Jamie Carragher has admitted that, despite Liverpool’s tremendous results on the pitch in the early weeks of the season, there’s been one issue surrounding the club which has seemed off-colour.
Arne Slot has experienced four competitive home matches at Anfield so far, but with none of those being ‘marquee’ fixtures, he’s yet to experience the stadium at its raucous, frenzied best.
The atmosphere at the 61,000-capacity venue has come in for much criticism among match-going supporters on social media in recent weeks, and in the latest Fan Debate on The Overlap, a Nottingham Forest fan who attended their recent win away to LFC argued that the ground’s historic aura is a mere ‘myth’.
Carragher replied: “You know what, it’s been a real topic this season, the atmosphere. You think, you’ve got a new manager, is it the thing of like ‘Klopp’s gone, maybe the football’s slightly different’, because we’re all sort of thinking that the atmosphere hasn’t been great at Anfield this season.
“If I’m being totally honest, the thing of the Anfield atmospheres was always built on European games. I think normal Saturday 3 o’clock games, like most fans you sit there and wait for something to lift you rather than you lift the team, but I agree.”
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It was telling that Anfield regular Chloe Bloxam, who was also on the Fan Debate, also conceded that the general atmosphere at the stadium on matchdays hasn’t been great and that a sense of complacency may have set in among some elements of the home supporter after the success of the Jurgen Klopp era.
There’s no denying that, on many occasions in the past, the febrile intensity from all four corners of the ground frightened the life out of illustrious opposition, but lately there’s been some justification to the visiting fans’ taunts of ‘This is a library’.
Perhaps a few Champions League nights over the coming weeks, particularly against Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid, will see Anfield truly come to life like we know it can.
You can view the exchange between Carragher and the Forest fan below (from 24:57), via The Overlap on YouTube: