FSG have caused some PR disasters since they’ve been at the club, but letting Trent Alexander-Arnold walk for free would be a legacy-defining gaffe…
WHEN thinking about football’s greatest PR gaffes, I’m left ruing the decrepit millennial I am fast becoming.
Pining for the 1990s in some form or another.
Scandal, in such form, was traditionally organisational. Some manager or Chief Executive caught on a yacht, secretly being wooed into corruption on grainy film.
Or there was the occasional night out (bender) which usually involved an English team of some form abroad, which every player involved would bank for the decade later after-dinner circuit.
I’m loathe to use the phrase ‘these days’. Am I really getting this old? I’ll go with ‘the modern era’.
The modern era saves its PR disasters for the individual who pocket tweets a picture of an Aston Martin when getting shit off his own supporters on Twitter, puts some post-match apologist spiel out which starts with ‘say something like…’, or simply makes the cross of West Ham while still an Aston Villa player.
There is, of course, the murkier side of such scandal. The allegations against Manchester City or players exposed to gambling show the broad brush of a PR machine is still in operation at all clubs, and they won’t take any prisoners when in full swing.
Pep Guardiola and other City suits smiling at a camera with the yellow ticker tape of Sky’s breaking news in the background, exonerating City’s UEFA charges of financial rule breaches, will always be a bad look no matter the context.
Liverpool have held up their side of the PR disaster legacy, to be fair. There’s been no shortage of FSG blunders from ticket pricing to conspiring in a breakaway league coup.
John W. Henry staring down a camera telling us he wants to apologise despite not just asking people who are invested and knowledgable about these matters in the first place. Knowing the same pattern will eventually repeat in some form.
Oddly, transfers aren’t often as blundering from a public relations standpoint. The general mood music around transfers can be influential, even defining for clubs, but they rarely cross over.
One of the few examples of where it could is Trent Alexander-Arnold and Liverpool.
With every passing day, week and month, the contract impasse around Alexander-Arnold becomes an audible, piecing alarm in our ears.
Liverpool would cope, but they will lose a magnificently hybrid footballer who I believe is a rarity.
He’s a cheat code. Someone opponents like Bournemouth can make target one to nullify, only to realise Liverpool have quality everywhere else and he will still find a way.
I don’t think we’ve seen the best of Alexander-Arnold. I think he can become even more defining in games and in Liverpool teams to come.
Away from the pitch, any announcement that the player is leaving on a free transfer would be the biggest PR disaster for Liverpool Football Club since the Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra charges.
The club have worked incredibly hard to emit the reputation of smartest and coolest kids in class over the past 10 years. They have strived to play the game two moves ahead of everyone else.
Selling Philippe Coutinho was one of the greatest gambles of FSG’s reign. Even if Coutinho’s Barcelona career hadn’t nosedived in the way it did, Liverpool could point at a record transfer fee and where it was reinvested as mitigation.
They have none of that in this case. They can’t tap the side of their nose and wink if Trent leaves and Connor Bradley is player of the match in the next game because we all know that wasn’t the plan.
Losing this player now would smack of incompetence around Julian Ward replacing Michael Edwards, around Klopp’s last season, around Richard Hughes now.
There would be no stone left unturned in the inquest. Alex Inglethorpe would probably get a kicking somewhere.
There would be little accusation levelled at the player. The perception that someone should pledge allegiance on the grounds of being from the city is a loose, at times problematic concept.
Football is about egos and money and negotiation at an elite level. Trent is no longer a prospect – and by virtue, property of The Academy – asking Liverpool for a career. He’s a phenomenally established and brandable athlete who can call his own shots.
It’s impossible to know where any negotiations are at. Player and club aren’t saying anything definitive. Nothing is being briefed.
There’s a chance that Alexander-Arnold might be asking for the captaincy, to play in midfield or for his own seat at the coffee bar in Kirkby.
I doubt it. It’s likely he’s weighing up the financial package on offer (if there is one), how loved he feels and how nice living in Madrid and winning Champions Leagues might potentially be.
The time to try and hipster this out is over for Liverpool. They need to remove the sunglasses, take their hand out of their kecks and throw the kitchen sink at keeping the player.
If they don’t, there is no spin to be spun. A full house in the PR disaster sense that even Malcolm Tucker can’t save you.
Liverpool simply cannot afford to let that happen. The optics on this one are too bad.
If Trent leaves, it will undo so much of what they’ve worked so hard to create.
It could go some way to eventually define the FSG era.
Buy Dan Morgan’s book ‘Jürgen Said To Me’ on Klopp, Liverpool and the remaking of a city…
