The Enshittification of Liverpool Fans, & How To See the Reds’ Season Clearly and in Context
FREE READ. The loudest Liverpool fans are becoming like the worst politicians and influencers
‘Enshittification’ is essentially Cory Doctorow’s term for how the internet has devolved into bad ideas, bad practices, bad incentives, with everything designed to engage and make money for shareholders, rather than provide the initial aim of a helpful service; everything suffers, and everyone suffers.
In the wider sense, I see that people are getting enshittified.
You just have to get off social media, and smell the fresh virtual air, to see how those still on it are like rabid petrol-drinking lunatics driving the whole world off a cliff in a blaze of burn-it-all-down insanity.
Or haven’t you noticed?
Algorithms push people towards crazy politics of all extremes, and at the same time, football fans to increasingly unhinged reactions, where almost no fan in the world is happy with their club, with some fans taking to storming training grounds and attacking their team’s players.
Most want change, just as in politics, everyone wants change. Change, change, change.
The two are not unconnected.
The culture, at the same time, is more immediate, more now now now, more irrational. It’s passed a tipping point.
To get any traction in the enshittified world you need to scream, shout, rage, hate, and generate heat for your output; or (like mine) it gently trundles along, never going viral (as I got out of that warped game), while a smart but limited readership sticks with me, as I limit my ambitions to not ever growing, just trundling along, earning enough to keep on keeping on.
To gain new subscribers, I’m not going to make a complete dickhead of myself (especially as I’m already enough of a dickhead in general; you don’t want to be adding more to that. Sheesh!)
Once sensible and sane fan sites and YouTube channels and podcasts – peopled by some I once respected – compete for clicks and views in this horrible attention economy, and what works is outrage (and transfer news, and sack the manager; ideally, signing new players on the day you sack the manager).
It’s got to the point where I really don’t care what they have to say anymore, as they’ve jumped the shark, nuked the fridge, and fucked the pie.
Cue all these once-sensible fans now being outraged all the time; cue them making their living and building bigger followings all doing the same thing, like sheep – very angry sheep, who may have had a beer or two. And some smart sheep who have been virtually lobotomised; and some not even as sharp as the average sheep to start with.
(I do get outraged about refs, but based on masses and masses of data. And I try to shame them into mere honest mistakes, and less dishonest ones.)
See them stoke each other up, none wanting to be the pathetic specimen who calls for patience. Competing within their own groups to be the most angry and outraged, and against other groups doing the same. A race to the bottom.
Studied patience is not so hot on the internet, as I know; and the modern internet is brutal. Enshittification appears to have no end, until we’re all gone, I guess.
(The good news? We might not have to wait long. Nukes are fired on England over a row about Greenland or the Middle East or Ukraine, and as they obliterate half the country, people find time to blame Arne Slot.)
I recently realised that the very worst time to talk about a football match is right after a football match; if you want to get to the truth. But hey, that’s when the iron is hot and the hot-takes so hot they melt logic.
It’s the time to enjoy a win, but not to think clearly.
There are so many flawed ways of ‘thinking’ that appear through the red mist of anger, frustration, outrage; brains run on old operating systems, from the Palaeolithic, designed to react to fear. Indeed, before brains evolved to think, and it was all primal reactions.
These people will rant with the far too frequent use of words like “unacceptable”, “embarrassing”, “disgraceful”, “negligent” and “scandalous”; words best used now and then, in the proper context. (And they will say “it’s UNACCEPTABLE” in caps quite a lot, as caps get you more brain-dead eyeballs.)
“Negligent” was what these same people said when an alternative to Virgil van Dijk was not signed in the summer of 2017 (patience, dear fellow fans); and again when Philippe Coutinho was sold to Barcelona for a mind-blowing £142m (patience, dear fellow fans).
So yes, we could have kept a soon-to-fade Coutinho, not had the money to buy Alisson, and gone for Harry Maguire instead of Virgl, with Simon Mignolet still in goal. Happy days ahead!
All I saw on Twitter, in the days before I realised it was rotting my brain and the brains of everyone else on there (but still able to see that what they said was utter bollocks) was that both of these were supposedly grossly negligent actions by the club.
I countered it, but nine years on, it’s only getting worse.
Boiled Lobster
I often mention the concept of the hedonic treadmill, as it’s like the reverse slow-boiling of a lobster.
