Slot Has Had Long Enough! He Must Go! FSG Must Go Too!

EVERYTHING must go! Club must go! ALL-CAPS MUST BE USED!

There have always been the ill-informed, the paranoid, the delusional, the impatient, the uneducated (in general, or on specific issues, or those just unprepared to learn even if presented with opportunities) and the conspiracy-minded, before getting onto the more technical medical terms, such as ‘batshit crazy’ and ‘a few sandwiches short of a picnic’.

In the past, those poor, deeply disturbed and mentally unwell patients would smear messages onto padded asylum walls with their own faeces.

And in the old days, some underpaid, beleaguered cleaner would wipe the walls clean, and that would be the end of it.

Now, such smearings pop up on Google, via ‘popular on X’ (which is how I get to see what I don’t want to see), and below the articles on places like the Athletic. (I shudder to think what’s written under tabloid articles.) People TikTok it.

We are not our thoughts. Stop and listen to them, and they just appear. The problem is believing them, then taking them to the world.

I often wonder if it’s worth ‘arguing’, via these articles – as I no longer engage on social media – with the unhinged.

The issue is that you always feel these opinions are more prevalent than they truly are, as they get amplified – as if the asylum staff photographed the walls and sent the photos to the newspapers, and the editors took it all as gospel, with front-page headlines screaming, “I Just Did a Shit, and It Sang Blue Suede Shoes”.

Yet at the same time, they gain traction. Bad ideas can sometimes be more appealing, as they go for the heart and the primordial brain, and manifest as ‘feelings’.

(I feel that the most demeaned, derided and discriminated-against class of people are bald men with glasses. I’ll say it again: one day my fellow blind baldies will unite, and we’ll take over the world, if we can see where we’re going.)

We shouldn’t mock the mentally unwell, but at the same time, we shouldn’t revere what they say.

And a lot of the time it’s more about people with personality disorders, which is something that me and my 62 omnipotent alter egos find annoyingly self-centred (especially God Paul, and God Paul II).

So it makes sense, from time to time, to try and understand why people are so ill-informed, and thank our lucky stars that we’re not them, trapped inside their lunatic minds; albeit they often seem the types to think they know everything (yet have never heard of Dunning-Kruger), and perhaps live in blissful ignorance.

Yet at the same time, plenty do seem quite angry and unhappy, and don’t seem to enjoy anything to do with football, except laughing at other people when they fail.

They want transfers, transfers and more transfers, but then give up on these players after one game. They don’t look at context, as that’s too complicated.

Last year, Liverpool didn’t even have a proper director of football (to sort contracts, etc.), and there was also a search mid-season for a new manager; and now there’s a new director of football, various elite people returning above him, a new manager (aka head coach) and a whole new backroom staff.

I started writing this piece last week. And I noted: I’ve already seen arguments that Arne Slot was always the wrong appointment, and that’s now clear to Liverpool fans. Yes, we’re there already. So, it’s time for the antidote.

**This article is for paying TTT Main Hub subscribers only, as we celebrate 15 years of paywalled content, and, to date, only one case of offensive faecal muralling**