https://x.com/eddiegibbs/status/2058776691330224502
Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson received the love their Liverpool careers demanded, emotional scenes at Anfield for two modern giants who helped restore this club to greatness. The applause for Jordan Henderson and Caoimhin Kelleher carried genuine warmth too. For a few moments, the bitterness of this dreadful season was set aside and Anfield remembered what pride once felt like.
Yet the football itself dragged everyone back into reality soon enough.
Another shapeless, spiritless afternoon from a Liverpool side that has spent most of the season looking confused by its own existence. Cody Gakpo led the line here and barely touched the ball. Last week it was Isak, before him Ekitike, disappearing into the fog of a system clueless how to deploy a central striker. Slow possession, sterile patterns, no incision, no authority. Mid-table football in everything but the bare minimum league position that had to be achieved, in other seasons 60 points doesn’t get you a Champions League place, Liverpool have been lucky.
That 1-1 draw felt entirely fitting. Liverpool have been limping through months of mediocrity and the results merely mirror the performances. If this carries into next season under Arne Slot, mid-table is exactly where this club is heading.
The post-match farewells were moving, but there was a telling detail in the choreography. No microphone handed to Salah or Robertson on the pitch. Sensible perhaps. The risk of honesty hanging in the air was probably too great.
Then came more vague talk afterwards about evolution, style, injuries and patience, the same hail-Mary talk that has surrounded this team and Slot for months. More spin, more deflection, more attempts to persuade supporters not to trust their own eyes.
The hope now is simple. Let the media management end. Let the hierarchy make the only tangible decision that matters. Let this farewell be remembered as the final act of a glorious Liverpool era, the building block for the next one, and not the beginning of a long decline.