We gradually want a bit more, a bit more, and what sated us a while back is just not good enough now.
This can be handy in keeping us motivated, and moving us to the next level, but it also means that you lose sight of progress. Or why you might not be able to access the next level right now.
A helpful psychological tool for getting to the truth is to reframe a situation, so that you remove emotions, hindsight bias, peak-end rule, the hedonic treadmill, negativity bias, the absolutely terrible mindfuck of ‘expectation’ (the more you want or expect, the more you feel let down), and dozens of other cognitive distortions that will be skewing your ‘thinking’ and your perceptions.
You reframe, to see clearly.
Let’s go back to 17:59, on May 26th.
Liverpool have won the league well over a month earlier, with games to spare, and had taken their foot off the gas, as is only sensible after a gruelling slog for eight months. (But let’s save those defeats up to beat the manager with, eh?)
In the middle of last season, the Reds xG Difference peaked at its highest yet (in the xG era, data 2017-onwards) on a rolling 10-game average, to top anything from Jürgen Klopp’s brilliant (but human and imperfect) tenure.
And some of Klopp’s peaks were remarkable, as we know.
That mid-season was exciting, full-throttle and as good as Liverpool have played according to the data; nothing slow or boring about it as the Reds raced clear – but also, Arne Slot had tweaked things, and the clear rebuild everyone said was required was thankfully delayed by a year. (It wasn’t “Klopp’s team” that won the league, but a mixture of many factors, including crediting the manager in charge, as is normal.)
Stability, lack of change, is what won the title in 2019/20. Not signings; there were none. Yet equally, there comes a point where you have to risk stability for new blood, or the team will all be old buggers.
I’ve said for over 15 years that on average, big summer spends tend to not work out immediately; but then in the second season the effect is clear. So you have to be patient.
I’ve said for even longer than new players take time to adjust, more often than not. And the more new players, the more variables at play.
May Joy
In May, fans couldn’t be happier. It’s all joyous; joyous beyond words.
Then Paul Doyle, with the most fucked-up road rage ever captured on camera, drives into hundreds of fans and is lucky dozens are not killed.
(Road rage, incidentally, has been likened to social media abuse, in that everyone is dehumanised as you look out through a screen and think ‘fuck you!’. Everyone is just an avatar getting in your way.)
No one dies, but it’s an alarming occasion; a warning to love what we have, as some fucking maniac could drive his car into them in a heartbeat.
Liverpool finally spend a fortune in the transfer market, as the impatient fans have called for.
Spend! Spend! Spend!
(The only other thing that moves the needle for football content is transfers. Transfers and outrage. Yes, it’s a grim world, and watch those who focus mostly on transfers and outrage, as they’re in it for the money or fame. That’s where the cash and clicks are. That, and hardcore goat porn, but I gave up on that after catching a nasty case of cryptosporidiosis.)
Fans had previously taken to singing about Liverpool having no money, when the books were always balanced; unlike other clubs who broke the rules and in essence, half-broke the sport.
(More on that in the year 2072, when Man City are docked half a point and fined 99 pence on Pep Guardiola’s 101st birthday.)
Fans had called for the mega-spend a year earlier, when Arne Slot and co. decided to assess and work with what was there, which was a Klopp team at the end of its cycle, with just the midfield rebuilt and yet to fully function; making tweaks to get the balance right for the short time before the rebuild.
We knew a period of potentially painful transition was due back in 2024.
Didn’t we?
Or did we forget?
Because forgetting is all a big part of this.
Which is why I’m going back to remind people, to view it from the perspective of reality.
Reality
Gone is Trent Alexander-Arnold, indisputably the best passer from deep positions the English game has ever seen (if far from its best defender); tempted by tap-ups from Real Madrid going back two years.
Flawed, but he has the best out-ball in the game. If you want to get the ball upfield quickly with one pass, he’s your man.
(How’s he doing at Real Madrid? How’s Xabi Alonso doing at Real Madrid? Asking for a friend.)
Next, Luis Díaz, nearing 30, wants a big-money move to Barça, who have been tapping him up for eons, and whose idea of big money these days is 30 pesetas and a half-eaten chorizo, as they pull more levers than the old station guard at St Pancras.
Díaz, so derided by Liverpool fans in 2023/24 (especially) for his lack of end-product (he missed a ton of chances that season), goes to Bayern instead, to join a team that has all the money and all the best players, and steamrollers everyone every week.
