Not for the first time this season boos could be heard ringing around Anfield. Can this state of affairs really be repaired?…
PEOPLE have lost their minds and I can see why.
Anfield is usually expectant and supportive by nature. There’s usually a Day One where past crimes are paid and we can start again. Just win today and we’ll go from there. Sometimes even a draw is a start, but not right now.
Anfield underwent quite the journey on Saturday. From supportive to confusion to angry confusion and back to supportive again before the substitution of Rio Ngumoha. Then people lost their minds and everything developed into a fury competition.
Anger and frustration I get, but I can’t get on board with booing in any context. It’s childish and smacks of being spoiled. Oh, I’m fully onboard with the central message. It’s just that we take great pleasure in deriding a club not a million miles away for doing it for little reason and now we’re doing it at a substitution — a substitution I can sort of understand, regardless of how it blunted us further. But boos aren’t for me. Everyone else boos. Liverpool don’t. Now we do.
I was asked ‘But how else can we vocalise our frustration at the manager?’ by various furious people on Saturday afternoon. Well, I don’t think Arne Slot was in any doubt about how the supporters felt about him at that point. I like the Spanish hanky-waving thing. It’s more damning. That’s if that’s your thing.
But at some point we’re going to have to look at repair. It’s too easy to calm all ills with ‘Just sack Slot’ as it supposes that a simple reverse on everything will bring back the Champions. It’s also fair to say that there are things out of his control.
‘Go on then, genius. What would you do?’ was one response to my email last week. A fair question, albeit one that supposes I’m paid to do that sort of thing. We can’t fix the main forwards all being out at the same time, but I’d have a look at wasting an aggressive midfielder at right-back, particularly when Alexis Mac Allister is begging to be released to a beach (though he was marginally better this week, as he at least made a tackle or two) and the inclusion of Jeremie Frimpong in any formation that doesn’t involve wing-backs which we don’t play. Neither a defender nor a front player. Just quick and another lad played out of position because we’ve got no one else.
But many things are in his hands and when you see senior players squabbling on the pitch, wondering who’s picking up who and who’s going to press next and with whom, it’s not right and has to stem from a basic coaching issue. Either his instructions are too elaborate, they don’t work or the players are ignoring him and are just muddling through it without direction but with bucketloads of fear.
Anger is fine. It’s immediate and is the occasional product of an emotional club and fanbase; but at some point we have to look at turning it around.
Stu Wright, the personification of ire on the Post-Match Show, made the point about the manager’s press conference when he talked about ‘getting over the line’ and into the Champions League. Liverpool shouldn’t be falling over line as if the very act itself justifies the nonsense that’s made even that basic requirement. I can see Slot’s point though. We just want this season to end. Write it off and move on.
But is the final whistle against Brentford going to draw that line? Many will come, many will go and the injured will recover. What can Arne Slot do with all of that? Which is the typical Arne Slot season? The shite we’ve seen recently or the one that walked to the title. I’m not sure.
I asked a similar question after the first two Brendan Rodgers campaigns. His first was woeful, his second, one of our favourites ever. We’re in a similar boat here. The question is, do we take the risk? By the end of Brendan’s third season, most of us wanted a change.
Two games left, thank God. The anger will continue, probably regardless of what happens in them as the tone is set, but we have to work on putting this to bed and go back to what we’re best at, with or without Arne Slot. No one wants to boo forever and people will eventually want their minds back.
