Robertson opens up on how Diogo Jota's death hit Liverpool during 2024-25

Some losses can be explained with statistics, and some seasons simply cannot be understood without talking about human pain. Liverpool's 2024-25 campaign belongs to the second category, and the man who put it into words is Andy Robertson, the club's former defender, who sat down for a conversation on The Overlap and described what the death of Diogo Jota in 2025 meant behind closed doors.

Robertson didn't hold back. He called what the squad went through "horrendous" and said the blow marked every player who knew Jota, which was essentially the entire locker room. He wasn't just talking about the veterans, either. He also brought up the new signings who arrived last summer, including Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, who landed at a Liverpool that was "heartbroken."

"I felt so sorry for these boys because they'd signed, and they'd signed for a lot of money, and it took them months to settle in. We didn't care about football," the Scot explained, making clear where the group's priorities lay during that stretch.

"We lost that edge"

For Robertson, that collective grief had a direct impact on the team's performance. Liverpool finished the season in fifth place in the Premier League, and over the summer came confirmation that manager Arne Slot would be leaving. Robertson connected the two without hesitation.

"Every footballer has that competitive edge, and when you lose it, sometimes you can't perform at your best. I think last season we lost that edge," he admitted. He went further, describing the team's mental state for much of the campaign: "Looking back, I think we lost some of that determination because sometimes we'd think, 'what's the point? Look what Jota's family is going through, look at his kids...'"

"We were grieving. He was our friend, at the end of the day he wasn't a footballer to us. He was a teammate, a friend. It was incredibly hard for us."Andy Robertson

The story gets even more personal when Robertson recalls the days leading up to the tragedy. He said that just a week before Jota's death, he had been at his wedding. "It's one of the hardest things you'll ever go through: seeing him on the happiest day of his life, and then a week later seeing his family devastated," he recounted.

Slot and the club psychologist stepped in

Asked whether the group had real space to grieve the loss or whether they simply had to snap back into being footballers, Robertson praised how Arne Slot handled things at the time. According to him, preseason essentially didn't happen because the manager decided not to demand training sessions from anyone who wasn't in a state to face them.

The club also made a psychologist who already worked at the institution available to the squad, and he organized small groups to grab a coffee and talk. "We did that fairly often and I think it helped," Robertson said, though he was honest about the limits of the whole process: "We had to play football at the end of the day. We had no other choice in that. We tried to do it the best we could, and maybe that's why last season was so tough."

Robertson now plays for Tottenham Hotspur, a team that's had an uneven start to this season with just two points from five matches. Liverpool, on the other hand, started the campaign unbeaten and currently sits in sixth place in the Premier League.