Díaz was smartly retooled as a false nine by Slot, but people forget that.
Darwin Núñez, bless his purblind socks and skew-whiff shooting boots, is sold for decent money, too.
We loved him, dear Darwin, but he wasn’t good enough in the end (a bit like Federico Chiesa, whom we also love, but also isn’t as good as his cult status suggests; a fine player, but not a solution).
Núñez was a pure Klopp buy, but if people think the current finishing is wayward, then both the stats and the eye-test tells us Darwin was a big backwards step (but played a part in a few key games last season).
Other players will depart; handy squad players who want to be in the starting XI, like Jarell Quansah, Ben Doak and Harvey Elliott (how’s it going, Harv?). It suits Liverpool to reinvest the money, but lost is that intrinsic knowledge.
Liverpool lose the handiness of their slot-in skills, as players who know the system and can do a job; instead, they go and in Elliott’s case, get completely frozen out.
But the Reds’ big spending pretty much all makes sense; lots of incredible talents signed, to cover pretty much all the areas required. Another centre-back cannot be got over the line, but the deal was done until the selling club’s owner has a panic down the gym. (But Marc Guéhi is not the answer to shitball.)
Liverpool sign Jeremie Frimpong, one of the fastest ‘attacking’ players in world football, who is cover for Mo Salah as well as a right-back option.
Milos Kerkez, raw but the best young left-back in England, signs too.
In between, the Reds buy the magisterial Florian Wirtz, who doesn’t look built for English football, but whose brilliance will surely shine in time – as I continued to note until well into the winter – just as it took Luka Modrić, Robert Pires and various other artists at least a year to adjust to the game over here; some, like Mo Salah and Kevin De Bruyne failed and were shipped off ‘permanently’ to Italy and Germany respectively before their later second acts.
All of those are older than Wirtz at the time of first arrival in England or when sold as flops; Wirtz had only just turned 22.
We’re skipping forward a bit here, but a couple of months ago I wrote:
“Klopp took over 10 years ago, in October 2015, but Firmino’s first goal was in late November in a famous 4-1 win at Man City; his second in mid-January 2016 (with a brace against Arsenal). He ended the season with 10 league goals in the second half of the season after just one in the first.”
I used this as a precise example of how I saw Florian Wirtz, who floats a bit deeper and wider than Firmino, flourishing; just as I used data and video evidence to tell everyone from last April onwards that Hugo Ekitiké was the striker I’d invest in, whilst others who misread the data said he couldn’t finish (I said they were wrong).
Ekitiké? Goals, assists, everything. A rare case of hitting the ground running, like Fernando Torres.
Wirtz? A slow burner, but now as bright as anything in the game.
Goals? One in December, three already in January. And he’s still only 22, still capable of getting stronger, faster and much, much better. Each week, he, Frimpong and Kerkez are getting better; Ekitiké remains a gem. Isak is on crutches.
July, July
So, back to July 1st. Frimpong, Wirtz and Kerkez have all been signed.
Liverpool look in good shape to defend their title, but it’s a summer of big transition. The early signings are mouth-watering, and more are on the way.
And defending the title is hard, as we know; Liverpool have only successful done so in the last 100 years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
I’ve called this Alternate Season Syndrome, where teams put so much into winning the title or overachieving, then may experience Gold Medal Syndrome (the depression that is essentially a huge comedown after the euphoria) and a bit of burnout. Some individuals may get complacent, too. Or just a tad less hungry.
Most titles won during the Reds’ 17-year Imperial Phase (1973-1990) were in alternate years.
The last four from the Imperial Phase were 1984, 1986, 1988 and 1990. (In between, Everton won it in 1985 and 1987.)
Klopp’s last two great seasons were 2020 and 2022; Rafa Benítez’s two great European seasons 2005 and 2007, and his best league season 2009.
The pre-Imperial Phase, with Bill Shankly, saw the Reds win the title in 1964 and 1966, but the Imperial Phase proper began in 1973.
Arsenal had 2002 and 2004; Chelsea 2015 and 2017. The last two for Man United were 2011 and 2013. The first recent ones for Man City were 2012 and 2014. Only a few clubs go back-to-back.
