Johnny Phillips: Lack of fans means lack of love for players

The 19-year old defender blacked out his Twitter account after being subjected to online abuse. It stemmed from a mistake he made during his team’s 7-2 EFL Cup win over Lincoln City. He received similar abuse on his Instagram account.

Much of it was widely condemned by others online, and his team-mates have stepped up to support the teenager too. But behind-closed-doors matches have skewed the gauge of opinion that match-going fans provide.

Had Williams, from Wrexham, been playing in stadiums full of Liverpool supporters then it is likely the negative effect of online clowns would have been significantly reduced.

Former Watford and Brentford goalkeeper Richard Lee first used social media as a player and continues to do so in his role as a football agent.

“One of the reasons you get nervous before a game is the potential of having tens of thousands people screaming at you – both cheering and booing,” he says. “You get that immediate feedback which impacts you psychologically and physiologically.

“As a goalkeeper you’d know instantly if you’d made a mistake or pulled off a great save, you’d sense from the crowd and the surroundings.

“But if you’re playing in front of nobody there isn’t the same level of intensity and nervous energy.

“If you have your crowd cheering you on and giving you the energy it’s one of the reasons teams do better at home, you get the energy from the crowd.

“We’ve effectively got training ground games going on and we are not getting a true reflection of the clubs because of the lack of crowd.”

On completion of these matches there is no warmth from the support at full-time. No friends and family waiting in the lounges to speak to the players.

In pre-lockdown times, Williams could conceivably have joined his team-mates in receiving the acclaim of a packed Liverpool away end at the end of that 7-2 win at Sincil Bank.

Instead, he left an empty stadium, boarded the coach home and his first supporter interaction was with faceless social media accounts.

“A lot of the feedback now is on social media and that’s very different to the feedback you get from a crowd,” Lee continues. “I had a situation in my last ever game for Brentford, it was probably my worst ever game, where we drew 6-6 with Dagenham and Redbridge in a cup tie and won on penalties.

“I’m walking off the pitch thinking I’ve had a torrid night, but we won the tie and as I was captain and they knew I was coming to the end of my time there, they were singing my name.

“I knew it was a bad night, but it was so nice to get that reception. Then when I got on the team coach I saw some of the reaction on social media, but it didn’t hit me that badly as I’d had that immediate reaction from fans in the ground. I felt a lot of love.”

This didn’t happen to Williams last week.

As a young player, it would be a fair assumption that the match-going Liverpool fans would have put an arm around their man if they had been in the stadium.

And here’s another point. Social media is not a true reflection of either a match-going crowd or a club’s entire support.

The dislocation of supporters from the stadium is altering the narrative. Opinion on social media is disproportionately loud and extreme.

Lee regularly speaks to the young players on his books about the best way forward in today’s world.

“Keep focused on what is going to move you forward,” he explains. “You can live in your bubble, which is fine.

“A lot of people feel they need to be on social media to know what’s going on, but it’s irrelevant.

“The people who are going to make the decisions on your career are the coaches and managers.

“A lot of players are nowhere near social media and they are really happy.

“Have your own board of directors – coaches, friends, family – they are the only people you need to listen to.

“Sometimes when lads come to me with criticism they’ve had on Twitter I’ll tell them to click on the last 20 comments that user has made and more often than not all 20 are negative.

“One of the human needs is to feel significant. Now a way you can get significance is to go online and give abuse to all these stars and if you get a nibble, somebody replying, that feeds that appetite for significance.

“So having the awareness and understanding that this is what these people do will help you let it go.”

It is deeply saddening that it has come to this – that a teenager wanders off a football pitch and is faced with a torrent of abuse.

And it is not just in football where a toxic discourse finds a place in society.

But the longer fans are kept out of stadiums, the longer it will be before Williams can experience what true support is all about.

After all, this is a 19-year old who should be feeling the love of a loyal supporter base rather than being confronted with a faceless account tapping out inane bile on a mobile phone.