Liverpool are 4th title-winner to lose four-in-a-row: What happened to the other three?

Liverpool are officially the fourth Premier League title winner to then lose four in a row. But what happened to the other three?

Liverpool fell to a 3-2 defeat at Brentford on Saturday evening. It's their fourth consecutive defeat in the Premier League, following losing efforts against Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Manchester United.

Worryingly, however, this might have been the worst performance of the lot. Liverpool were outplayed for large periods and struggled badly to control the game.

Are the Reds actually going further backwards, then? Or was this simply Brentford being perfectly suited to playing against this Liverpool system?

We won't really know until a few more games happen but what we do know is that this was a fourth defeat on the bounce - and that's only happened three times before with the Premier League champions. Interestingly, all four of those runs happened in the last 10 years.

Maybe even more interesting is that three of them have occurred in the last five. Here's how the other three groups eventually got on.

Four in a row

The most recent downfall came last season, of course. Manchester City went on a rotten run of form, quickly bowing out of the title race and initially looking unlikely to finish top-four.

They did turn things around, though. Pep Guardiola was unable to reshuffle and comfortably secure UEFA Champions League qualification but it’s important to note that it came on the back of around £200m spent in the January transfer window.

We can’t see Liverpool doing the same.

Leicester City were the first reigning champions to suffer four defeats in a row. That happened back in 2016/17 but the important note here is that they weren’t really the same group.

Leicester’s title win was followed by N’Golo Kante moving to Chelsea, ripping a core piece from the team. You can certainly say that similar has happened with Liverpool this year as Trent Alexander-Arnold left for Real Madrid.

Though, Leicester were surprise champions who suddenly needed to contend with European football, too. Their downfall was drastic but also semi-predictable.

The most notable champions to fall four times the following season, though, were Liverpool in 2020/21. Jurgen Klopp’s side had an incredibly difficult follow-up campaign that had a giant asterisk on it as the Reds endured one of the more bizarre injury crises you’ll ever see.

Liverpool had three senior centre-backs in their squad and all were out for the season by the end of January. Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez didn’t even make it to December, in fact.

Klopp had the team top of the table on Christmas but the depleted squad couldn’t contend. Still, they did finish third after finding a group that worked towards the end of the campaign.

Overall, then, this is quite worrying. The only one of the three you can really compare to Liverpool’s current drop-off is City last season and they spent their way out of it.

Liverpool’s spend actually came before this season - and it’s one of the reasons things have turned so quickly. The idea of even more transfers isn’t necessarily encouraging.

🔴 Shop the LFC 2025/26 adidas home range

👉🏻 Liverpool have a NEW right-back and he's the best in the world

👉🏻 Marc Guehi is COMING: Liverpool will agree deal to sign England star

👉🏻 Liverpool legend's son is now an elite centre-back