And of course, Slot – for what has he ever done for us? – is one of only three living Liverpool managers to win the league. It’s not like the club is the dominant force in an English game with many strong teams right now; more than ever, in fact.
So it was always likely to be a difficult season, unless everything went perfectly.
Then, Johnny Heitinga went to manage Ajax; a promotion worthy of his talent, even if won’t work out.
Heitinga is not the key to any success, but a contributor (see my recent article about how the genius is always the guy in the background who doesn’t then prove to be the genius).
It’s more change. Okay, July 2nd.
Boy, this is a great summer! The parade turned dark, but we’re all still basking in the afterglow of glory, while many of the players have been in Portugal attending the wedding of perhaps the most likeable man in the squad (and a key connector of all the players), Diogo Jota, who marries his childhood bride with his beautiful three young children present.
Life Is Perfect
Life couldn’t get any better.
Okay, so it’s nearly time for preseason. The players are heading back to Liverpool. Everyone is buzzing.
Diogo, whose lungs were pierced by his damaged ribs when fouled against Chelsea many months earlier, has had minor surgery, and is advised not to fly back to Merseyside.
Right, hands up.
Who is reading this, and is a total fucking gobshite?
Put your hand up if you’re a total fucking gobshite. Do it, now.
I mean honestly, if you’re whinging about Liverpool and Slot and anything else, put your hand up.
Put down the microphone, the camera, the iPhone, the keyboard, and say yes, I’m a total fucking gobshite.
I’m sorry. I forgot. I lost perspective. I lost the plot. I was suckered by my emotions and I’ve been an utter bellend. I’ve been enshittified.
Because what happens next is so horrific that its impact is not simply of a car overturning and catching fire on some foreign shore, and two men dying.
Its impact is not fleeting; not healed by painkilling injections and rehab in the gym. A quick rubdown for the lads is not going to solve this one. Not even deeply invasive surgery or six months in plaster will solve this one.
What happens next is still happening now, as that’s how grief works. Not necessarily consciously in every minute, but it’s not over, either.
Because what happens next was also destructive to preseason – which is needed to build stamina and optimum fitness for the season, as well as to integrate the new players.
But who the fuck cares about preseason?
Did you, then?
Of course not. Because for a few minutes you were a human being, with decency, and perspective.
Go back. Go back and think about it. Go back and think about it for even just a few seconds. And then stop being a fucking dickhead.
(Again, I’ve been a total dickhead in the past, but I’m in Dickhead Recoverers Anonymous – albeit I may have just blown my cover. But don’t tell anyone about my goat porn sideline, at least until I was sidelined by it.)
Think back to preseason, and the remarkable scenes at the end of the game at Preston, where the players and crowd saluted Saint Diogo for what felt like hours; players cried. Fans cried.
I was at the Bournemouth game, where Mo Salah cried. I cried. It felt spiritual.
I mean, I remember.
Do you?
Or are you less primordial human at this stage and more gigantic orange goldfish with a TikTok or YouTube account?
Fans were going to respect the memory of Diogo, apparently, and not be a bunch of whiny, moaning numpties. Fans had things in perspective.
For about three days, it turns out.
Saint Diogo’s song is still sung week after week, and none of the lessons learnt. It’s sung, perhaps, to be seen to be sung by people who want to be seen to be caring, and then, soon after, boo the players who were trying their best and unlucky not to win.
Fans sing You’ll Never Walk Alone, then act like they’ve sung What Have You Done for Me Lately.
Klopp has talked about how much he hates modern fans who want managers sacked, and don’t allow for things to be built or rebuilt, and why he’s glad he’s out of the nonsense.
No one listens. But, “Bring back Klopp!”.
Tell yourself, afresh, that all this is going to happen from July 3rd.
Then, the rest, below, will happen too.
The Rest
You get the massive spend you were after.
Of this much-desired and screamed-for spending spree in the summer, Alexander Isak was a clear “must have” for a lot of fans.
Fuck what it costs, just get him.
Isak will arrive, but very late, after months of inactivity, as the Reds have to deal with the Saudi state’s personal persuasions, to get their man freed from his Geordie jail.
When he finally gets his first two league goals, having unsurprisingly looked off the pace and burdened by a record price tag (and initially with no idea how to gel with all these new players), he has his leg snapped in two by a 6’4” 15-stone one-man wrecking machine who is making an honest but dangerously late attempt at winning the ball, and succeeds only in snapping the striker’s tibia.
