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Brendan Rodgers or Arsene Wenger out: Are Arsenal or Liverpool Twitter users more angry with their manager?
One has overseen his club’s worst start to a league campaign for 32 years, the other has seen his team slip to 12th after finishing second last season. Both have just suffered damaging defeats they’d rather forget.
Only by scrolling through Twitter could it have got any more miserable for Arsenal's Arsene Wenger or Liverpool's Brendan Rodgers this weekend. Both managers were the subject of a barrage of fans’ fury condensed into 140 characters.
A section of the Arsenal fanbase seemed to lose patience with their manager after Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United side picked up their first away win of the season at the Emirates on Saturday, while some Liverpool supporters apparently faith in Rodgers after a 3-1 loss at Palace spelt a fourth straight defeat in all competitions for the Reds.
In the last month alone the Twitter hashtags #WengerOut and #RodgersOut have been tweeted over 80,000 times, with both reaching a peak this weekend according to social analytics tool Topsy.
On Saturday the blunt hashtag #WengerOut was tweeted 27,904 times as Arsenal fans failed to come to terms with yet another failed attempt to beat Manchester United – the Gunners have beaten United just once in their last 15 meetings.
The #RodgersOut brigade were smaller in number, but still clearly visible on the social media platform. The hashtag was tweeted 11,284 times yesterday, and was even trending in Liverpool during the afternoon.
The majority of Londoners were seeming preoccupied elsewhere on their Saturday evening, but #WengerOut was a national trend in Nigeria.
Most anti-Wenger sentiment seems to have accumulated over a period of time with fans who have reluctantly become increasingly frustrated with the club’s failure to consistently challenge for trophies and poor record against other “big” Premier League sides.
Tweets from both sets of fans reveal a hankering for Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp as the chosen saviour. #KloppIn was tweeted 975 times yesterday.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) November 24, 2014
It should be noted that Arsenal are seen to have a larger online fanbase than Liverpool. The north London club has 31m Facebook “likes” and 4.85m Twitter followers. In contrast, Liverpool have 24m “likes” and 3.52m followers. So a larger number of tweets in reference to Arsenal and their manager is no scientific indication of Arsenal fans’ any more peeved with their manager.
It was all so different a year ago for both managers, when Arsenal sat top of the Premier League with 28 points and Liverpool were hot on their heels with 24 points.
Yet Arsenal’s tally of 17 points after 12 games is their worst in the Premier League era, while Rodgers’ Liverpool side only narrowly avoid such ignominy. The Reds have 14 points after 12 games, their worst tally at this stage of the season since the very first Premier League campaign in 1992.