Liverpool are in freefall. Following Sunday’s humiliating 4-1 defeat to Manchester City at Anfield, they’ve picked up just nine points from their last nine Premier League matches stretching back to the 1-1 draw against West Bromwich Albion on 27 December.

At this point, it can no longer be considered a minor blip. For what is almost a quarter of a season now, Liverpool have been chugging along at one-point-per-game. It’s a sustained run of borderline relegation-standard form which threatens to plunge this season into catastrophic territory if it continues for much longer.

At present, they’re on course to finish on 66 points – a tally which has only been good enough to secure top four in two of the last 15 Premier League seasons, and that would also represent their worst tally in any full season under Jürgen Klopp.

With the last vague glimmers of hope of retaining the title now comprehensively shattered, Liverpool cannot afford to be swallowed up by the misery of these past six weeks. They have to, as a matter of urgency, realign their focus and navigate a path to collect enough points to ensure a top four finish – a prospect which seemed so certain not that long ago, but is all of a sudden shrouded in considerable jeopardy.

Not only is there a gap between them and Leicester City and Manchester United which needs closing, they also face significant pressure from a whole host of teams determined to hunt them down, from Chelsea in fifth – now just one point behind following their bright start under Thomas Tuchel – all the way down to Aston Villa in ninth, who currently sit five points behind but with two games in hand.

It’s not where Klopp and his players would ever have hoped or imagined they’d be 23 games into the campaign, but it’s the reality they must now deal in. Now they have to find a way to haul themselves over the line to secure Champions League football next season.

Here’s why it’s absolutely crucial.

Financial implications

It’s impossible to determine the full extent of the damage caused by the pandemic on Liverpool’s finances at this point, but rough projections from the summer indicated that the club anticipated losing somewhere in the region of £100m from a combined drop in TV, match day and commercial revenue.

Much of that hit will already have been taken, and while the roll-out of vaccinations across the country provides some light at the end of the tunnel, a return to any kind of pre-pandemic normal still feels a long way down the line for football and society in general – if indeed that point does eventually arrive. The ramifications are therefore set to rumble on for some time yet, which, of course, isn’t remotely unique to Liverpool.

Failing to qualify for the Champions League would therefore further dent what is already a hugely fragile and unpredictable financial situation. Qualifying for the group stages alone is worth an automatic €15.25m cash injection, with every group stage victory reportedly worth an additional €2.7m, and €900,00 for every draw.

By winning the competition in 2018/19, Liverpool scooped just shy of £100m in total Champions League revenue, and even last season, despite crashing out in the last 16 to Atlético Madrid, they still earned £71m from their European campaign. Both the immediate consequences and longer-term knock-on implications of missing out would be enormous.

(For a full, in-depth breakdown of Champions League finances, the Swiss Ramble's Twitter thread is well worth a read.)

Team legacy

So much more than money alone is at stake here. This Liverpool team has a legacy to protect. To surrender the title as meekly as they have stings, but with all the extreme mitigating circumstances (horrendous luck with injuries, mental and physical fatigue, the continued absence of supporters, a succession of freakishly unfortunate VAR decisions etc.) they’ve had to contend with this season, it’s entirely understandable that they haven’t been able to retain it. Especially after back-to-back 97 and 99-point campaigns in which they’ve become European, World and English champions, a drop-off was perhaps an inevitability.

All that said, what has been most alarming through this dismal period, even beyond the chronic inability to create chances and stick the ball in the back of the net, is the lack of fight. Time and time again, Liverpool have found themselves in sticky situations within games, and there has been no response. They’ve looked defeated, demoralised, possibly even disengaged from the whole enterprise at times, unable to dust themselves down and conjure up a reaction.

In the past, the ability to process all kinds of adversity has been a core element of this team’s DNA. It’s why Klopp famously labelled them mentality monsters, because they don’t take no for an answer. It’s never not their day, because between them, they’ll figure out a solution to overcome whatever obstacle stands in their way in order to achieve the desired outcome.

Lately, that just hasn’t been happening. Now, when Liverpool go a goal down, it’s almost like the players are thinking “it’s happening again” , and they end up trudging towards full-time without ever looking like they believe they can turn it around. Again, there are loads of valid explanatory factors in all this which are beyond their control, but at the same time, Liverpool can’t just throw the towel in and accept this season as a total write-off.

In years to come, when we look back on what this team achieved, this could be a one-off bad season whereby everything which could conceivably go wrong did go wrong, but still they showed enough spirit and resolve to ultimately drag themselves over the line to finish in the top four and rebuild ahead of a fresh title challenge in 2021/22. All things considered, that would be an achievement in and of itself. Or, if they can’t snap themselves back into gear ASAP and end up falling short of that bare minimum target, it might turn out to be the beginning of the end of an era which could have brought so much more success.

