Jurgen’s big test looming
LIVERPOOL chose the moments after Monday night’s 3-1 defeat at Leicester to announce the appointment of a new chief executive.
According to Peter Moore, he ‘bleeds Liverpool red’ so perhaps the incoming CEO will have been as dumbfounded as everybody else by another miserable night for Jurgen Klopp’s team in the East Midlands.
A revival that began with a home win over Tottenham 16 days earlier and was followed by a winter training break in Spain lasted precisely one game. Monday night’s defeat was Liverpool’s fifth in seven matches.
They have won twice — the other victory coming against Plymouth in the FA Cup — this calendar year, meaning that when Klopp spoke about inconsistency after the Leicester game he was wrong. Liverpool have been consistently bad for quite some time now.
‘Yes we are consistent there, if you want to look at it,’ said Klopp. ‘We’ve brought on this situation and now everyone can doubt our attitude and that’s really our fault. The only thing we can do again is to work on it because we have no other solutions.
‘ What happened against Leicester has happened too often this season. Everyone knows how good we can be so that makes it even worse.’
The worrying thing for Klopp is that Monday night’s defeat against last year’s struggling Premier League champions was not that hard to predict. Since beating Manchester City at home on New Year’s Eve, Liverpool have looked desperately vulnerable, especially against teams who like to play on the counter-attack.
Asked if his players are simply not as good as he once thought, Klopp did not duck the question.
‘It’s getting more serious now,’ he said. ‘We all play for our future, myself included. Of course performances have an influence on these things.
‘I don’t think they aren’t as good as I thought but I think they need my help more to show it every week.’
When the season started a tilt at the Champions League places would have been judged as pretty much par in Klopp’s first full season at the club.
Unfortunately, his record after 55 games is less impressive than that of his predecessor Brendan Rodgers. The fact that expectations were raised so high by Liverpool’s flying start to the season is also pertinent. A failure to solve enduring problems is not helping him, either.
Lucas Leiva versus Jamie Vardy on Monday night was one of the season’s great mismatches. Vardy scored twice and terrorised the Brazilian. While Leiva is not Klopp’s idea of a reliable central defender, problems in that area still exist — as indeed they do in goal and at left back.
Manchester City’s Claudio Bravo may be known as the goalkeeper who never makes saves but Liverpool’s Simon Mignolet is the kind who never makes match-winning saves.
The man bought to replace him, the German Loris Karius, is currently on the bench while James Milner’s gallant stint out of position at left back would appear to be catching up with him at last. Nobody who has followed Klopp’s career or indeed watched his Liverpool team in the first half of the season will have any doubt about his suitability for the role.
When Liverpool are ‘on’ they remain the best team in the country to watch. One can only imagine they will improve when Klopp spends in the summer and removes the lingering debris of the Rodgers era. Players such as Daniel Sturridge may well never play for the club again.
Klopp does also need to make Liverpool a more pragmatic team, though. They tend to win well or not at all. In short, Liverpool are not reliable under Klopp.
New CEO Moore will arrive this summer fresh from time working with the gaming giants EA Sports. On the video screen, every goal is a screamer and every game a cliffhanger.
Here in the real world, Klopp’s team must find more functional ways to win.