With Liverpool struggling on the pitch, Anfield’s atmosphere is already suffering and supporters missing kick-off is hardly going to help.
A new way of getting into the stadium has appeared out of nowhere, brought in quietly and seven home games into the season, leaving fans to figure it out for themselves while standing in the cold.
It feels like yet another layer of complexity in what is already becoming an exhausting experience just to attend a football match.
Fans are already dealing with online ticket queues that are unbearable, the constant technical issues with NFC passes and, for many, the ridiculous need to keep a burner phone just to get into the ground.
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Adding another hurdle on top of all that creates a level of anxiety and stress that shouldn’t be part of a matchday. Crystal Palace at home in the Carabao Cup is when it all started.
Nothing in the club’s communication suggested anything was to be different, yet people suddenly found themselves in a queue that barely moved. And that brings us an important part, the communication.
Liverpool send a matchday guide before every home game and supporters rely on it. It tells you the bag policy, road closures, turnstile times, everything you need, but nothing changed in those emails. There was no mention of “100 percent searches” for all supporters across general and hospitality admission.
Hi @spiritofshankly everyone in the main stand lower is now being searched and scanned on the way in – causing huge queues outside the turnstiles.
Stewards said it ‘came from above’ and are not impressed either.
Why???
It’s not happening in other stands is it? @LFCHelp pic.twitter.com/fTiNxeYjRB
— Andy Milburn (@AndrewGMilburn) November 2, 2025
Just the same generic line about searches and security checks, the same advice to arrive early that fans have seen hundreds of times. No warning of new procedures. No mention of wanding. No mention of a full manual search process. Nothing at all.
Fans were left to work it out themselves. They arrived at the ground following their usual routine and suddenly found out it didn’t work anymore. People who have been going to Anfield for decades were caught completely off guard.
It wasn’t until four home games later that the email communication finally changed, advising supporters ahead of the Nottingham Forest match that “100 percent searches” were now in place. By then, the damage was already done.
This felt like box-ticking rather than a safety measure
My own experience summed up what thousands went through. On Saturday at around 2.18pm, long before the usual rush, the Anfield Road End was already full of static queues. I posted a picture saying it was a shambles and that I’d queued quicker in an airport.
Within minutes replies came flooding in from supporters across the ground. People who normally walk straight in were stuck. People who arrived early were stuck.
As the line crept forward, the problems became obvious. A steward waved a wand over supporters’ pockets and it kept beeping loudly, yet nothing happened. No follow-up checks. No questions. No bag opened. Just a beep, a glance, and ‘go on mate’.
In front of me, three women were told their bags needed a search tag, but the bags weren’t actually searched. The tag went on anyway and they were waved through.
It felt like a box-ticking exercise rather than a serious safety measure, and the frustration is made worse by the fact that most supporters still don’t know why any of this is happening beyond the vague line about ‘bringing LFC into line with Premier League procedures’.
Missing kick-off hurts the Anfield atmosphere
Supporters are frustrated — properly frustrated. In our WhatsApp group, one fan said, “I got there an hour early and still barely moved.”
On X, others comments ranged from: “Ruins the experience” to “never queued like this before” and “so bad today, missed kick-off.”
Another put it even more simply: “It shouldn’t take this long to get into a match.”
This was 25 minutes into queueing and 2 minutes after kick off for upper ani pic.twitter.com/dNjtVzMPgw
— Shaun (@shaunb2706) November 2, 2025
These aren’t dramatic reactions. They’re ordinary supporters saying what everyone at Anfield is feeling.
This is happening at a club where routines genuinely matter. Football supporters aren’t robots. They go to the same chippy. They meet the same mates at the same time. They walk the same streets. They enter through the same turnstile. They’ve done this for years, often decades.
These routines are part of what makes Anfield feel like a community rather than just a venue. Suddenly forcing people to change all of that without warning is guaranteed to annoy them.
One lad summed it up perfectly when he said, “My dad’s been going for 40 years. We always arrive at 2.40. Now we can’t. Why wasn’t this said earlier?”
And he’s right, because the real question is: why should they have to arrive earlier at all? Why should this suddenly become the supporters’ responsibility to fix? This is a club issue.
They are the ones who should be facilitating the needs of their customers — and I use that word deliberately — because fans pay an awful lot of money to attend
Anfield and deserve a matchday that doesn’t feel like an ordeal before the football even starts.
There is also the atmosphere to think about. John Gibbons put it perfectly when he said, “fans p***ed off before they have even got to their seat isn’t the best for the atmosphere.”
He’s right. Anfield doesn’t switch on at kick-off. It builds from the pubs, the streets, the traders, the walk to the ground. If thousands of supporters are still stuck in queues at 2.55pm, soaked and annoyed, the atmosphere inside is flat before a ball has even been kicked.
And the timing couldn’t be worse. At a moment when the team needs the crowd more than ever, Liverpool are unintentionally creating the worst possible conditions for supporters to actually do their job.
When people are still filing in for the first 10 minutes, it is hardly conducive to an electric atmosphere.
Fans understand safety
Just don’t understand how it gets worse game after game tryna get in the upper pic.twitter.com/RF1CY8B54x
— Joe (@j0emcelr0y) November 26, 2025
This whole situation is being justified quietly behind the scenes by pointing towards Martyn’s Law. Supporters understand that completely.
Nobody is arguing against safety and nobody is pretending the world hasn’t changed, but Martyn’s Law has a long phase-in period.
It does not require clubs to suddenly introduce new procedures seven games into a season. And if Liverpool want to bring things in early, fine — but then they need to tell people properly. They also need a serious plan to deliver serious checks.
What supporters are seeing now doesn’t feel like real security. It feels muddled. A wand that beeps without consequence and bags that get tags without being opened doesn’t reassure anyone. It just irritates people who are already standing in the cold for half an hour.
Supporters aren’t being unreasonable. They aren’t anti-safety and they aren’t demanding special treatment. They simply want to know what’s happening before they reach the turnstiles
They want checks that actually mean something, not a process that looks confused from the outside. And above all, they want the club to respect the routines that make Anfield what it is.
This is Liverpool’s job to fix – not for supporters
We’ll be playing Qarabag by the time I get in here ? pic.twitter.com/YsI6CudPCA
— Alfie Outram (@brownalfie98) November 26, 2025
Matty Johnson from the Spirit of Shankly supporters union summed up what so many are feeling when he said: “Bottom line is people don’t want to go in early.
“It’s their tradition to have a pint or a chippy etc — so telling everyone to go in early won’t make any difference.”
He’s right. Matchday routines aren’t an inconvenience to be brushed aside. They’re part of the culture, part of the build-up, part of why people love going to the match in the first place.
Supporters shouldn’t be asked to rip that up because the club has introduced a system that clearly can’t cope with the numbers.
Matty also pointed out: “When we go to Tottenham we have to go through an airport-style machine where it scans us, take out our items in pockets etc before going in — and then you’re in the stadium with no queues at the turnstiles.”
Anfield doesn’t have the space for that and everyone accepts it, but as he added: “In the meantime they should have random checks, or have them on the inside of the stadium.
The Anfield Road End has two working turnstiles for the upper tier. You can’t expect people to turn up earlier because you are searching everyone to go into the stadium.”
Again, he’s right. Supporters aren’t asking for perfection. They’re asking for something that looks like a plan.
Liverpool supporters aren’t asking for the world here. They’re asking for clarity, consistency and a matchday experience that feels like Liverpool, not an airport queue with guesswork attached.
This is Liverpool Football Club’s job to fix this – not the supporters’.