Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher has claimed he “can’t win” after being accused of showing bias towards his former club.
Following Liverpool’s Carabao Cup final defeat last month, Carragher praised Newcastle United for a dominant performance against his old team, suggesting the Magpies could have won by three or four goals at Wembley. The Scouser even expressed his admiration for Eddie Howe, saying he ‘absolutely loved’ him.
However, after acknowledging Liverpool’s subpar performance against Paris Saint-Germain a week-and-a-half earlier, Carragher admitted that he could “understand that in terms of the opposition.” He then added that Newcastle was merely a “good Premier League team”.
Not one to hide his loyalties, Carragher jokingly questioned why the FA didn’t appoint Howe instead of Thomas Tuchel, suggesting “he probably wouldn’t have done this today”. The ex-defender also took a playful jab at co-commentator Gary Neville for encouraging Newcastle to “take it to the corner” in the final moments of the game.
“People say I’m biased towards Liverpool,” Carragher revealed during the Overlap fan debate. “But I can assure you if you look at my social media, I have a lot of Liverpool fans say, ‘No he goes the other way to prove he’s not biased’. You’re like, ‘You can’t win’.
“If you look at social media, no matter who the co-commentator is, and you have two sets of supporters, say it’s [Aston] Villa v Newcastle, they’re both convinced you’re against their team. You can’t win.
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“As a co-commentator, the best bit about it is a last-minute goal. You’ve got to reflect the stadium. You’ve got to go mad. So I do a lot of Liverpool games and Liverpool scores a lot of late goals. It happened under [Jurgen] Klopp and Liverpool wins most of the time.
“Liverpool doesn’t lose that often and if it does have a spell, I’ll be getting accused of being too critical maybe by Liverpool supporters. So I’ve got to the stage where I did think about it where I was like, ‘Am I too far the other way sometimes? Am I too hard on Liverpool if they’re not doing well?'”.
“In the end, I’ve just thought, ‘I’m just going to say what I think and if subconsciously I am biased to Liverpool on something or I maybe get more excited with a goal, it’s me. That’s the way I am. I don’t get bothered by social media now.'”.
