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<\/p>\nThe final Blood Red column of the season focuses on Andy Robertson, Liverpool’s poor season and why the impact of Diogo Jota’s death cannot be overlooked so easily<\/p>\n
05:00, 23 May 2026<\/p>\n
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The Liverpool players applaud the travelling supporters after the friendly against Preston North End at Deepdale on July 13, 2005 – 10 days after the death of their team-mate Diogo Jota(Image: OLI SCARFF\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Perhaps liberated by the sense of finality about it all, Andy Robertson has been speaking more freely than ever this week.<\/p>\n
The finest Liverpool<\/a> left-back in a generation leaves as a club legend and an emotional afternoon is anticipated when he – alongside another icon, Mohamed Salah<\/a> – departs on Sunday, once the last game of the season, at home to Brentford, has been concluded.<\/p>\n As Anfield<\/a> afternoons go in late May, the event won’t quite hit the heights of last year, when the Reds lifted the league title in front of their fans for the first time in 35 years.<\/p>\n But that the day itself, save for the ovations reserved for Salah and Robertson<\/a>, will generally be a low-key affair sums up what has been a tough campaign for the club.<\/p>\n Some jeopardy does technically still exist for Champions League hopes in the form of an unthinkable six-goal swing with Bournemouth<\/a>, but that is also oddly fitting for a troublesome term where anything that could go wrong has tended to do so.<\/p>\n We’re about to find out if fate will cruelly intervene once more this weekend but even this iteration of Liverpool surely cannot stumble from here.<\/p>\n And in the rush to analyse and assess where the problems truly lie at Anfield right now, some matter-of-fact assertions from Robertson this week cut through so much of the noise<\/a>.<\/p>\n For many, 20 defeats is unforgivable and Arne Slot<\/a>‘s brand of football has quite rightly been questioned at various junctures.<\/p>\n But for Robertson, when asked where he thinks the cracks started to show in an interview<\/a> with a handful of publications that included the ECHO this week, the Scotland skipper had a more straightforward, if infinitely more harrowing explanation.<\/p>\n “We can\u2019t hide away from it,” Robertson said, referring to the horrendous death of the much-loved Diogo Jota<\/a> last July. “And it is not an excuse, but what we went through in the summer no team will ever go through. No member of staff will go through. I hope they never go through it because of the devastation we went through. Football didn\u2019t matter.”<\/p>\n In a separate interview with Arsenal legend Ian Wright, Robertson expanded on the topic, revealing: “After the highs of the end of last season, the first time I saw the lads after the trophy [parade] day, we were on a plane to one of our mates’ funerals. We’re only human beings at the end of the day. I think for the world of football it was tough enough, but for us it’s one of our best mates.”<\/p>\n Robertson is right. When Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, were involved in that fatal car accident in northern Spain in the early hours of July 3, football didn’t matter. Somewhere along the way, however, the unimaginably tragic death<\/a> of the Portugal international no longer became part of the equation when it came to discussing the Reds on the pitch.<\/p>\n The ECHO was there in the Far East last summer, just weeks after Jota’s passing, as a club in mourning attempted to somehow return to some sense of normality. We were also there at Deepdale earlier that month and felt the enormous emotional weight as the players clapped the travelling fans in their first appearance since their No.20’s death.<\/p>\n In hindsight, it is little wonder there have been underwhelming displays on the pitch and in the dugout.<\/p>\n When results dipped and performances waned and the criticism became more fierce, Liverpool were questioned intensely. Just where has it all gone wrong? What is at the core of these issues? Is Slot still the right man for the job?<\/p>\n The pages of the ECHO have been just as culpable as anywhere else when critiquing Slot and his players, who have been routinely assessed in a negative light because of their output this term. How fair has it all been?<\/p>\n As Robertson’s admissions reveal, grief is not linear and the players’ wealth and status as elite sportsmen have done little to protect them from the distress of their friend’s death<\/a>.<\/p>\n The true scale of its effect probably won’t be felt for years and it is a simple fact that Liverpool were the only club in the Premier League<\/a> to have counsellors at their training base last summer during preparations for this season.<\/p>\n Cody Gakpo<\/a> did his utmost to present the idea<\/a> of the squad being a tower of strength to those outside of it who needed support when he spoke to the ECHO on the club’s pre-season tour of Japan and Virgil van Dijk<\/a> has only hinted at how impactful Jota’s death<\/a> has been during the many, many post-match interviews he has conducted since.<\/p>\n