Liverpool also buy who Italy’s finest-ever coaches think is the generational talent of their country’s defending, 18-year-old Giovanni Leoni, a tall, stylish, brilliant young player. An utter Rolls Royce; a Virgil van Dijk in the making.
Cue Leoni’s ACL torn to shreds on his hitherto impressive debut. The ‘next Paolo Maldini’ is now about as useful as Virgil in 2020 after being hit by an out of control Pickford truck.
Stefan Bajčetić, the purest defensive midfielder on the books who is talented on the ball too, and still one of the best all-round young midfielders I’ve ever seen, is still not fit.
I mention this as he’s just one of pretty much every Liverpool teenager to break through in the past decade to then suffer up to years of injury hell, as the step up in modern, ultra-fast, brutal English football is too much for any growing body.
(Further afield, anyone seen Romeo Lavia since 2023? What happened with Evan Ferguson? How is Levi Colwill right now? Where’s Kobbie Mainoo? All these as teenagers were at one point starting every week, almost all hobbled by injuries. Remember how good Kaide Gordon was at 17?)
Rio Ngumoha emerges brilliantly – a great thing – but to play him, as I said months ago having studied the massive rise in serious and career-ending injuries to teens and been warning of this for a couple of years, would be to risk his career.
He seems to have grown inches already this season, and Jayden Danns has had a horrific time with his growth spurts. (On Rio, I’ve listed all the players whose careers have ended or plateaued due to injuries all season long, and won’t list them all again.)
Frimpong, the fastest, most direct player in the squad – proper 37kph stuff – who offers the unique quality of old-fashioned go-outside-the-man-and-roast-him (and can score goals too), suffers two serious hamstring injuries, with hamstrings not an issue last season for Liverpool players.
But this has been a far from ideal preseason, as noted, and injuries beget injuries; players come back and get injured again.
Tell yourself in the summer that Frimpong will miss a huge chunk of the season, as the one super-pacy addition who can go past any full-back in the world.
That Conor Bradley, after various minor injuries, will see his knee almost explode in a horrific freak injury or ligament and bone, that means that Liverpool have had about a dozen different injuries to right-backs alone.
(We obviously could have guessed that poor Joe Gomez would be injured again, but selling Gomez would be like turfing out a beloved, loyal dog.)
Tell yourself that young Kerkez, who initially struggled at AZ Alkmaar, and then AC Milan (who foolishly showed him no patience), and again initially at Bournemouth, and who is still only 21 when he arrives, will be a bit nervy at the start, and a bit positionally unsure of himself in a new system.
(I was at his difficult debut against his old club after the vigil for Diogo, and did okay, if not great, against the taller, faster, springier Antoine Semenyo, and the guy in front of me literally spent the entire 90 minutes shouting that Kerkez was rubbish and that he should fuck off. This is just one example from my hundreds of games in the past 36 years that made me realise someone saying “I was at the game” means nothing to me, as I could take my dog to the game if allowed, and he would be as knowledgeable as some human lumps of lard who go every week.)
Tell yourself that as the season progresses, Kerkez, like Andy Robertson who didn’t even make almost all of Klopp’s first 25 matchday squads (or Fabinho a year later who was kept back from a debut until November), will start to blossom, as is common.
Tell yourself that Wirtz will be that slow burn, as he works to add kilos of muscle without losing his spark and zip, and build up his stamina, and adjust to the brutal treatment and the time you’re allowed on the ball.
Tell yourself that he’ll have to cope with the massive price tag, and it’ll be 2026 before he’s purring and totally running games, and creating and scoring; and you may tell yourself, back in the summer, that this would be perfectly reasonable.
Perfectly reasonable. We’ll wait for that, just as in 2024 we’d all have gladly waited 2-3 years for the league title, and got it in 12 months; now a second in a row is a DISGRACE, it’s NEGLIGENT, it’s SCANDALOUS, it’s SHAMEFUL, it’s EMBARRASSING.
Remind yourself that this was always going to be a season of transition, and these can often be difficult.
Tell yourself that there will be weekly refereeing howlers, VAR taking away good goals and giving penalties against for non-fouls outside the box, and that the PGMOL will only make it harder.
Then, that the league is going to go full-on shitball. Those who want Klopp back may be wise to notice how a lot of less-good teams just bypass the press now.
