The long goodbye begins with Liverpool at their stirring best
FOR Jurgen Klopp, this was the start of the long goodbye. For his Liverpool team, it was the first step in making sure their manager leaves in the only appropriate manner at the end of this season.
There will be no shortage of emotion and melancholy around these parts between now and the end of May. It’s inevitable, whether Klopp wants it or not. But what Liverpool’s season really must yield now is trophies.
Klopp’s eight-and-a-half years at Anfield may have been about glamour and excitement and energy and identity. But they have been about winning, too.
So if his current Liverpool squad owe their outgoing manager anything over the next four months or so then it is more victories, more success, more silverware. Liverpool are still alive in every competition that stood before them last August. Top of the Premier League, in the Carabao Cup final, in the knockout stages of the Europa League and, after this victory, in the fifth round of the FA Cup.
Had we not known what we know as of Friday morning, namely that Klopp will leave Liverpool this summer, there would not have been anything out of the ordinary about this occasion or this dismissal of a spirited but defensively flawed Norwich team.
Norwich once ruined a great Anfield day by winning 1-0 here in the last game before the old Kop terrace was knocked down in 1994.
Here, there was never a chance of a repeat. But, no, there was nothing particularly poignant or emotional about this game, not that was visible anyway. Nothing in the match programme. No banners. No new songs.
It was just another example of Liverpool doing what they do and that, in its own way, served as the greatest tribute to Klopp and all that he has brought to this great institution.
Liverpool ran hard, passed quickly, hustled for possession and, eventually, scored five goals when they could have had double that.
There was also a return to the pitch, as substitutes, of Andrew Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dominik Szoboszlai following injuries. When Robertson appeared after so many weeks out, the reception almost lifted the roof off this fabulously reconditioned old stadium.
So with Liverpool’s roster replenished and with young players such as full back Conor Bradley and midfielder James McConnell emerging at pace — both were excellent here — there is a quickly gathering momentum threatening to push this season forward.
On Wednesday, Chelsea visit in the league and then, on Sunday, Klopp takes his players to Arsenal. Nobody would wish to play them at the moment and if news of Klopp’s plans are to energise his players — rather than have the opposite effect — then this 90 minutes of football may one day be viewed as the start of all that.
For Liverpool fans, all of this must serve to encourage but also to frustrate. After the transitional difficulties of last season, this is a squad that looks perfectly set up to develop into something to love and savour over the next few years.
How hard it must be, then, to accept that the man best capable of guiding and leading them where they need to go is readying himself to walk into the sunset before the summer is even upon us.
Here, under a spotlight nobody would have expected when the Cup draw was made, Klopp fielded an under-strength team that was still strong enough. Norwich, managed by Klopp’s old friend David Wagner, were committed and organised but failed by individual errors.
Liverpool threatened from the start and Darwin Nunez struck a post from 20 yards. Then, in the
16th minute, they scored as McConnell, on his first start, chipped a cross on to Curtis Jones’s head. The finish, across Norwich’s stand-in goalkeeper George Long, was neat and well-angled.
Norwich had no possession and no territory at this point but, still, they equalised. Joe Gomez snuffed out a break by blocking a cross but when the corner was whipped to the near post, Ben Gibson’s backwards header found the far corner.
Anfield was irritated rather than stunned. This version of Liverpool does concede the occasionally poor goal. But the memory was soon wiped by a goal that more than anything we saw here summed up much of what has traditionally been so good about Klopp’s team.
Bradley, the 20-year-old Northern Ireland full back, hustled an opponent out of possession with tigerish energy on the far touchline and this lit the touchpaper. With Norwich caught short of numbers and off-balance, Bradley was able to advance and play Nunez through the middle.
Liverpool’s raw but talented centre forward still had much to do and he has missed clearer chances than this over the last season and a half. But his low right-foot shot was perfectly struck and found the bottom-right corner of the Norwich goal, with Long unable to do anything about it.
Liverpool missed other chances before half-time — Cody Gakpo and Ryan Gravenberch the culprits — but when Gibson made a mess of heading away a long ball seven minutes into the second period, Diogo Jota volleyed it in with that familiar calmness of his to ensure there would be no surprises.
Ten substitutes arrived in the final half-hour — what a nonsense that all is — and one of Liverpool’s scored within eight minutes of coming on, Virgil van Dijk heading in from a corner.
A stunning 25-yard right-foot shot from Borja Sainz gave Norwich supporters something better to think about on the way home but familiarly poor defending allowed Gravenberch to head Liverpool’s fifth deep into stoppage time and that was the end of it.
Earlier, it had taken only 57 seconds of the game for the first Klopp song to tumble down from the Kop. As he left the pitch at the end, meanwhile, they sang one of their favourites.
‘I’m so glad that Jurgen is a Red…’ is how it goes and indeed he is. For now, at least.