Overreaction Monday ft Trent Alexander Arnold, Liverpool and end of English footballing pyramid

BySiddhant Lazar, SportsCafe Editor

04/06/2020

Overthinking and over-reacting to situations is the human way but when it comes to football, something clicks in a person that makes things comical, ludicrous and rarely sensible. That being said after a packed weekend of hysterical fans in England, there were bound to be a few hare-brained ideas.

Everything Liverpool stands for now means absolutely nothing

Liverpool furloughing their staff after announcing £42m profits and an increased turnover of £533 million has seen the world and their fans all turn against them.

SC Take: The entire myth of Liverpool is built around the people. Their anthem is about people never walking alone. Their “This Means More” motto is about how they are not just a football club but something more global, something more people-friendly. And then, the Reds go and get the entire world, rightfully, angry at them. Then to make things even worse, their finances are released and it turns out, Liverpool are in profit of £42 million.

That’s more than a lot of Premier League clubs and it’s seen many claiming that they mean absolutely nothing now. It’s far from an overreaction although there are few around who would disagree with that statement. But after watching the reaction the world has had to Liverpool’s furloughing of their staff, Manchester United, Manchester City and a few others have opted against doing the same. That says everything…

Trent Alexander Arnold is nothing more than hail-mary producer

The lack of football seems to have gotten to a few people with the men and women on the interweb arguing about how Trent Alexander-Arnold is nothing but a cross merchant.

SC Take: No football has driven a few people crazy and that list slowly grows by the day because anyone who thinks Trent Alexander Arnold is nothing more than a crossing merchant is right. The Englishman is a majestic crosser of the ball, so good that a few people have claimed that he’s on par with David Beckham, England’s crossing maestro. But saying that the Liverpudlian right-back can do nothing more than cross is just wrong.

He’s a majestic crosser/passer of the world and one of two reasons why the Reds were doing so well over the last two seasons or so. The other reason is Andy Robertson but Alexander-Arnold for all the talk about his defensive liabilities is actually not half bad. He averaged about 1.6 tackles, 1.2 interceptions and is about third or fourth for nearly every defensive facet at Liverpool. Not too bad, is it?

People’s appetite for football “will be roughly on a par with cock-fighting”

With Gordon Taylor’s battle against the Premier League club’s raging on, the Daily Mail has taken to saying that unless players take wage cuts the appetite for football “will be roughly on a par with cock-fighting”.

SC Take: Now we get euphemisms and metaphors and various other literary devices but there has to be a limit to their usage, now doesn’t there? Calling what is the world’s premium sport, watched by well over a billion, beloved by just as many people and possibly one of the few sports around the world that has a global impact. It’s why football is watched by so many, not just because of the fact that it’s a drama, action and pure theatre smashed into 90 minutes of action.

But calling it “roughly on a par with cock-fighting” is going simply too far. Cock-fighting is hated and not watched for a reason but while reputations of footballers, their clubs and even the league will fall, it’s not going to make too much of a difference anyway. Because public perception over footballers and the “greedy money-makers” football league wasn’t that great before a global pandemic which never seemed to affect the game itself.

The English football pyramid will come crashing down

In the midst of a global crisis, those on the interweb believe that the English football pyramid will come crashing down partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and partly because of everything else.

SC Take: In the days since football was suspended, the English football association, in association with the English Football league and the National League, opted to close every league below the national league. That effectively rendered their season null and void, thus destroying whatever the hopes and dreams the world below the national league had of ever becoming professional. That includes football at the grass-roots level and it was always going to happen.

Because below the League Two, the English football pyramid was an unstainable monster that England seemed to pride themselves on. They were overjoyed at the fact that they’re one of the few countries that have such a system in place and one that thrives that well. Jamie Vardy and countless others are success stories but if this continues, they will be the only ones. Far from an overreaction and the fact that there has been no move to fund them and stop what will be a wide spread bankruptcy is shocking. At least the PFA is trying to do something but it is not enough.