John Aldridge reflects on the reaction to Liverpool’s draw with Burnley in the first half of his weekly ECHO column
Arne Slot saw his side drop points at home to Burnley(Image: Gaspafotos/MB Media/Getty Images)
I can understand why some supporters booed after the final whistle on Saturday. I’ve been going to Liverpool matches for 60 years and it happens very rarely.
It tells you the frustration on the terraces. The supporters aren’t happy with the performances or the style of play. It’s slow, it’s ponderous.
The lads are told what to do and it’s not like they don’t try. They are creating chances, they want to win. They put in a right shift against Burnley. But it looks passionate-less. On the pitch and off it. There’s nothing to get the fans up and out of their seats, and nothing for the lads to feed off either.
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The atmosphere has died. Anfield has always had a fantastic atmosphere but now you seeing supporters getting frustrated and leaving in their hordes before the game has even finished.
I can understand why they booed and I can understand their frustration. I’m a supporter and I’m frustrated too.
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People say we should always get behind the team. But if you keep getting knocked down, you can’t always get back up.
It’s horrible to see. It’s not all around the ground, let’s get it right. It was probably about 20% of the stadium that actually booed. But 20% of 60,000 Liverpool supporters, that’s a lot of people.
Things won’t improve unless Slot changes philosophy
We do have to give due respect to Burnley, they defended really well. But we have to do better as a team as well.
We were 1-0 up. And with all due respect, they didn’t throw the kitchen sink at us. There was a five-minute spell where they had a couple of chances, we kept giving the ball away and Ibrahima Konate nearly scored an own goal.
If you keep making mistakes, you’ll pay the price. And that’s what happened. They get the goal, having not taken our own chances, and we’re back on level terms.
We did have a few chances after that to win the game, but we snatched at them because we were desperate. We were panicked.
We were putting in so many good crosses but no-one got on the end of them.
It’s something I complained about in my column recently. I was a poacher as a striker so I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The build-up is a bit quicker than it was, like against Sunderland and Leeds, but it’s still not quick enough. As I said, it’s ponderous.
That’s how Arne Slot wants to play, without giving the ball away, bossing possession and trying to play our way through sides. But it doesn’t always win you games.
Every team plays the same against us. Every game at Anfield is the same. It’s so frustrating to watch.
We’re not good enough to break teams down. Barnsley are third division, they defended well and it was only when they tired at the end, that we were able to run riot and get two late goals.
Things won’t change unless the manager changes his philosophy. It will only change in the Champions League against teams who don’t do the low block, like we saw against Inter Milan.
Maybe in the league against the likes of Man City, as it was better against Arsenal recently.
But it’s not going to change overall, so we have to get used to a bumpy ride in the second half of the season.
