THE BEST IS YET TO COME
Unbeaten Liverpool have to improve in pretty much everything, roars Klopp
DRESSED in white trainers, blue jeans and a grey training top, the man who has the destiny of this season’s Premier League in his hands answered a very short question with an even shorter answer.
‘Has your team reached its potential yet this season?’ Jurgen Klopp was asked. ‘No,’ he replied.
Maybe this is the best news of all for those hoping Liverpool can win the English championship for the first time since 1990.
After Manchester City’s recent struggles, Klopp’s Liverpool are seven points ahead of Pep Guardiola’s champions and six in front of Tottenham, who are second.
Today Liverpool face Arsenal at Anfield. On Thursday they go to City. Two draws would probably be satisfactory but win both and Klopp will no longer be able to pretend that league positions don’t mean much at this time of year. Liverpool will be very strong favourites indeed.
Still, though, there is the feeling that City will come strong again in the second half of the season. They must do, surely. So if Klopp is to take his team somewhere that nobody really expected this season then he is right to hope for even more improvement from a side currently on course to break all kinds of club records. ‘There have been a lot of really good parts,’ added Klopp (below). ‘But was there a game where I thought that it was not possible that we can be better? No. It was not there yet. We have to improve in pretty much everything. ‘We have had our moments, we have had very good moments.
‘I sit here and think it is like a kid getting a nice present for Christmas and then asking: “Where is the other one?”. You always want something else or a bit more.’
After 19 games, Liverpool have 51 points. That is more than either of possibly two best Liverpool teams of all time — Bob Paisley’s 1978/79 vintage and Kenny Dalglish’s side of 1987/88 — had at the same stage.
The 1979 side conceded only 16 goals all season, something we presumed would never be bettered. Klopp’s team have conceded seven at the half way point of what is admittedly a shorter season.
So signposts to glory are everywhere for Klopp. Currently he doesn’t want to look at them but soon he may have to.
‘We were not the hunters before and now we are not the hunted,’ he said. ‘We are just a football team who want to play the best season of our lives. I don’t feel like a leader, we don’t feel like leaders of it. That’s a personal thing.
‘Maybe a lot of people are thinking like that but I don’t feel it. There is absolutely no difference.
‘The difference comes when you have five games to go and you are six or seven points up.
‘Then it is normal that things like this happen, but it is much too early now.’
There have been some notable achievements in English football in recent years. It is only two-and-half seasons since Leicester City won the Premier League. So we have to be careful when we talk about what a Liverpool triumph would mean.
Nevertheless, it would be a striking achievement and as such this is a very big week.
Liverpool finished 25 points behind Pep Guardiola’s City last season. City broke the 100-point barrier and were the first team to do so. We thought we would wait a while to see a repeat but seven months on and we are talking about it already.
Today Arsenal will present a stern challenge. The teams drew 1-1 at the Emirates last month and Unai Emery’s team have the capacity to trouble Liverpool on the counter-attack. Arsenal manager Emery revealed yesterday that he turned down the chance to sign Liverpool’s forward Mo Salah from Roma when the Spaniard was coaching Paris Saint-Germain. ‘We had some doubts but those doubts he has broken,’ said Emery.
Klopp, meanwhile, managed Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang when the two men were at Borussia Dortmund.
‘He is outstanding, as a player and as a person,’ said Klopp.
‘He has a combination of speed and finishing skills. It makes him an exceptional player.’
Liverpool were not at their best against Arsenal last time. Nor were they against City when the teams drew 0-0 at Anfield in October. They will have to be better over the course of the next six days to take a proper grip of this title race.
Yesterday Klopp carried the air of a man who knows that the biggest questions will be asked further down the tracks. As usual his comic timing was switched on.
Asked how it felt to be the most popular German in England, he said without pause: ‘It is only because of the alternatives.
‘Maybe go to Manchester and ask that question again…’
But underneath he knows the scale of the opportunity and what it means. Win their next two games and all of a sudden Liverpool could be in Devon Loch territory.