Many of Liverpool's most important figures don't live in Liverpool. Does it matter?

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In 2014, it expanded its business operation by opening a bureau in London to help grow what had started on Merseyside.  Meanwhile, the organisation’s head of football, Michael Edwards, originally from Hampshire, lives just outside Manchester and runs an office in nearby Altrincham. Edwards appointed Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, a Scot who usually travels north for a couple of working days a week from his home on the south coast of England. Hughes hired the head coach, Arne Slot. Though he has a place in Liverpool, his family remains tethered to the Dutch town of Zwolle, not far from where he grew up. Then there are the players. Across the past decade, most have gravitated towards the Cheshire millionaire belt, where footballers from other north-west clubs tend to live. This season, the only Liverpool-born player in the team has been Curtis Jones, though he has mainly served as backup to other midfielders, with his own long-term future in doubt. It feels a pertinent issue to raise as a particularly significant Merseyside derby looms on Sunday — the first at Everton’s new dockside stadium, and which would see the hosts move within two points of their guests with a win, although Everton also only have one local regularly in their ranks (James Garner, born in Birkenhead).   But does it actually matter? The broader trend of Liverpool’s significant figures drifting away from the city itself was also true last season when Liverpool surged towards the title. Nobody was quibbling over postcodes when Liverpool’s squad, staff and executives were cavorting with the Premier League trophy in front of the Kop. But context is everything, and the context has changed. Not only have results nosedived, but the disconnect between Liverpool’s fanbase and the club feels acute. FSG, whose top brass only ever show up at Anfield a couple of times a year, has been accused of being tin-eared due to proposed ticket price increases across the next three years. Meanwhile, there is a developing critique of Edwards and Hughes, who are key to the future of Slot — the head coach with 17 losses to his name in 2025-26. Each of these figures will be out of contract at the same time in 2027. There is a whiff of each of them passing through in their current roles. Amid bad results, a contingent of Liverpool players (Dominik Szoboszlai, Jeremie Frimpong, and Ibrahima Konate) have started trying to rally an irritable crowd before, during and after games. Such gestures suggest they do not really understand that what tends to get Liverpool supporters going is running back, tackling hard, and passing forward with purpose, rather than being told to raise their own game by players who only do their own bit sporadically. There is a conversation to be had about the atmosphere at Anfield, where 18 per cent of the capacity is now corporate seating and other spaces are hoovered up by first-timers or tourists who want to experience the stadium, but the current malaise is not down to the supporters.  Would there be such a sense of disconnect if a greater number of the people involved at Liverpool were more enmeshed in the city itself?  Liverpool’s players have tended not to live in Liverpool since the 1970s, when many had homes in West Derby, close to the old Melwood training ground. After Kenny Dalglish moved to Southport, a seaside town with its own identity 17 miles north of Liverpool, other players joined him, but when he became player-manager in 1985, they began moving out, some of them to the Wirral peninsula, because they didn’t want him knowing about everything they were up to.  At various points in the decades since, players have formed communities near Woolton in the south of Liverpool, Blundellsands to the north, and Formby, which is halfway to Southport, giving them access to local feeling, creating the impression they are relatable in some way. Until the early 1990s, the players belonged to a successful team, but they were visible in the city because of a rich social scene that helped inspire the club’s success. Yet as time has moved on, as expectations have increased upon footballers generally, wherever they have lived, they have tended to inhabit similar worlds, their mansions looming behind high walls and vast gates. Owners and directors might think they can make cleaner and better choices without the distraction of the noise a febrile city such as Liverpool sometimes creates. Yet just as distance makes it easier to try to impose unpopular decisions around thorny issues such as ticketing, it also makes it easier to misjudge mood and underestimate responses. The same goes for players. Trent Alexander-Arnold, born in West Derby, north-east of the city centre, had not lived in Liverpool for several years before he decided to leave the club last summer for Real Madrid. Maybe nestling deep in the minds of some supporters who tormented him in his final weeks as a Liverpool player was the idea that he already thought he was too good for the city.  What is absolutely certain, especially for a local, is that Liverpool always has to seem like it is the priority and nowhere else is better. It is also true that the figures who have had the greatest impact at Anfield have been embraced not only because they did well for the club, but because they became fully embedded in the culture of the city, regardless of where they were from. Rather than being intimidated by the prospect of living and working in close quarters, they realised it helped them do their jobs better. Bill Shankly lived in Liverpool, Dalglish remains in Southport but is often seen around Liverpool, and though Klopp was based in Formby for nine years, the stories about him drinking in his local pub or watching amateur matches in nearby parks helped his reputation as an everyman, making followers love him even more. On the blue side, Seamus Coleman — who was born in County Donegal, in the far north of Ireland — still lives in the city and has spoken about how those roots help him identify with what Everton fans are feeling about their club.  All were outsiders who really grasped the nature of the people in Liverpool, harnessing its energies and inspiring unity. Shankly led the way on this front, but you cannot imagine a future Liverpool manager (or head coach) having the needle to buy a house on Bellefield Drive, overlooking Everton’s old training ground in West Derby, as he did.  For Shankly, it was his way of showing that he knew as much about Liverpool’s closest rivals as his own club, and with that he commanded an unparalleled power. After being knocked out of the Champions League this week by Paris Saint-Germain, Slot not only sounded separated from the truth by claiming his team had “shown we can compete with the champions of Europe”, because his team had barely unsettled their opponents across two legs, but he also sounded powerless because the framing of any comprehensive defeat as a plucky effort does not come across well in a city that tends to think it can take on the world. You cannot imagine Shankly being taken on by this version of Liverpool, who now employ head coaches rather than managers after Klopp’s power extending well beyond the scope of his football team caused some internal angst.  That might indicate that the club’s system does not suit the best instincts of the city it represents — that something very important is missing or, worse, has been lost altogether. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Simon Hughes is a senior writer who joined The Athletic from The Independent in 2019. His latest book Chasing Salah was released in 2024. He has also written There She Goes, a modern social history of Liverpool as a city Follow Simon on Twitter @Simon_Hughes__