Liverpool Fans Do Not Need Lectures From Media Figures Protecting The System

Carragher, Holt, Ladyman, Rooney and others criticised Salah, but Liverpool supporters know this crisis runs far deeper than one social media post.

Mohamed Salah’s social media post was not comfortable viewing. Let us start there.

Liverpool people of a certain generation will always remember former chairman John Smith saying in a 1986 documentary that Liverpool “do not air our dirty linen in public”. That principle mattered. It was part of the club’s culture. Internal matters stayed internal. Problems were handled behind closed doors. Dignity came first.

So no, I did not enjoy watching Salah publicly criticise the direction of Liverpool Football Club. I did not enjoy Curtis Jones amplifying it either. I wish none of it had happened.

But wishing it had not happened does not magically make Salah wrong.

And this is where the reaction from large parts of the mainstream football media has become utterly infuriating.

Because instead of seriously engaging with why Salah’s words resonated so deeply with Liverpool supporters, too many journalists and pundits have defaulted to the laziest possible narrative. Salah is selfish. Salah is bitter. Salah is toxic. Salah is making it about himself. Salah is damaging the club.

Fine. If that is your position, at least explain the foundation beneath it.

Where is the balance in any of this coverage? Where is the objectivity? Where is the scrutiny of Arne Slot’s catastrophic handling of this season? Where is the outrage over Liverpool producing historically bad results? Where is the serious examination of a side that has visibly regressed tactically, physically and emotionally for over a year?

Instead, we are watching media figures circle around the same safe conclusion because it protects relationships, preserves access and keeps everybody in comfortable positions.

That is precisely why fan media has become so important.

Fan Media Exists Because Trust Has Eroded

I write for independent outlets. I have a job outside football that pays my bills. Liverpool writing is driven by emotion, investment and genuine opinion, not by preserving access to press conferences or maintaining cosy relationships behind the scenes.

That matters.

Because when I hear figures like Ollie Holt, Ian Ladyman, Wayne Rooney and even Jamie Carragher lining up to condemn Salah, I cannot help questioning how authentic these opinions truly are anymore.

Are they analysing the reality Liverpool supporters are watching every week, or are they protecting the machinery they rely upon professionally?

That sounds harsh, perhaps unfair to some, but supporters are not stupid. Fans can sense when coverage becomes performative rather than honest. They can sense when journalists become more offended by a breach of media etiquette than by the collapse unfolding on the pitch itself.

Liverpool have been dreadful this season.

Not mediocre. Not inconsistent. Dreadful.

This is a side that has looked physically weak, mentally fragile and tactically incoherent for months. Liverpool have become painfully easy to play against. The football is sterile. The aggression has disappeared. The identity has vanished. Supporters are not imagining this decline. They are living through it every week.

Yet somehow Salah became the central villain because he publicly acknowledged what everybody can plainly see.

The media reaction has exposed a disconnect between football’s establishment voices and the supporters inside the stadium.

Salah Broke The Rules, Not The Truth

Salah violated an old Liverpool principle by speaking publicly. That much is undeniable.

But there is a difference between breaking convention and telling lies.

Nothing Salah said was morally wrong. Nothing he said was factually wrong either.

Liverpool do need to rediscover intensity. Liverpool do need higher standards. Liverpool have drifted alarmingly away from the football that made them feared across Europe. The side does crumble too easily now. All of this is true.

What fascinates me is how little curiosity there has been from mainstream media about why so many Liverpool supporters instantly agreed with him.

That should have been the story.

Instead, the entire conversation became about Salah’s tone, Salah’s timing and Salah’s ego.

Very few people stopped to ask why a significant section of Liverpool’s support reacted with something close to relief. Perhaps because many supporters feel they have spent the past year being gaslit about what they are watching.

When fans complain about performances, they are told to calm down because Slot won the league in his first season.

When supporters point to tactical failures, they are accused of hysteria.

When concerns emerge about standards slipping, they are dismissed as emotional overreaction.

Meanwhile Liverpool continue conceding goals at alarming rates, producing lifeless performances and looking less recognisable with every passing month.

Supporters know what decline looks like. Liverpool’s fanbase has seen enough football across enough decades to recognise drift when it arrives.

That is why Salah’s words landed.

Carragher Should Know Better Than Most

Jamie Carragher’s contribution to this discussion has been especially disappointing.

Not because he criticised Salah. That is fair game. Nobody should be immune from criticism. But Carragher framed this entire situation as “Salah FC”, comparing him to Cristiano Ronaldo’s scorched earth Manchester United exit.

That comparison felt absurd.

Ronaldo attacked everybody and everything because his own status had diminished. Salah’s post focused overwhelmingly on Liverpool’s standards, identity and direction. You may dislike the method but pretending this was solely about personal ego ignores the substance entirely.

More importantly, Carragher should understand Liverpool supporters better than anybody sitting in those television studios.

He knows this fanbase. He knows how emotionally tied supporters are to identity and intensity. He knows Liverpool supporters will tolerate failure far more readily than they tolerate drift, passivity and emotional detachment.

And yet his analysis barely engaged with any of that.

Instead, it became another lecture about timing and selfishness.

Again, I ask, where is the balance?

Where was this energy when Slot publicly distanced himself from responsibility by implying supporters underestimate the importance of transfer windows? Where was this scrutiny when Liverpool repeatedly produced chaotic, disorganised performances? Where was the outrage over the collapse in standards across the squad?

Salah gets hammered for speaking publicly, yet Slot has spent months handling the media appallingly while overseeing Liverpool’s steepest regression in years.

The imbalance is impossible to ignore.

Public Fallout Revealed Something Bigger

The most revealing part of this entire saga was not Salah’s post itself.

It was the reaction from Liverpool players.

Modern footballers understand optics perfectly. They are media trained relentlessly. Every like, every emoji, every interaction is calculated because they know how quickly narratives form online. Tony Barrett and Liverpool’s communications team work tirelessly to prevent precisely this sort of public fracture from happening.

Yet players still openly engaged with Salah’s message.

That matters enormously.

Maybe they were only supporting a friend. Maybe they simply agreed standards must improve. But they absolutely understood how it would be perceived externally. To pretend otherwise is naive.

This is no longer one unhappy player lashing out.

This feels like symptoms of a club losing alignment from top to bottom.

Which brings us back to why fan media matters so much now.

Supporters increasingly crave honesty. Not sanitised access journalism. Not carefully managed narratives designed to preserve relationships. Honest reactions from people emotionally invested in Liverpool Football Club itself rather than their standing within football’s media ecosystem.

I may not write with the polish or eloquence of some national journalists. But at least supporters know where I stand. They know my opinions are not shaped by preserving access, protecting relationships or worrying about invitations drying up.

And I suspect many Liverpool supporters are growing tired of voices who no longer seem capable of speaking freely themselves.

Salah broke an old Liverpool rule this week.

But perhaps the louder truth is that Liverpool’s silence had already become unsustainable.