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Trent Alexander-Arnold was booed by Liverpool fans during Sunday’s 2-2 draw against Arsenal as Andrew Robertson admitted it was “not nice” to hear the jeers for his team-mate in his first appearance since announcing he will leave the champions at the end of this season.

Liverpool right-back Alexander-Arnold confirmed his impending exit on Monday ahead of a widely-expected move to Real Madrid.

In his first game in front of Liverpool’s fans at Anfield since his decision to quit his boyhood club, the Merseyside-born England star was subjected to audible jeers as he was introduced as a 67th-minute substitute against Arsenal.

There were also some cheers for the 26-year-old product of Liverpool’s youth academy, who has won two Premier League titles and the Champions League with the Reds.

But he was booed several times while in possession in the second half as Arsenal fought back from two goals down despite finishing with 10 men after Mikel Merino’s late dismissal.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot had said prior to the game he would not tell supporters how they should react to the player’s announcement.

Slot dropped Alexander-Arnold from his line-up as he looked to the future by starting with 21-year-old Conor Bradley.

The highly-rated Northern Irishman is viewed as the natural successor to Alexander-Arnold and the crowd sang his name during the game.

“There’s a lot of emotion around it,” Robertson said of the taunts for Alexander-Arnold.

“For Trent, it’s not been an easy one. Of course it’s not. But he’s made the decision.

“It’s not nice to see a friend get booed, it wasn’t nice. But as I said, we can’t tell people how to act.

“I can’t tell you how I feel about it, I’m extremely proud of him. I love him as a player, I love him as a friend. He will be missed as one of my best friends in the game.”

READ ALSO: Fan Violence Casts Shadow Over Nigerian Football League

 ‘There’s a lot of ill-feeling’ 

Slot opted to toe a delicate line between supporting Alexander-Arnold and not angering Liverpool’s fans.

“There were people who were not so happy, there were people who were happy for him. They clapped for him. A few of them booed,” he said.

“I will always back my players, the ones I lead and wear the red shirt.

“It would not be fair to focus only on the Liverpool fans that booed. If they want to, it’s fine but there were a lot of people that were really positive about him as well.”

Slot said he would have no qualms about selecting Alexander-Arnold for Liverpool’s final two games at Brighton and against Crystal Palace at Anfield.

“The thing I consider is I want to win a game of football and if we think we can win with Trent, I owe it to his team-mates and to the fans, because they hired me to win as many games of football as possible,” Slot said.

“And if I think there’s a better chance of winning with Trent, then I will pick him.

“If I think it’s a distraction or whatever can happen for us not to play a good game of football, then I might make another decision.”

Alexander-Arnold is the latest Liverpool star to leave for Madrid after Steve McManaman and Michael Owen in 1999 and 2004 respectively.

Neither have been able to completely heal the wounds caused by their defections to the Bernabeu.

But former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher echoed Robertson’s frustration with the reaction of Reds fans to Alexander-Arnold.

“That’s the story of the game. That’s what we will be talking about after the game, and the back pages of every newspaper tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m surprised how many. When you’re in a crowd of 60,000, there’s no doubt there’s a lot of unhappy people at Liverpool about the situation, and I’ve said that’s understandable.

“But for me, I don’t believe that any player putting that red shirt on, going out to play for the club and trying to win them points or win them trophies should be booed.”

Minutes after the final whistle, Vincent Temitope, a forward with Nigerian football club Plateau United, was bleeding after suffering a horrific cut to his neck.

Temitope was attacked after he had scored in the 3-2 loss away to Nasarawa United last month in the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL).

His club blamed the attack in central Nigeria on supporters of the home team, with director Yaksat Maklek saying some fans attacked him “inflicting a cut on his neck region, causing sustained bleeding”.

Such instances of violence are frequent in a league in which the home teams often deploy means to win at all costs.

A week before Temitope was attacked, players of Lagos-based Ikorodu City were rescued from a stadium in the southwestern Nigerian city of Ibadan after earning a 1-1 draw against the home team, Shooting Stars.

Match officials reportedly had to disguise themselves as policemen to evade violent fans as they tried to leave the stadium.

Only a month before, Shooting Stars’s goalkeeping coach John Dosu was punched by an official of a visiting team.

“Desperation for victory, desperation for points, particularly for teams that want to finish amongst the top three, or teams that want to avoid a drop, is usually at the foundation of crowd violence,” Toyin Ibitoye, a former spokesman for Nigeria’s national football squad, the Super Eagles, told AFP.

Fan violence at stadiums also festers because some clubs tacitly support the perpetrators, Ibitoye said.

The result is a toxic match-day atmosphere, where fans often feel entitled to attack players and officials if results don’t go their way.

Players and match officials are not the only ones at risk.

The police had to fire tear gas to disperse hundreds of angry fans who stormed the pitch and went on the rampage after Nigeria failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup.

But analyst Emeka Nwani suggests that the “violence and hooliganism” are not as rampant as portrayed.

Patrice Motsepe, the president of the Confederation of African Football, told journalists in Ghana last month of his “very deep and steadfast” commitment to eliminating violence in African football stadiums.

“To have a single fan injured at the stadium is something that we do not want to experience under any circumstance,” Motsepe said in response to a question about a recent wave of incidents across the continent.

READ ALSO: ‘Not Nice,’ Robertson Faults Liverpool Fans For Booing Alexander-Arnold

 Unscrupulous referees

The integrity of the Nigerian league is also threatened by dubious officiating, which officials are struggling to crack down on.

As the current season nears its climax on May 18, league organisers are also scrambling to tackle the age-old problem of questionable officiating.

Some fans accuse referees of bias or being compromised, especially in high-stakes fixtures.

In a strongly-worded memo two weeks ago, the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) told referees across all tiers to be fair or face the consequences.

It warned that referees found guilty of malpractice could face a 10-year ban and even be handed over to the police for “further investigation and prosecution.”

For many club officials, the warning was long overdue.

“That’s how you curb the ‘mago mago’ we always see at this point in the league,” an official with one of the local clubs told AFP, using local slang for foul play or manipulation.

 ‘Cosmetic sanctions’

Despite fines and stadium bans occasionally handed down by the NPFL’s board, the sanctions are often seen as merely cosmetic.

Clubs are rarely held accountable beyond token punishments, and banned fans often return to stadiums undeterred.

The league fined Nasarawa United six million naira (about $3,740) after the attack on Plateau United’s Temitope and ordered the club to play its remaining home games in a neighbouring state till the end of the season.

Analysts believe that to counter the violence, the clubs and offending fans should face much tougher punishment.

“The best sanction for me, apart from banning the fans… or banishing the club from their base, is to also deduct points,” Nwani told AFP.

Better officiating standards and enhanced stadium security and fan engagement could also help deter the violence, said Ibitoye, who called for “more surveillance cameras” to identify perpetrators.