It’s no surprise to see Trent Alexander-Arnold’s unhappy return to Anfield dominating the headlines.
And there’s an equal lack of surprise to see a lot of those headlines being mad nonsense.
We’ve got two-word messages that might not in fact have been two words, brutal mockery that might not in fact have been brutal mockery, and four shocking things that…well, you can see where that’s heading.
Numberwang
Headline from the Daily Mirror:
Arne Slot’s two-word message to Trent Alexander-Arnold after hugging ex-Liverpool star
Intro from the Daily Mirror:
Arne Slot described Trent Alexander-Arnold as a ‘special human being’ after giving him a consoling hug in the wake of the former Liverpool defender’s torrid Anfield reception.
We’re sure you don’t need us to point out what’s gone wrong here.
Being mischievous, though, aren’t we? Obviously not playing by Queensberry Rules, are we? Clearly there must have been some other ‘two-word message’ in the wake of Liverpool’s win over Real Madrid last night, the only alternative explanation being Reach headline writers can’t count to three, which we don’t think is the case at all.
So is there a two-word message? Yes. Well, kind of yes. Maybe yes. We don’t actually know. And we don’t actually know, because Arne Slot doesn’t actually know. We’ll let him take up the story.
‘He (Alexander-Arnold) lost so that is tough. I said something like ‘keep going’ to him. I honestly didn’t know exactly what I said to him. He has been special to this club, he has been special to me. And he is a special human being.’
So there was a bland Hallmark message of indeterminate, unremembered length that the Mirror themselves correctly concluded was less interesting than the ‘special human being’ part when writing the actual story.
Which is all fine, but begs one question. Why not just then say ‘three-word message’ in the headline? If that’s the bit of the quote you’re going to pull for the intro?
You’ll be unsurprised to discover Mediawatch has A Theory. And our theory is this: there is a greater implied chance of a ‘two-word message’ being uncomplimentary and featuring industrial language than a three-word message. ‘Two words, the second one is ‘off” kind of thing, and thus a more compelling curiosity gap is created for what said message might be.
And we can surely all agree it would have been quite something if Slot had rocked up to his press conference and said: ‘I said something like ‘get f*cked’ to him. I honestly didn’t know exactly what I said to him.’
Alexis Mock Allister
One of the many brilliant ways social media has helped journalism is that it has entirely removed the pesky and inconvenient need to find out whether something is actually real or true.
All you have to do now if you want to concoct a story out of some fluff is scour social media, find three or four people saying a thing – and we’ve been on social media, you can find three or four people at any one time saying quite literally anything on there – and bish, bash, bosh, you’ve got yourself a yarn.
Like The Sun have here, for instance.
‘Savage’ – Fans convinced Liverpool match-winner Alexis Mac Allister mocked Trent Alexander-Arnold in brutal way
What brutal mockery could this be, we wonder?
And some thought the Argentine took a brutal swipe at his former team-mate after the goal.
Oho, here we go. A brutal swipe, is it?
Mac Allister, 26, did the ‘A’ celebration, making the letter with his fingers.
TAA regularly performed the same gesture when he scored for Liverpool…
Case closed, the prosecution rests. Oh, hang on, there’s some more stuff here.
…however, it is a very common celebration used for many years and certainly not unique to the Real and England man.
It was thought to have originally been used in the noughties as a nod to the A-Star organisation set up by Fitz Hall and Andrew Johnson to tackle youth violence – with Micah Richards and even Titus Bramble among those to do it.
Even Titus Bramble!
Jack Grealish, Mason Greenwood, Ross Barkley and Ben Chilwell have all seemingly used it to pay tribute to people whose names begin with A.
And the likes of Gareth Bale, Dele Alli and Lautaro Martinez performed the gesture for unknown reasons, too.
So, could be nothing then? Or a bizarre swipe and brutal mockery of Lautaro Martinez or Jack Grealish or even Titus Bramble.
But even so, fans on social media were convinced Mac Allister’s sign was a cheeky message directed at Alexander-Arnold.
Downgraded from brutal to cheeky now, we note. Still, the most important thing is to just go with the conviction of ‘fans on social media’ (they found four people, by the way, saying this about a winning goal scored by one of the biggest teams in the country against one of the biggest teams in the world in the biggest game of the night) and definitely don’t bother actually finding out for sure.
Shock and or
One of the many things grumpy old cloud-yelling Mediawatch genuinely doesn’t understand about modern media trends is this current vogue for writing theoretically serious pieces under headlines that make the author sound like a six-year-old in the first week back at school writing about what they did on their holidays.
‘I was at Liverpool’s win over Real Madrid and four things shocked me’
That’s the headline from the Daily Express and, okay, let’s jump beyond the back-to-school homework project weirdness of the style and get down to the four shocking things Charlie Malam saw.
Number one? Dominik Szoboszlai being the game’s best midfielder. Is that shocking? We’re not sure that’s shocking. Do you know who else isn’t sure that’s shocking? Charlie Malam, who writes:
Is that a surprise? On current form, no.
When the first of your four shocking things is in fact not a surprise, it has to go down as a weak start.
What else? Real Madrid’s stars being underwhelming. We’ll just about allow this one: the collective Anfield ineffectiveness of your Mbappes, your Bellinghams, and your Vini Juniors could certainly qualify.
Next? Trent Alexander-Arnold coming on as a substitute. Yes, we are apparently supposed to be shocked that Real Madrid brought on an excellent footballer as they tried to get something from a game they were losing 1-0, even though that footballer used to play for Liverpool and they are powerfully unhappy about it.
It was a surprise then to see Xabi Alonso, a man who knows the Liverpool crowd well, subject Alexander-Arnold to those inevitable boos with so little time left.
We’re in ‘the opposite is actually a story’ territory here, aren’t we? Imagine if Xabi Alonso had not used Alexander-Arnold and admitted to doing so out of fear of the fans’ reaction. And ‘so little time left’? It was 10 minutes plus stoppage time in a game Real Madrid, despite being thoroughly outplayed, were still only losing 1-0. If Alexander-Arnold were entirely incapable of ever influencing a game from that position, Liverpool fans wouldn’t be so upset.
And then, last of all, the VAR penalty review. An incident so shocking, that a still clearly shaken Malam notes:
The decision not to award a penalty is probably the right one on reflection
We’re glad you got to go to the game, anyway.
Breaking news
A mildly amusing slice of Reach cross-promotion here in the Mirror amid the rising PANIC at Arsenal’s injury CRISIS which, if things continue to worsen at their current rate, could even see them concede another goal sometime around January.
After this weekend’s Premier League fixture against Sunderland, the final international break of 2025 commences, meaning Arsenal won’t feature again until Sunday, November 23 against Tottenham in the north London Derby, reports football.london.
Did… did the Mirror just credit football.london for reading a fixture list?
