Former Liverpool defender Andy Robertson has said that the death of teammate Diogo Jota in 2025 was "horrendous" and had a major impact on the players that knew him.
Speaking on The Overlap, the Scotland international expressed empathy for the new signings who joined Liverpool last summer -- among them were Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz -- as he stated that the club was "heartbroken" and the new arrivals struggled to settle in.
Robertson also said that Jota's death definitely had an impact on the team's performances, as players came to terms with the loss of one of their friends.
Liverpool finished fifth last season and head coach Arne Slot was sacked in the summer.
"It's difficult to describe or talk about. What we went through was horrendous," he said.
"The new signings, they're coming into a club that was heartbroken. I felt so sorry for these guys because they'd signed, and they'd signed for big money, and it took them months to settle in. We didn't care about football.
"That was the truth of it, we didn't care about football because we'd just lost one of our best mates in the changing room.
"All footballers have that edge and, when you lose that edge sometimes, you can't perform to your best. I think last season we lost the edge.
"When I look back on it now, I think we lost that determination a little bit because at times we were maybe thinking 'what's the point? Look at what Jota's family is going through, I mean look at his kids...'"
Robertson also said that Jota was the friend of his Liverpool teammates, not just a footballer.
"We were grieving. He was our mate at the end of the day, he wasn't a footballer to us. He was a teammate, a friend. For us, it was incredibly difficult.
"The week before he died, I was at his wedding. 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."
Asked if he felt that he was able to grieve or if he felt like he just had to go straight back to being a footballer, Robertson praised Slot and said that the players felt they could speak to one another about what had happened.
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"We spoke a lot. The manager was really good to be fair. Our pre-season was barely anything because Arne said: 'If you don't want to train, you don't train.' And that was his attitude of the pre-season," he said.
"We had a psychologist that worked at the club anyway and he set up little groups where you could grab a coffee and talk. We did that quite a few times and I think that helped.
"It was incredibly difficult for us but we just couldn't help feel sorry for his family, for his wife. Their life got flipped completely upside down ...We managed to get through it together, we just said that we'll always remember him.
"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 perhaps that's why last season was so tough."
Robertson is now playing for Tottenham Hotspur, who have had a difficult start to the season -- having picked up just two points from five games so far.
Liverpool have enjoyed an unbeaten start to the season and currently sit sixth in the Premier League table.
