The Briefing: Liverpool fans turn on Alexander-Arnold, and who’s been worse: Man United or Tottenham?

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s Premier League football.

This was the weekend when Southampton finally got their 12th point of the season but were told they weren’t trying to play football by Manchester City’s sulking Ruben Dias, Newcastle United and Aston Villa made themselves favourites for Champions League qualification and Arsenal came back to draw at Liverpool.

Here we will ask if the Trent Alexander-Arnold situation isn’t just pretty sad, what Nottingham Forest’s owner thought he was doing by storming on to the pitch at full-time and whether it can get any worse for Europa League finalists Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United…

Isn’t the Trent Alexander-Arnold situation just sad for all involved?

One privilege of being a football fan is that you don’t have to be logical.

If we all carefully thought through everything that we did while watching football, we’d probably end up doing something else with our time. It should be about emotions, and that doesn’t always correlate with how you’d behave in normal daily life.

That said, it was still pretty surprising — alarming, even — to hear just how strong the vitriol directed at Trent Alexander-Arnold was after he came on during Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal on Sunday.

There seemed to be a rough 50-50 split between those who booed and those who offered their support when he was introduced, but the former faction was much louder for the first few times he touched the ball, the home crowd ensuring that Alexander-Arnold knew how they felt about his decision to leave on a free transfer.

As neutrals, we’ve been instructed in recent weeks not to tell Liverpool fans how to think about this situation, the implication being that we don’t understand the reason that they’re so upset. But what if we do understand, and we think it’s a pretty silly thing to boo your own player, while he’s still playing for your team, for the crime of wanting to move somewhere else — even if it is on a free transfer, even if he is a local boy, even if it is to a theoretical rival?

Maybe it would have been better if Alexander-Arnold had waited until the end of the season to formally announce his departure. Maybe it would have been better for Arne Slot not to pick him at all, to treat these final few games as a head start on pre-season and only use players that are going to be there next season.

Then again, maybe they thought it would be better to have a proper goodbye, to think about the previous 20 years rather than the last few months, to celebrate a brilliant player who’s won two Premier Leagues, a Champions League and been part of probably the most exciting Liverpool team we’ll see for a generation.

It’s clearly understandable that Liverpool fans are annoyed. Should they face Alexander-Arnold in a Real Madrid shirt in the future, you wouldn’t blame them for making Luis Figo’s return to the Camp Nou look like afternoon tea at the Savoy.

But above everything else, regardless of what side of this you fall on, ultimately it’s just incredibly sad that it’s come to this. That Alexander-Arnold’s final memory of Anfield will be this, regardless of where you place most of the blame.

Without telling Liverpool fans what to think, this would be my overriding emotion if I was one of them.

Why did Forest’s ‘owner’ think storming on to the pitch would help anyone, other than himself?

Whoever supplies television sets to Nottingham Forest will be able to tell you about Evangelos Marinakis’ emotions.

Marinakis has a special seat just above the director’s box at the City Ground, in front of which is a giant TV. On more than one occasion during his tenure, Marinakis has been known to react to results — both good and bad — by… damaging those screens.

Marinakis at a Forest game in August (Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)

Not ideal from a cost/environmental point of view, but it’s probably a better way of expressing his frustration than marching on to the pitch and remonstrating with manager Nuno Espirito Santo, as he did in the aftermath of Forest’s 2-2 draw with Leicester City.

Given Marinakis’s outburst, the reaction of the players and the general atmosphere at the City Ground, it would be easy to forget that Forest have now qualified for Europe for the first time since 1995. It’s likely that they’ll have to settle for the Europa League or Conference League rather than the Champions League, but it’s still an extraordinary achievement considering that, back in August, the game against Leicester would’ve looked more like a relegation six-pointer.

Which further underlines how absurd and potentially damaging Marinakis’ reaction was.

Of course he was irritated at the defending that allowed relegated Leicester to score twice and nearly get a couple more. And further by the miscommunication that resulted in Taiwo Awoniyi staying on the pitch when he was clearly unable to continue, after colliding with the goal post.

