KLOPP MUST LEARN FROM MOURINHO
Liverpool not as mean or streetwise as arch-rivals German’s bid to restore glory days is badly off track
WHEN Jurgen Klopp joined Liverpool this week back in 2015, he said he would win a title within four years. In recent days there has been some discussion about what exactly he meant.
According to those who were there, it was subsequently made clear that when Klopp said ‘title’ he meant ‘trophy’. His pledge had, it seems, been less bold than it appeared.
But the fact that this issue has been raised prior to tomorrow’s game with Manchester United at Anfield indicates Klopp’s mission to restore Liverpool to a position at the top of the English game may not be running exactly on trajectory.
During Klopp’s exciting two years on Merseyside there have been bigger games than this, but not many. Liverpool can be formidable at home but if they lose this one they will be 10 points behind their great rivals in the Premier League.
Already their goal difference, after only seven games, is inferior by 18. In terms of the title, they will be coming from a terribly long way back.
It is often said that Liverpool and United are similar but that is only true up to a point.
United are currently a club defined by trophies, whereas Liverpool are fuelled in part by romantic notions and the promise of better days ahead. Back in the day — when Liverpool were tearing it up under Bob Paisley and others — it was actually the other way round.
United, for example, are coming off the back of four ‘fallow’ seasons following Sir Alex Ferguson’s reign. In that time of relative struggle they have won three major trophies.
Liverpool, supposedly the more progressive club under Klopp and previously Brendan Rodgers, have won one trophy — the League Cup in 2012 — in more than 11 years.
That is a dreadful, embarrassing run for a club of their stature and so far the closest they have come to improving it was losing two finals in Klopp’s first season.
So as Liverpool continue to wrestle with their modern identity, United will tomorrow prove quite appropriate opposition, a barometer even. Jose Mourinho’s United have the look of a classic modern English team. Athletic, tall, powerful, pragmatic and mean.
Liverpool are quick, nimble and clever but continue to lack some basic ingredients. They lack some ‘street smarts’ and that is something that could never be said about a Mourinho team, no matter how pedestrian his football can sometimes appear.
Underpinning all this, of course, is the elephant that just refuses to leave the room, Liverpool’s defending. It has held them back for years. When Rodgers’ team almost won the league in 2014, they conceded 50 goals. Only one team in the top eight conceded more and clubs such as Southampton and Crystal Palace conceded fewer.
Last season that figure stood at 42, an improvement, but it was interesting to read Kenny Dalglish say this week that he would rather see Klopp’s team win 3-2 rather than 1-0. That was strange because it flies squarely in the face of an age-old Liverpool creed established when Dalglish was playing and winning at the club.
Dalglish’s first memorable contribution for Liverpool was to score the winner in a 1-0 European Cup Final triumph against Club Bruges at Wembley in 1978.
It was a limp, turgid game but Liverpool won. The next season Dalglish played in a team that won the old First Division title while conceding only 16 goals in 42 games.
At Liverpool, success always started at the back.
Paisley said after a goalless draw at Coventry: ‘It may not be good for football and perhaps it’s not entertaining, but to win the Championship you have to find the happy medium between adventure and the need to get results’.
Much has changed in football, but that sentiment still rings true more than 40 years on.
Klopp has tried to solve the problem, which at least indicates he knows it is there. He wants to sign Southampton central defender Virgil van Dijk, and RB Leipzig’s gifted holding midfielder Naby Keita will arrive next summer. Both players would do much to help and anybody who really believes Klopp is not the right man for the job at Anfield cannot have felt the surge of electricity Case for the defence: Jurgen Klopp brought on by the sight of his Liverpool team at their best.
Klopp is moving Liverpool forward, often thrillingly. He and Liverpool still appear to be the right fit.
But there are holes in the plan at the moment and perhaps another look back to the Dalglish era is appropriate.
David Fairclough was a Liverpool striker of the time and said recently: ‘You were scared you were going to lose the ball because of the bollocking you were going to get. I lose it and Ray Kennedy is there and it’s, “What the f*** are you doing?”.’
At Liverpool, possession was everything but so were strength, organisation and reliability.
If, as they go in search of Klopp’s first ‘ title’, there is anything this Liverpool team can learn from the ones before them and, indeed, the United side that they face tomorrow, it is surely this.