Klopp’s poor call starting to bite Pool

LET’S be honest, everybody loves him, don’t they? There’s that ebullience. There’s the way the effervescence of his personality is reflected in his side’s football and, more than anything else, there’s the way he just seems like a good bloke. Jürgen Klopp. Salt of the earth. Good lad.

There’s a palpable decency to the guy, but we fear that this very decency has led him towards making a decision not in his or Liverpool’s best interests. The decision? The one to let Nathaniel Clyne go out of loan to Bournemouth until the end of the season.

Clyne’s game time has been limited ever since the emergence of Trent Alexander-Arnold and understandably enough he was eager to move to get first team football. Understandable, that is, from Clyne’s perspective, not so much from Jürgen Klopp’s or Liverpool’s.

Liverpool needed defensive cover more than Klopp needed to give Clyne what he wanted. At the time even it seemed a strange decision to make. Yes Liverpool have some promising young defenders coming through the ranks – Ki-Jana Hoever for instance – but the Reds are in the teeth of a title challenge, it’s no time for kids.

Almost as soon as Clyne left the club Alexander Arnold picked up a knock. Almost as soon as he left the club Clyne would have been in a position to get the games he so desperately wanted. Poor luck for him, worse for Liverpool who are left desperately short-handed.

All you had to do was see how the Reds performed on Monday evening against West Ham to see that, with James Milner as make-shift full-back, Liverpool’s entire attacking strategy was hamstrung by the lack of a specialist at right full-back.

Liverpool’s midfield woes haven’t been helped by the decision to let Clyne go either – Milner would probably have made a better contribution to the cause at midfield in place of the pretty disappointing Naby Keita than he did at full-back.

In a week Liverpool have dropped four points from winning positions, that can’t be totally unrelated to the decision to let Clyne go. It was one of Klopp’s most misguided decisions as Liverpool manager. It could prove the most costly.