There are probably more dignified ways to find out your manager has lost his job. For Milos Kerkez, the news came via a knock on a bedroom door from his brother somewhere in Serbia. That is how Liverpool's first-team squad learned that Arne Slot's time at Anfield was over.

Kerkez has spoken candidly about the moment the news broke on 30 May, and by his own account, nobody in the squad saw it coming. The left-back was back home preparing for the World Cup when the story landed. No forewarning. No quiet word through official channels. Just his brother appearing at the door with something he did not expect to hear.

"I was surprised," Kerkez said. "I really didn't know. I was back in Serbia, I was sleeping and my brother woke me up. He knocks on my door and it was a big surprise. Nobody knew. I couldn't believe it, I was like: 'wow!' I have been in touch with him since, we have exchanged a few messages. That's it."

There is something a little sad about that final line. A manager who guided Liverpool through his first season, dismissed after a second that fell apart badly, reduced to a few brief messages with former players. Football is a brutal business, and Slot found that out the hard way.

The context around the sacking tells its own story. Liverpool's Premier League title defence disintegrated early in Slot's second season, and the Reds finished fifth, a full 25 points adrift of champions Arsenal. That is not a gap you can explain away with bad luck or a difficult run of fixtures. That is a season that fundamentally did not work, and the hierarchy acted accordingly once it was over.

Kerkez himself was one of the few Liverpool players who could hold his head up. In his first full season at the club following his move from Bournemouth, the Serbian left-back made the position his own, featuring in 34 Premier League matches and gradually squeezing out Andy Robertson, who has since departed for Tottenham. At 21, Kerkez looks very much like a player built for the long haul at Anfield.

But even with that personal progress as a backdrop, Kerkez is not dressing up what last season represented collectively. There is a refreshing honesty in how he talks about it — no spin, no deflection, just a straightforward acknowledgement that the squad fell well short of where they needed to be.

"Obviously last season was tough for everyone," he said. "When you are here, you need to play to win things. We had tough moments. We had moments when we fought back and then we had tough moments again. It was a good experience. You can learn a lot, pick up a lot. It wasn't good for our standards but we need to improve this year."

That phrase is the one that will stick. It wasn't good for our standards. From a player who spent much of last season establishing himself in this squad, that is as clear-eyed an assessment as you will hear from inside the dressing room. Liverpool do not do fifth place. Liverpool do not do 25-point gaps to the champions. The players know it, and Kerkez is not pretending otherwise.

Now the task falls to Andoni Iraola, the new man in the dugout, to take a squad that clearly still has quality within it and restore the kind of consistency that wins things at this level. Kerkez sounds ready for that challenge. Whether the rest of the squad is equally clear-eyed about what went wrong last year will be the real test of how quickly Iraola can make his mark.

A new manager, a squad with something to prove, and a left-back who got the worst possible alarm call on a May morning in Belgrade. Pre-season will tell us a great deal about whether this Liverpool side genuinely means what Kerkez is saying.