They have more than enough quality to ensure that the latter scenario doesn’t unfold. Now, over these remaining 15 games, they need to go out and show it. This team has come too far and created too many glorious memories to fade away this quickly.

Retaining prized assets

One of the greatest accomplishments of Klopp’s tenure has been transforming Liverpool from a stepping stone club into a final destination where the best players in the world feel they can win the biggest honours in football. Not since Philippe Coutinho’s departure to Barcelona in January 2018 have Liverpool really had to worry about any of their prized assets being snapped up by one of the Spanish giants or any other European powerhouse with superior spending power and prospects of silverware – hence why they’ve been able to tie the vast majority of the current core to long-term contract extensions.

But with noise already humming along in the background about Mohamed Salah’s future plans potentially lying elsewhere, especially following his AS interview in December, it’s not unreasonable to think that he, among several others in the squad, would seriously be considering their options come the end of the season if Liverpool were to miss out on Champions League qualification.

Given he and Sadio Mané will both be 29 by the start of next season, would they be content to spend one of their prime years not playing in Europe’s elite competition and commit to helping Liverpool get back in the following season? Perhaps, but it’s far from certain – and the last thing Liverpool need is a summer of speculation around their star assets and the possibility of them pushing hard for a transfer. It’s worth noting that Liverpool might have been prepared to listen to offers for either player any way at some stage within the next 12-18 months, but only on their own terms and as part of a long-term succession plan.

Without Champions League football on offer, though, the club’s bargaining position would be drastically weakened, and it would serve as major encouragement for potential suitors to make a move (although who those are remains to be seen, as both Real Madrid and especially Barcelona are in serious financial trouble of their own).

Liverpool are also still yet to agree contract extensions for Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk, whose current deals run until 2024 and 2023 respectively, but again, not being in the Champions League, which was previously a given, would add a whole new unwanted layer of complication to those negotiations for two of the best players in the world in their respective positions.

The fundamental reason Liverpool have been able to build such an exceptional squad over the past few years is because they’ve had continuity and stability. If the team keeps on winning, players want to stay, the club earns more money and can reward those players for achieving that success. If, all of a sudden, Champions League football is taken off the table, it becomes a whole lot more difficult to do so.

Attracting high calibre transfer targets

Just as not having Champions League football increases the probability of losing star assets, it also decreases the likelihood of being able to recruit new ones of a similar calibre. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible – Liverpool won’t just lose their appeal to prospective transfer targets overnight – but it does undoubtedly make them a less attractive destination, and would likely force a re-think about who those targets might realistically have to be.

In a parallel universe where Liverpool hadn’t suffered such a debilitating injury crisis and had gone on to retain the title while also going deep in the Champions League this season, they may well have been in a position to fend off strong competition to sign a player of Erling Haaland or Jadon Sancho’s ilk in the summer – just to name two of Europe’s most sought-after talents. Dayot Upamecano would be another prime example.

Hypothetically speaking, if Liverpool were interested in either of the Borussia Dortmund duo (or any other high priority target on Klopp and Michael Edwards’ list), they’d likely be rivalled by at least one of the Manchester clubs, possibly Chelsea, and a sizeable handful of other European clubs for their signature.

Not being able to offer Champions League football isn’t always a deal-breaker (Arsenal still managed to sign Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang when they were in the Europa League, for instance), but it puts them at a significant disadvantage, compounded by the loss of income which then makes it harder to match rival suitors for transfer fees and wages as well.

Avoiding the Europa League trap

One of the biggest problems with dropping out of the Champions League places is that it’s often not that easy to get straight back in, in part because of all the factors mentioned above, but also because you invariably end up getting dragged into the black hole that is the Europa League which has the capacity to suck the life out of a domestic league campaign.

The last two times Liverpool have missed out on Champions League qualification having been in it (2009/10 and 2014/15), it has taken them at least two seasons of rebuilding thereafter to get back into it.

Unless you win it, Europe’s second tier competition is almost always a hindrance, as Thursday night games in Russia and Ukraine are hardly conducive to performing well at the weekend. Even if you do go all the way and lift the trophy, it’s still somewhat underwhelming, especially when you’ve won the actual, proper European Cup in the very recent past.

This season, there are only two Europa League qualification spots for English teams, which go to fifth in the Premier League and the winners of the FA Cup. If the winners of the FA Cup already qualify for Europe through the league, then the second Europa place goes to sixth.

There’s also the even more dystopian prospect of the newly-created UEFA Europa Conference League to consider, which is essentially a third tier European competition below the Europa League, starting from 2021/22 (the winner of which qualifies for Europa League in the following campaign). That’s now the prize for winning the Carabao Cup, but given that Manchester City are the strong favourites to do so, then sixth in the Premier League would then enter the Europa Conference League next season (or seventh, if the FA Cup winner is also a top six side).

The bottom line is, Liverpool need to avoid either of these at all costs. Having to participate in either would be heavily detrimental to next season.