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James McConnell of Liverpool reacts during the Emirates FA Cup Fourth Round match between Plymouth Argyle and Liverpool at Home Park (Image: 2025 Liverpool FC)

Liverpool suffered a shock FA Cup exit to Championship strugglers Plymouth Argyle on Sunday Ryan Hardie’s penalty was the difference at Home Park.

While Slot named a much-changed side, having left a significant number of his senior stars at home, it was no excuse as a below-par Liverpool found themselves victim to a classic FA Cup giant-killing.

With the national media in place at Home Park to witness a big cup upset, here’s what they made of the Reds’ dismal defeat…



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Oliver Holt of the Daily Mail believed Slot made the ‘first mistake’ of his Liverpool reign against Plymouth.

He wrote: “If anyone could have predicted where Liverpool’s pursuit of the Quadruple might end this season, many might have bet on the Bernabeu, the Nou Camp, Munich’s Allianz Arena or perhaps Wembley Stadium.

Nobody really knows how Plymouth Argyle managed to survive those nine minutes of injury time at the end, those interminable minutes when hearts were pounding and nerves were shredding and it felt like not just Conor Hazard’s goal, not just Home Park, but Plymouth itself, was under siege.

“Just as nobody had really seen this coming: the team rooted to the foot of the Championship, hosting perhaps the best team in the world right now, and sending them spectacularly to the canvas.

It was only their fourth defeat of the season in all competitions and, after the Premier League loss at home to Nottingham Forest last September, the only one that mattered.

“They will probably go on to win the league, they are one of the favourites in the Champions League and are in the Carabao Cup final but, for Plymouth, it makes this giant-killing, after the last-round giant-killing of another Premier League club, Brentford away, all the more memorable as they claimed a place in the last 16.

“Liverpool were so poor that it was simply shocking at times, until their desperation kicked in and they went long, with centre-half Jarrel Quansah pushed up as an auxiliary centre-forward even though they already had Núñez, Jota and so on up there.”

The Times’ Hamzah Khalique-Loonat pointed out Liverpool’s ‘form, experience, and eight FA Cup titles counted for nothing’ as Plymouth ‘wrote history’.

He wrote: “The good ship Liverpool has run aground.

Arne Slot’s dreadnought was last seen just off the coast of Plymouth, the same spot where HMS Argyle was sighted, sailing off merrily into the fifth round of the FA Cup.

“It has been some time since a giant-killing of this stature, with the Premier League and Champions League leaders being unceremoniously dumped from the Cup, by a team affixed to the bottom of the Championship.

“This was only their third win since November 5 last year.

A touch which secured victory and wrote history.”

And finally, the Liverpool ECHO’s very own LFC correspondent, Paul Gorst, believes there was one small mercy for Slot after his side’s FA Cup embarrassment.

He wrote: “If the bad news for Arne Slot is that his team are now out of the FA Cup, the good news is that the Liverpool boss at least had the best part of 300 miles back to Merseyside to get it out of his system.

“For the supporters who had made that same cross-country trek for this fourth-round tie, such an arduous pilgrimage surely only added to the frustration at bowing out to a second-tier team.

“But by the time the club themselves touched down on home soil on Sunday evening, one suspects Slot and his staff will already have turned their attention to Wednesday evening's festivities at Goodison Park.