Later on Sunday, Marinakis put out a statement on Instagram that said, among other things: “Everybody — coaching staff, players, supporters and including myself — we were frustrated around the injury of Taiwo and the medical staff’s misjudgement on Taiwo’s ability to continue the game. This is natural, this is a demonstration of the passion we feel for our Club.”

Which was all pretty predictable, but didn’t acknowledge there might have been a problem with what he did, and added ‘throwing the physiotherapists under the bus’ to ‘publicly yelling at the manager’.

Marinakis confronts Nuno after the game (JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Did he really think his reaction would help? Does he genuinely believe publicly dressing down the manager, who has guided Forest to their best season in 30 years, is going to inspire the Forest team to play better in the remaining two games?

As a minor point, Marinakis signed over control to a blind trust to avoid falling foul of multi-ownership rules in anticipation of potentially facing his other side, Olympiacos, in Europe next season. Of course, in reality, Marinakis is still the man in charge but as far as the paperwork is concerned, he’s just some guy who gets a good seat for every game.

There will be those that argue Marinakis has spent millions on the club and is therefore entitled to express his frustrations. But what is this about: what’s best for him, or what’s best for Forest?

Who’s had the worse season: Manchester United or Tottenham?

It’s very strange to think that, in a few years, when the memories have faded and we’ve forgotten all of these grim, repetitive Sundays, that either Tottenham Hotspur or Manchester United’s 2024-25 season Wikipedia page will actually look quite good.

One of them will end the season having won the Europa League. One of Ruben Amorim or Ange Postecoglou, who week after week have looked more and more demoralised after they try to explain another dispiriting domestic defeat, will have a much better looking CV and some nice photos of them holding a trophy while ticker tape flutters around their ears.

And yet, if you scroll down that Wikipedia page to find the league table… well, that muddies the waters a little.

It’s looking likely that these two will occupy the two places above the relegation zone. There’s a decent chance that they will both end the season without breaking the 40-point barrier. They’ve lost 37 games between them so far and you’d have to say it’s probable that will be 41 in a couple of weeks. Sunday was bleakly predictable for both, displaying familiar failings with no real indication that they’re going to get much better: it feels like this whole season has been spent watching a game elsewhere, as score updates from Tottenham and Manchester pop up in the corner of the screen, detailing new lows for both.

So who’s been worse? On balance you have to say that, before we know who wins the final, it has to be United. They spent a huge sum of money last season, then theoretically upgraded their manager, and have still managed to get worse at pretty much every turn. Tottenham at least have the excuse of a crippling injury crisis that some weeks took out their entire first-choice defence, even if that excuse is now wearing slightly thin given most of the injured players have returned.

Postecoglou oversaw another Spurs defeat on Sunday (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

But that could change in Bilbao on May 21. It all comes down to that game.

There has been some very silly discourse in the last week or so, with some suggesting that whoever wins in Bilbao do not ‘deserve’ a place in the Champions League next season, the implication being that UEFA should somehow step in and remove the Champions League place if they don’t consider the Europa League winner worthy. Whoever wins will deserve the place because that’s been the reward attached to the competition from the start.

But even with that in mind, it’s going to be very strange to see one of these teams being able to justifiably claim this campaign as a success.

Coming up

• It’s play-off time: aka, horrendous nerves and absolute chaos time. The two first legs in the Championship semi-finals might look like they produced clear front-runners, but don’t be fooled. Sheffield United go into Monday’s second leg against Bristol City with a 3-0 lead, but that sort of advantage has been squandered before, so do tune in.
• And then on Tuesday, Sunderland are also ahead, but much less so — they’re 2-1 up over Coventry in one of football’s more unlikely grudge matches. Again, tune in.
• Titles are being decided all over the place, and this week could see another one: after that madcap Clasico, Barcelona can seal things in Spain should they beat Espanyol on Thursday, or if Real Madrid lose to Mallorca on Wednesday.
• Oh, a little bonus Friday night Premier League? Don’t mind if we do! The brave Europa League final boys tune up for their date in Bilbao, with games that are more consequential for their opposition: Aston Villa host Tottenham Hotspur, and Chelsea are at home to Manchester United.

(Top photos: Getty Images)

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