Liverpool fans have every right to criticise the club in the wake of their decision to furlough non-playing staff because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This isn’t about McDonald’s and it isn’t about Starbucks. This isn’t about the tech billionaires or the well paid who work in business. This is about Liverpool and their betrayal of everything this club is supposed to believe in.
In October 2019 Peter Moore, the CEO, said they ask themselves ‘what would Bill Shankley’ do when they considered decisions. The move to shift 80% of the non-playing staff’s wages onto the taxpayer is about as far removed from those ideals as possible.
In one stroke, Liverpool had erased all the goodwill it had gathered from Jurgen Klopp’s reaction to the coronavirus pandemic and Jordan Henderson trying to organise all the Premier League captains to contribute towards a special fund for the NHS.
And that has angered a lot of fans. They have every right to be mad at the club, especially after many had a pop at Newcastle and Tottenham for taking the same decision earlier in the week.
It’s left many who love Liverpool feeling ashamed, hypocritical and part of the problem. This shouldn’t spark whataboutery, because that’s not the point, and it shouldn’t provoke a legal debate either because that’s also not the point.
This is purely a moral argument. If a club the size of Liverpool, that have announced considerable pre-tax profits and a sky-high new kit deal with Nike, have such little regard for the normal tax payer that they are prepared to shift thousands and thousands onto government books before slashing wages of those earning more in a week than most earn in a year, how can we begin to ask others to help each other?
Liverpool were a club who did that, but they’ve undermined themselves in spectacular fashion. Of course people are angry about that.