real Madrid had hammered our four-in-a-row champions Manchester City in the play-off round.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s exit, Slot was moaning about the “unfairness” of having to face PSG so early in the competition — having topped the 36-team qualifying group.
Yet that has always been the nature of knockout football.
PSG, along with Real and City, struggled in Europe before Christmas and ended up unseeded.
Enrique’s side were supposed to arrive at the sharp end of the Champions League undercooked due to a lack of domestic competition.
But perhaps it was Liverpool.
This has not been a vintage Premier League season, with City in meltdown, Arsenal ravaged by injuries and indiscipline, Chelsea severely inexperienced, while Manchester United and Tottenham have disappeared without trace.
Slot’s first season in charge will be rightly considered a roaring success whatever happens in Sunday’s showpiece at Wembley.
But with Alexander-Arnold likely to miss out through injury, Ibrahima Konate a doubt and the entire team having played two hours of high- intensity football before the misery of a shootout defeat, Newcastle will fancy their chances a hell of a lot more than they did before Tuesday.
Liverpool’s players will still get to parade the Premier League trophy in front of a packed Anfield for the first time at some point in April or early May — their previous title win having come during the Covid pandemic.
Yet the team which defends that title next season might look very different indeed.
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