Andy Robertson Reflects on Liverpool's Tough Season After Jota's Death

Andy Robertson admits Liverpool “lost their edge” last season – and says the squad simply stopped caring about football in the aftermath of Diogo Jota’s death.

Jota was killed in a car crash in Spain in July 2025, along with his brother Andre Silva, as they travelled back to England ahead of pre-season. Liverpool were reigning Premier League champions, braced for another title defence. Instead, grief ripped straight through the dressing room.

Speaking on the Stick to Football Podcast on Disney+, Robertson laid bare just how shattered the club was.

“It's difficult to describe or talk about, really, because what we went through, it was horrendous,” he said. “Say if I'm talking about the new signings, they're coming into a club that is heartbroken.

“They're trying, and that's where I felt so sorry for these guys because they'd signed and they were signing for big money and all that, if I'm talking about football. It took them months to settle in because we didn't care, we didn't care about football.

“That was the truth of it. We didn't care about football because you've just lost one of your best mates in the changing room.”

Liverpool’s standards slipped. The intensity that had defined them for years faded. Robertson doesn’t hide from that.

“I think all footballers, we all have that edge, don't we? And I think when you lose that edge sometimes then you can't perform to the best. And I think last season we lost the edge.

“I think when I look back on it now, I think we lost that determination a little bit and things like that because I know at times we were maybe going, ‘You know what, what's the point?’

“Like look at what Jota's family are going through. Look at his kids. But yeah, we were grieving. It was our mate at the end of the day. He’s not a footballer to us, he was a teammate, he was a friend.”

For Robertson, the pain was brutally personal.

“The week before he died, I was at his wedding,” he said. “So that's one of the most difficult things you'll ever go through. Seeing him on the happiest day of his life, and then the next week you're seeing his family torn apart.”

Slot’s impossible task

Liverpool eventually finished fifth. Arne Slot lost his job at the end of the season, his tenure judged in cold numbers rather than the context of a traumatised squad.

Robertson, though, was keen to highlight how the Dutchman handled those first weeks after Jota’s death.

“We spoke a lot (in pre-season). The manager was really good, to be fair,” he recalled. “Like our pre-season was barely anything because, to be fair to Arne, he was like, ‘If you don't want to train, you don't train.’

“Say one day you come in and you're struggling or whatever, that was his attitude of the pre-season.”

Liverpool’s existing club psychologist set up small support groups. Players met for coffee, talked, shared whatever they could. It helped, a little. Not enough to make things normal. Nothing could.

“So we did that quite a few times, and I think that helped. But it was incredibly difficult times.

“But then you always just feel sorry for his family, for his wife. At the end of the day, their life got flipped completely upside down.

“Ours, we were heartbroken and everything like that, but for them daily, it must be so difficult even now.

“We managed to get through it together, I think, and we always just said, ‘Look, we'll always remember him,’ and everything like that.

“But we had to play football at the end of the day. We didn't have a choice in that. We tried to do it as best we could and that's why last season was so tough.”

From open-top bus to funeral

Robertson accepts the harsh reality: “football's based on results.” Liverpool did not win enough games. Slot paid the price.

But the left-back believes the scale of what the squad endured never truly fed into the wider judgement of their season.

“If you go back to the summer before, we have the biggest parade in Liverpool's history, right? We're on the open-top bus, we're going through the city centre, and I think over a million people had come out and seen us.

“The next day, we all shake each other's hands, we all go off for the summer. The next time we see everyone is at the airport heading over to Porto for his funeral. That's the next time I see all my teammates.

“So, from going from the highest of highs in terms of being on a parade with the Premier League trophy, and you're parading it round thousands and thousands of fans, to then seeing staff and players the way we were, like that, it's not normal.

“It's not normal what we went through. So, I think could it have been factored in? Yeah, maybe it could have.

“But then when the season goes on and things like that, we know that we then have to do better and we need to win games and things like that.

“And I get why then there was a lot of frustration around the way we were playing, the results that we were getting. I can understand it.”

Cracks behind the perfect start

Slot tried to protect his squad early on. He eased off the physical demands, avoided cranking up the internal competition when players were clearly struggling.

“At the time at the start, the manager was really good and he helped us a lot,” Robertson said. “He understood the situation in terms of pre-season, in terms of not pushing us too hard, not trying to cause too much competitiveness or whatever, in case somebody was struggling that day or whatever.”

Liverpool actually flew out of the blocks. Five wins from five. Talk of another title charge swirled almost instantly.

“And, we then were starting slow, but we then go and win the first five games, and everyone thinks Liverpool are going to win the league again.

“We won the first five games but we were probably covering over the cracks at that point. And then after the international break, the cracks came.”

New signings, new start

The criticism, when it came, landed heavily on the new arrivals. Big fees, big expectations, small margin for understanding.

Robertson, though, sees that season as an anomaly for them – and believes their story at Anfield has barely begun.

“That's why I probably have so much sympathy in football terms towards the new signings, because I think they came into a team that was, like... we were elite in everything that we did for years.

“And maybe we couldn't be that because of what had happened. And then they then started getting quite a lot of criticism. And that's why I think these lads will be absolutely fine at Liverpool. I would treat this season as their first season. That's the way I would do it.”

Liverpool will move on. They have to. But they will do so with the memory of a lost teammate stitched into everything they try to build next.