Andy Robertson Reflects on Liverpool's Loss of Edge After Jota's Tragic Death

Andy Robertson admits Liverpool “lost their edge” last season – and says the death of Diogo Jota ripped the heart out of a dressing room that suddenly stopped caring about football.

The Scotland captain opened up on the Stick to Football Podcast, premiered on Disney+, about the impact of Jota’s tragic passing in a car crash in July 2025. The Portuguese forward died in Spain along with his brother Andre Silva as they travelled back to England for the start of pre-season.

Liverpool were reigning Premier League champions and braced for another title defence. Instead, grief took over.

“It’s difficult to describe or talk about, really, because what we went through, it was horrendous,” Robertson 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. Robertson knows it, and he traces it directly back to the moment their teammate never came back.

“We were elite in everything that we did for years,” he said. “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.”

“We lost that edge”

Robertson didn’t dress it up. The champions lost something you can’t measure on a spreadsheet.

“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.”

The pain was raw and personal for Robertson. Just days before the crash, he had been celebrating Jota’s wedding.

“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.”

Liverpool never truly recovered on the pitch. Arne Slot lost his job at the end of the season after the Reds slipped to fifth in the Premier League. The league table was brutal. The context, Robertson insists, was anything but normal.

Slot’s compassion in the darkest days

Results cost Slot his position, but inside the club, the Dutchman earned respect for how he handled an unimaginable situation.

“We spoke a lot (in pre-season). The manager was really good, to be fair,” Robertson 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 leaned on support staff as well. The club psychologist set up informal groups, more like coffee circles than formal sessions, just to keep people talking.

“We had a psychologist that worked in the club anyway and he kind of set up little groups and it would just be like, if you want to grab a coffee and come round and talk and things like that.

“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 flight

Robertson drew a stark line between the euphoria of one summer day and the devastation that followed.

“At the end of the day, football's based on results, and we didn't get enough results. And that was the fact,” he said.

“But 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.”

The season rolled on regardless. The expectations didn’t ease, even if the players were still trying to breathe through the grief.

“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 beneath a perfect start

For a brief spell, it looked like Liverpool might simply power through. The numbers said one thing. The players felt another.

“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.

“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.”

Those cracks turned into a season that drifted away from them, a title defence swallowed up by something much bigger than football. The league will only ever record a fifth-place finish and a manager sacked.

Inside that dressing room, the story will always start with the day they lost Diogo Jota – and with a team trying to find its edge again after their world was turned upside down.