Stop talking about this thing I’m talking about. Enough already with the big media fuss I am making a big media fuss over. This kind of messaging is always hard to swallow. Why, the angry man demanded, is everyone so angry right now?

For all that, the fuss over Trent Alexander-Arnold is definitely real, whatever its source or ultimate legitimacy. Why does everyone care so much about this? It seems weird, disproportionate and strangely fevered, not to mention hostage to some persuasive media voices that carry a bit too much unexamined fan-feeling and not enough of the old journalistic detachment.

It isn’t hard to see why. Alexander-Arnold has always been a tempting target. He is a genuine star at a time of few genuine stars. He sits across various emotive fault lines. He brings that combination of exhilarating talent, obvious weakness and an endearingly distinctive way of moving, the sense that one of these days you’re going to look down and notice he really is wandering around the centre circle in a pair of flip-flops, or ambling off to take a corner with a surfboard under his arm.

As things stand Alexander-Arnold is clearly winding his contract down, while remaining coyly silent over his intentions. Which are, it seems obvious enough, to sign for Real Madrid and make himself richer than Batman. It is understandable there might be irritation around this. But that peripheral noise is also a little out of control, not to mention potentially harmful to a Liverpool team poised at an awkward caesura in their season.

Sunday’s visit of Manchester United felt significant in this regard. Which came first? Was Alexander-Arnold barracked by his own fans because he was having a terrible game, or did Alexander-Arnold have a terrible game because he was being barracked by his own fans? And did this actually happen at all?

The bad game definitely did. This was one of those afternoons where if you were asked to pick out which player was hoping to catapult himself up into football’s all-time Ballon d’Or-winning Everest air, it could take anything up to 21 guesses before you landed on the bloke being teased like a three-legged dog on Liverpool’s right side. In mitigation, Ruben Amorim clearly targeted that flank. Either way, Alexander‑Arnold managed to make Diogo Dalot look like Vinícius Júnior on drugs.

According to the BBC’s website, this was met with “groans, abusive name-calling and expletive‑laden shouts”, with “a significant proportion of the crowd on his back”. The same report states Arne Slot ended up arguing with members of the crowd over Alexander-Arnold’s treatment. Opinion is divided on whether there was genuine targeted hostility. I didn’t make it to Anfield, having spent the morning resuming my own expletive-laden relationship with the flaky, positionally suspect Avanti West Coast train service. The Anfield Wrap podcast used the word “toxic” to describe some of the energy towards Alexander‑Arnold. As ever, the actions of a few people shouldn’t be allowed to characterise 40,000 others who happened to be sitting nearby.

But this kind of thing tends to gather its own momentum. Alexander-Arnold looked genuinely upset at times. There has been talk since in the digital hate-sphere of distraction, arrogance and literally not trying, to the extent it is probably a good thing Liverpool are playing Accrington Stanley this weekend and Conor Bradley needs a game.

What is the actual source of that visceral and very personal anger? It can’t be just the contract stuff. Liverpool’s two best players are in the same boat and that seems fine. But then Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah are not Local Boys, and this really does seem to carry a lot of weight, even if it makes no sense when you pick it apart.

Alexander-Arnold has given Liverpool his best years. At what stage does the local lad premium run out? Is it a life sentence? Would players be better off concealing their local heritage in order to preserve freedom of movement? What about all the local players poached by Liverpool from elsewhere? Presumably Stefan Bajcetic is also a filthy traitor to Vigo?

The most high-profile voice on this front is Jamie Carragher, who is very good right now in his TV spots, top of the game in those bits where he stands on a lighted floor explaining tactics and doing body shape stuff next to a politely frowning Gary Cahill or similar, but who also sometimes just chucks in these anti-truth bombs that can be highly confusing in context.

Carragher says he has no problem with Trent leaving, but only after he commits to a new contract of employment for two more years because otherwise: “Where’s our money to replace you?” It is an odd piece of logic. We love you so much that it goes beyond money into pure loyalty and feeling. Now, where’s our money? Because without it we may cease to love you.

In reality players are chattels. Clubs will discard them as they see fit. Having other plans beyond your childhood home is fine. And in the strictest sense Liverpool can’t replace Alexander-Arnold anyway as he is a one-off, as much a tactical approach as a player.

The entire Klopp machine was built around that balance of risk and creativity on the right, a full-back who operates at a constant level of creative urgency. It has been spectacular at times. In the peak title-chasing years Alexander-Arnold seemed to move with a kind of light around him, one of those footballers who just has a greater understanding of the ball, its contours and surfaces, its basic roundness.

At his best he dinks and fades and drills his passes at previously invisible angles, creating space and colour and geometry out of clean lines, a footballing Mondrian. And at his worst he really can be a poor defensive full-back, which requires the ability to read the danger early, to move with the right degree of lateral snap.

It is a note of triumph that a player such as this can still thrive in a sport of collisions and constant metering, the age of the all-purpose athlete-footballer. Alexander-Arnold is probably the closest thing to a maverick we’re going to get. Who knows how this might play out at Real Madrid, who see him as a replacement both for the injured Dani Carvajal and for the creative quarterback style of Toni Kroos. Good luck with that one.

For now it is worth digesting why that local boy stuff cuts so deep. One of the fault lines Alexander-Arnold seems to cross is that empty emotional space in the modern game, the basic alienation of fans, players, ownership and clubs that still retail themselves as geographical and tribal entities. There is a sense certain players are required to represent something, to fill this hole, to create a connection that no longer really exists, stretched thin by pricing, schedules and the globalising of the product. Loyalty, colours, tribalism: it is all still key to the sales exercise, another commodity to be marketed. Super Showdown Sunday. This Means More. We are us. This is now. We want your money. Long live inelastic consumer demand. Hang on. Delete the last ones.

If anyone deserves a little heat in this equation it is probably a Liverpool ownership that has employed four sporting directors since 2021 while trying vaguely to sell the club, and quite possibly leaving some basic HR tasks neglected.

For now Arne Slot will need to regear a little. Liverpool looked a little clogged against United, hustled out of the patterns that made the first half of the season a sunlit stroll. There is plenty of fresh air still at the top but it will demand clarity from Alexander-Arnold on his intentions; a firm hand on where this leaves him in the pecking order given Bradley is already a sensational full-back. Or failing that an ability to mute the voices and let it just play out.