Kirsty Linnett and Becky Jane Speak Out About Liverpool Treatment

Let me be clear: playing for Liverpool Football Club is a privilege and not a right. The club has every authority to decide that a player’s services are no longer needed. I know that. Kirsty Linnett and Becky Jane know that too. I want to lead with this, because the bad faith discourse around this recent and, at this point, predictably disappointing treatment by LFC to their women’s players has been that the women are just mad that they got dropped from their contracts.

It started on Friday with Kirsty Linnett. She put out a Twitter statement regarding being let go from the club.

Linnett claims that the club didn’t bother to tell her that they’d rescinded her contract until her agent called emailed them to further negotiations. The unprofessionalism is breathtaking. The disregard for a player who served them for three years, even donning the captain’s armband at points, is stunning.

Former Liverpool manager Vicky Jepson even chimed in to offer support for the player she brought into the club.

The outrage over that development had barely settled before Becky Jane chimed in with her own story.

The fullback had been with Liverpool for two years when they apparently cut ties with her following Liverpool’s third place finish in the WSL2.

While the men’s operation is busy negotiating multimillion pound contracts with the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Fabinho, and the slow-moving conscious uncoupling of the club and Gini Wijnaldum has stretched out this whole season, apparently the women get booted from their jobs with a “new phone, who dis?”

Unacceptable. Unprofessional. Unsurprising.

And if fans spent Friday thinking that the club couldn’t possibly make things worse — oh, don’t worry. Because they released a statement.

Though, ‘released’ might be a strong word since it wasn’t posted to the official site or any of their socials, a perfect microcosm of their general lack of care for their players and concern over any possible backlash or lasting detriment to the club. Though given the content of the statement, maybe it was for the best.

Can you feel the contempt dripping from every word? The annoyance this spokesperson feels at the inconvenience of being asked to comment on such unimportant matters?

Comment below with your favorite part of this. Mine is “We of course thank all the players who will be moving on” - oh, do you, anonymous spokesperson?

I want to be outraged, but at this point I’m just tired. Embarrassed and disappointed and so, so tired.

And again, no one is saying that these women deserve a spot at the club. Not even Linnett and Jane are saying that. It’s the way that these women are having their careers irrevocably changed and their livelihoods threatened with all of the concern of someone swatting away a pesky fly. It’s so hard to watch and hard to stomach from a club I love so much.