Earlier in the week, I recorded a TikTok video talking about how disgusted I was with the booing at the end of the Tottenham Hotspur match. It isn’t that I thought we played well, or that I think that supporters should always just like it or lump it when it comes to the performances that they have to watch. Instead, I just couldn’t believe that this season of all seasons, people chose to boo the players and management team. When the news of Diogo Jota’s passing broke in the summer, it left everyone in the world of football in a state of shock. Liverpool supporters in particular were hit with a sense of unreality, with no one quite knowing how they were supposed to carry on as normal. Many of us, perhaps even the majority, said that we would be compassionate and understanding of the club for the forthcoming campaign, such was the extent to which it rocked everyone. Our pre-season preparations were impacted, whilst the players looked like shadows of themselves for the first few months. Little wonder they seemed to struggle with even the slightest sense of adversity.
As a grown man I don’t’ boo’ so didn’t today, I do get the sentiment though. The discontent isn’t with the team or even the manager (some is) it’s a criticism of the way we set up, the lack of pressing & aggression, the slow, predictable play that kills the atmosphere.
Unacceptable at Anfield. #LFC
— Rab ☮️ (@rewerbyor.bsky.social) 15 March 2026 at 19:45
I explained all that in the video, but the majority of comments I got were from people either saying, “The booing wasn’t anything to do with Diogo”, or it was people saying that I ‘keep banging on about it’. I may be on my own on this, but I think the death of one of their friends and colleagues has had a profound impact on everyone at the club, from the manager down. I don’t think there is any aspect of this season that hasn’t been affected by what happened, with the issues continuing to influence things even now. The point I was making was that we all said we’d be compassionate and understanding, yet less than a year later a sizeable majority of people inside Anfield chose to boo the people who had gone through that tragic loss. No, we can’t keep pointing to it forever as a reason for how poor we’ve been this season, but I do think it has to be borne in mind until the end of the campaign at least. Until the players get to properly rest, complete with a full pre-season building up their fitness and working on patterns of play, the tragedy will loom large over them all.
It was a Full-Throttle Performance
If you wanted to be particularly churlish, you could point to the fact that there was only a small section of Galatasaray supporters inside Anfield last night, meaning that their players didn’t get the kind of backing that they’re used to. You could also say that few teams we will face over the remainder of the season, if any at all, will be as compliant as the Turkish side was, all but rolling over to allow us to walk through them and score at will. Yet you can only beat what is in front of you, with Tottenham Hotspur being in a not dissimilar vein of form when they visited at the weekend and yet coming up against a Liverpool side that didn’t have it in them to put them to the sword. In many ways, Galatasaray were exactly the right opponents for us to face, given the fact that it was at Anfield, under the lights on a European night and they had a lead to protect from the first-leg. Scousers are many things, but defiant is certainly on the list and no one was willing to allow this season to unravel without a fight. We might go down, but we need to make sure we go down swinging.
Going to need to see more of this, @ Slot.
— Sam McGuire (@sammcguire90.bsky.social) 19 March 2026 at 13:23
In terms of whether it can be the blueprint for the remaining games of the campaign, I’m not entirely sure it can be simply because of how full-throttle it was for practically the duration. Do we really have enough in the legs to be able to be so gung-ho time and time again? I don’t think the players are fit enough to be able to pull that off on a consistent basis, which is why I don’t think the manager has been asking them to do so before now. It definitely felt like the players were saying ‘enough is enough’ after the booing, ensuring that they left as much as they could out on the pitch. There was no shirking, no rolling over to have our bellies tickled; not even Mo Salah’s missed penalty had an impact on them in the same way that it would have done earlier in the season. I have no idea whether Arne Slot is the right man for the job, but I do think the players are still playing for him, in spite of whether some people might suggest otherwise. It might be that we can only produce this sort of display in the big games we have left, but hopefully, we’ll have enough of them.
The Crowd Was Up For It
Do the players need to lift the crowd, or does the crowd need to lift the players? It’s a little of both, I think. What I think we can say is that neither party has been living up to their end of the bargain so far. There are countless reasons for that, not the least of which is the fact that the football club is making it extremely difficult to even get into the ground in the first place. The enhanced checks being carried out by the stewards mean that supporters are angry when they get into the stadium, having had to wait around for a long time to be able to get to their seat. Whilst they might be necessary for everyone’s security, it’s fair to say that the club needs to do more to speed things up and ensure that people are excited rather than annoyed to see the match that’s about to take place. The crowd was well and truly up for things last night, which went up another level when the players showed that they were in the mood for some fun too. Crunching tackles and passes played with zip gave the crowd more to get excited about, which gee’d the players up more in turn.
Arne Slot full of praise for the Anfield crowd after a huge European night
🗣️ "Our fans showed that they can create an even bigger atmosphere than the one we experienced at Galatasaray."
The place was rocking 🔴🔥
— Anfield Index (@anfieldindex.com) 18 March 2026 at 22:35
I am of the opinion that there are a whole host of reasons why this season has been the way it has, but the more the players can play a style of football that encourages the crowd, the more the crowd will take encouragement from it. I’ve seen so many people blame Arne Slot for it, which is why so many people want to see him sacked, but I can’t believe that he’s actively wanted us to play the way we’ve been playing all season. I’m on record as saying that I don’t think he’s had a good campaign, but I also don’t think he’s turned into a bad manager overnight. He is a winner, which is what he’s already proven at Anfield with the title we won, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him try to find ways to harness that energy moving forward. Whether he’ll be around long enough to do so is a question that Fenway Sports Group will have to answer, but an Anfield that is bouncing is one that has been Liverpool overcome all sorts of difficulties in the years gone by, and I imagine it will continue to do so in the future. Long may that continue.