I recently published a piece about how Klopp’s 80 league games against the most shitball-like teams (Burnley, Stoke, Everton, Watford, West Brom, et al) saw him fail to win four in every ten; the same as against the very best sides, against which he should have won fewer, whilst winning more against the shitball teams – if you judge it on opposition quality, not opposition tactics.
Shitball is hard to overcome. On average, Klopp’s teams were worse, based on expected results, against Shitball than the best football teams.
But most people won’t remember such realities. Shitball, low-block, time-wasting, long-throw nonsense is hard to play against, and hard to keep up any pressure against.
No one will pass out from the back, so pressing can be useless. Teams will slow the game down, slow it down further, and slow it until there almost is no game. Unreliable refs will make bookings in added time only for timewasting, then not add the time wasted.
That Liverpool, prior to the Burnley game, had contested nearly 50% more aerial duels than last season (and are on course for over 1,000 this season – and that’s duels, not just normal headers), is a sign that this season has been super-weird, and suits the big, bullying Arsenal, who don’t play exciting football with their huge squad and exciting players, but play Cornerball.
(An aside: Slot’s elite set-piece coach is denied a visa in 2024 due to earlier signs of the enshittification of the internet, that led to a needless referendum, which succeeded on false/bullshit promises; even if people who voted to Leave may have been in chronically under-funded and run-down areas, looking for someone to blame; and even if the EU was far from perfect. As such, blame Brexit for Liverpool’s strangely poor attacking set-pieces this season. And blame social media for Brexit.)
Even though the Reds win rate on aerials remains elite, the fact that no team ever wins more than 60% of its aerial duels means 40% falling the way of the opposition, which is the whole point of shitball. Yes, you can try and win the second ball but no one knows where it will land.
That means 100-200 more loose balls from aerial duels this season for the Reds.
And in the Reds’ box, week after week, they fell perfectly for someone to convert, as is the randomness of the aerial duel and how the ball can land anywhere. And these players, faced with one-in-three chances, took them every time.
You may find yourself moaning at slow football, but it’s the slowing of matches. That teams don’t take as many risks at the back to pen them in with pressing. It’s not so long ago teams took quick free-kicks at the back; now the keeper takes them, like it’s the bad old days, only with additional time-wasting.
That giving the ball away in 2025/26 leads to accusations of being “too open”; but if you commit men forward, some Olympic sprinter will catch you out. You need 11 men forward attacking with gusto and pace – show some fucking ambition! – where there’s no room to move, and 11 men back at the same time, so as to not be accused of being stupid, naive, gung-ho, too open.
Think about how giving the ball away (throw, goalkick, free-kick) leads to 60 seconds of a grown man apparently forgetting how to take a throw or kick a football. Watch the opposition bench repeatedly throw balls onto the pitch, “by accident”. Watch the ref let it slide, or further slow things down by booking them and then not adding the time he just spent trying to write the player’s name or number because he’s not the sharpest tool in the box.
Tell your old summer self that, while in 2024/25 Slot managed to eke the last great (and I mean great) season out of Mo Salah by allowing him to stay upfield, that in 2025/26 teams have cottoned on. They’ll use that channel, to double-up on whichever one of the Reds’ full-backs is not in rehab.
You were probably amongst those who said it would criminal and negligent to not give him the lucrative new deal, aged 33; even though these late-career mega-deals famously fail many, many times.
Mo himself hasn’t been right emotionally, maybe sated by the new contract (or no longer fighting like a dervish to earn it), and then distraught at the loss of Diogo.
Think ahead, and how fans want Slot to drop him, but Slot stands by him; only to be publicly lambasted by the player he stood by. Fans forgive Salah quite easily for something pretty treacherous in footballing terms (albeit I don’t mind the forgiveness if he knuckles down when back from AFCON.)
Even Jürgen knew to get out before that was an issue.
Tell yourself that Salah will be dropped, and Liverpool will then go on a 12-game unbeaten run, with some unlucky draws, some great wins, including away at Italian leaders Inter; a superb controlling of the game at Arsenal when denied two stonewall pens; and an xG Difference against Burnley that Liverpool have roughly matched only 78 times since 2017, and won 69 of those; one of the 10% failures being a 1-1 draw against ... Burnley in 2017, under Klopp.
