Defeat to Swansea wasn’t in the script for a Liverpool side who have scored the most goals in the Premier League this season, and who for so long have looked like the last bastion of resistance to a rampant Chelsea side.

After the game, Jurgen Klopp cut a disappointed figure, searching for words in front of the advertising board behind him. To his credit, he dissected the goals and did the pundits’ jobs for them, but his annoyance was obvious. At his team’s performance, but perhaps also at the fans inside a ‘very quiet’ Anfield.

Klopp is not the first Premier League manager to criticise his team’s fans after a poor performance: Jose Mourinho did it multiple times in his second spell at Chelsea, and has done it again this season at Manchester United. Pep Guardiola has also bemoaned the quiet atmosphere at the Etihad Stadium, questioning why his fans don’t always show up at the ground or leave before the final whistle. And with the general trend in football towards higher ticket prices, higher prices for food, drink and other merchandise at grounds, as well as a trend towards corporate hospitality and football tourism, Klopp more than likely won’t be the last to complain about this either.

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Part of the problem may also be the early kick off. It’s also not the first time that Klopp has been critical of the lunchtime starts enshrined Premier League’s fixture schedule. Last season he had a fairly legitimate grievance against the Premier League’s scheduling of a match against Swansea at 12pm on a Sunday after playing Villarreal in Spain on the Thursday night. A very different scenario, though.

And yet, there’s an interesting link.

The Premier League schedules games for TV, and, as such, is meddling with kick off times based on broadcasters. It’s the age-old tug of war between the benefit of the sporting spectacle and the interests of those actually paying the wages. And in the Premier League these days, it is the bumper TV deal paying the wages. Matchday revenue is now but a speck on the earnings of top clubs: they make money from TV, but also from sponsors and other commercial activities.

That means clubs must put up with short turnovers between games, and at times that don’t suit. But so too do the fans. Lunchtime kickoffs, either on Saturdays or Sundays, don’t allow for much time to get into a game, and the atmosphere suffers as a result. Cue Klopp’s irritation after the game.

But no longer is it actual, physical football that Liverpool plug to a well-defined audience. Now it’s the packaged version they sell on TV and, increasingly, in smaller snippets seeded on social media. The trimmings are becoming much more interesting than the bird to a younger generation: 90 minutes is a long time to sit still, especially when you have the entirety of Twitter and Facebook to keep the pace moving much more quickly, and catch up with the goals and the funny bits as they happen.

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But why should we be worried about a quiet Anfield, then?

Well, for one thing, a quiet Anfield used to be a paradoxical idea. Only when it’s not matchday. If that changes, we must accept the culture has changed. But we should accept that anyway, and try to keep the noise intact.

Because no one asks what happens when the bubble bursts. If people don’t show up at the ground, Liverpool aren’t going to lose too much sleep. Yes, they’ll lose revenue, but as long as people keep watching on TV, and as long as their commercial sponsors keep coughing up, they’ll be absolutely fine. But if the demographic of the crowd changes too much, a bubble is created that can only burst with catastrophic consequences.

Without the fervent crowd you get no atmosphere, without the atmosphere you lose intensity and everything the Premier League has worked hard to promote for two decades: the microphones near the loudest parts of the ground to pick up the noise, the full stadiums, the matches played at breakneck pace under sun and shadow, the chants, the humour, the noise and the jeers directed at referees.

And without all that, you get a disinterested audience who will no longer care. A jaded film star from the black and white era, her beauty gone, her sallow skin sad and sunken, clinging to fame when the world has moved on to better things. Who wants to watch the Premier League without intensity? If intensity is off the table, then surely the sophistication and technique of Spain and Italy win out?

And so Klopp’s irritation is, probably, the same as Mourinho’s and Guardiola’s: the foreign managers who see the problem for what it is, English football losing the thing that made it special.

So, how do you Make The Premier League Great Again? It’s not with charismatic managers who sweep to power promising new ideas. That’s not the root of the problem. The root is the gentrification of the very part of the Premier League that makes it marketable worldwide. And without actually combatting that, the bubble will burst for sure.

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