‘Incidents like that…’ – John Aldridge didn’t like what he saw from Liverpool duo on Saturday

John Aldridge wasn’t impressed by the actions of two Liverpool players at the Etihad Stadium as the Reds’ FA Cup campaign ended with a chastening defeat to Manchester City.

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Many of the away fans who didn’t leave early vented their ire at the team’s performance in the 4-0 loss, with Dominik Szoboszlai seen remonstrating with the travelling Kopites at full-time in scenes of worrying disharmony.

In his latest column for the Liverpool Echo, Aldridge gave the Hungarian – who questioned his team’s lack of ‘fighting spirit’ – some partial benefit of the doubt but admitted that the optics of that post-match exchange didn’t look good.

Aldridge critical of Szoboszlai and Ekitike

The former Reds striker wrote: ‘I am not sure exactly what Szoboszlai’s point was and maybe something was lost in translation. He is one of the few players who doesn’t deserve a lot of criticism this year so I won’t do that here, but it didn’t look good.

‘He needs to understand that fans have every right to vent their spleen when they have just been so comprehensively outplayed the way they were against City on the day.’

The 25-year-old wasn’t the only Liverpool player called out by Aldridge, who added: ‘Hugo Ekitike swapping his shirt with France colleague Rayan Cherki while the game was going on was another strange one. That was unacceptable, I have to say.

‘Incidents like that point to a lack of characters in the squad, the likes of Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher wouldn’t have tolerated that. Attitudes need to change; this is part of the wider problem at Liverpool right now.’

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Liverpool need unity right now, not disharmony

In the greater scheme of things, neither of those incidents is anything more than a storm in a teacup, but nor did they look good in the context of a catastrophic afternoon in what’s been a catastrophic season for the Reds.

The irony is that they involved two of our best performers of the campaign, without whom we’d be in even deeper trouble than we already are, but their actions were unwelcome on a day of misery for Liverpool.

A fan base who’ve been subjected to near-constant mediocrity for a good six months had every right to let rip after such an insipid surrender at the Etihad, and Ekitike ought to have been more conscientious about the mid-game shirt swap with Cherki.

After years of watertight unity under Jurgen Klopp, unfortunately we’re seeing increased fractures between the fans and the players as it becomes increasingly hard to bottle up several months of pent-up frustration.

With a daunting Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain coming up, and with a mammoth battle to merely qualify for next year’s version facing us in the weeks ahead, this is a time when everyone involved with Liverpool needs to show a united front and do everything in their power to salvage something from this hitherto miserable campaign.

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