Liverpool is eerily quiet, with no Merseyside derby taking place on Monday night and the Grand National at Aintree cancelled over coronavirus fears. It’s 7pm on a Monday night on Merseyside, and all is quiet. Eerily so.
In the Winslow pub, yards from Goodison Park, there are no replica shirts and no queues. No noise, no sense of excitement, of fear, of tension. No customers. The same goes for the Royal Oak and the Brick, on nearby County Road. A few hundred yards away, the King Harry on Anfield Road is silent. The Twelfth Man and the Church too. No customers.
There are no police waiting to escort Liverpool supporters along Walton Lane. No helicopter hangs overhead, no touts linger, hopeful of a bit of quick business. The smell of burgers and beer and horse manure is absent.