Tell yourself that you’ll moan that Liverpool aren’t playing well when they win the first five games, then moan when they’ll play better when not winning games. And you’ll moan when it’s a 12-game unbeaten run, and ignore the games against the better teams, like Inter and Arsenal away, and just talk about Burnley.
(In other words, you’ll only be happy when winning in style, and comfort, 3-0 or 4-0, no alarms, no surprises; which is rare. Thus, expectations have you set up to be miserable.)
Tell yourself that the opposition will somehow convert an unsustainably high level of finishing for the first six months-or-so of the season. That they’ll score worldies, or take all of their one-in-three chances. That they’ll get key goals with deflections.
Tell yourself that Liverpool will be wasteful (the open-play xG creation remains elite), but then again, so was Luis Díaz in 2023/24 (massively so, albeit his parents had been kidnapped), and as was poor Diogo Jota in a couple of his seasons. So was Salah for periods, including this season. Finishing can be random.
That Liverpool will have six or seven clear penalties denied them, then when getting the first one in five months, Dom, who has never missed one, will smash it against the bar.
So much, huh?
Remember, Remember
Remind yourself, as you feel the fresh agony of Saint Diogo’s dying, that you said you weren’t going to be that dickhead this season.
That you were going to be an adult; human, even.
Would Diogo have wanted Slot gone?
Did you even read what Klopp said about modern fans, and their impatience, and how he absolutely hates it?
Have you seen how Trent is doing, or poor Harv at Villa?
Did you see how Xabi Alonso, whose football is similar to Arne Slot bar formation (patient passing, working an opening and not giving the ball away cheaply), was sacked at Real Madrid due to player mutiny and fan unrest?
Alonso, who has done just one great job in football, to Slot’s three?
(Outsiders AZ, joint top when league annulled in 2020; Feyenoord, rare title win followed by cup success; Liverpool, rare title win, only club’s 2nd in 35 years, not that you’d know it from people right now. EDIT: and maybe through no fault of his own, but the theme of this piece, Alonso’s Leverkusen fell away fairly dramatically the year after their miracle season, to finish 13 points and 38GD behind Bayern, despite keeping the team pretty much together. It’s not easy to be at the very top of your game as a team, year after year, unless you are so far ahead of the pack financially and in other terms.)
Do you not remember or know of the early struggles of Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, and Klopp himself? – the three greatest managers, arguably, in the club’s history?
The dips each manager had early on, in the middle, and later on? I’ve shared graphs of their trajectories, their masses of ups and downs when plotted in game-by-game order.
And the fact that I had to steadfastly defend Klopp in 2017 when people said he was no better than Brendan Rodgers as both shared a mere 52% win rate, and that Klopp’s teams couldn’t break down low blocks like ... Burnley?
Do you not remember the implosion of 2020/21, or the ageing team and horrible underlying numbers of early 2023 (before Klopp began to rebuild the midfield), and again, how football is a series of ups and downs.
And have you not worked it out by now – by now, goddammit – that progress is not linear, and regressions are not free-falls into oblivion?
Just the downs before the ups, if you wait long enough?
Go back and figuratively look at yourself in the mirror in the summer of 2025.
Think of all that will lay ahead. All that you still can’t even imagine and wouldn’t even want to dare to imagine.
Think of the tragedy, and the challenges.
Think of your humanity, before you lose it again on social media or in the studio with your mates after the game and a few bevvies.
Then think of Liverpool being a very decent 4th in the table (pretty much the average league position under Klopp), well-placed in the Champions League, and 12 games unbeaten ... and wonder WHY THE FUCKETY FUCK you’re acting like a spoilt, forgetful, ungrateful, entitled dickhead.
It’s Not Too Late (Okay, It Might Be)
Yet it’s not too late.
Or maybe it is, but don’t let the negativity virus take you for good. You can still be brave and stand up for reality, not perverse perceptions and gross incentives. You can fight off the bravado and online bullshit of never being positive as that’s so passé.
Cynicism is far cooler, and often wrong.
I’ll cut you some slack and say it’s enshittification. That is the modern incentive structure. That you’re trapped in some addiction to the outrage and the clicks and the fume, and wanting the love of the angry unthinking mob.
One day you’ll look back and be ashamed of yourself, but it’s best to try and shake your head a bit before then, if possible.
Right, I’m off to a livestock event; I hear there are some goats up for auction.