RANG CHANGES? YOU’LL BE LUCKY

DAVID MADDOCK JURGEN KLOPP has warned former confidant Ralf Rangnick: “You’ll have no time to make major changes at United.”

The two (above in 2011) have been close for many years, with the Liverpool boss even ringing Rangnick before he took his first management role at Mainz.

Klopp described his friend as: “A really good man and an outstanding coach, who in the football world is very, very highly regarded.” But he warned that will still not be enough to cope with the Premier League schedule through

December and

January and make improvements to

United – as his own experience in arriving at Anfield mid-season told him.

Klopp, who took over as Liverpool manager in October 2015, said: “You have an idea but you have to adapt it to your team. It’s not easy when you come in the middle of the season and there are pretty much 20 games between then and New Year’s Eve.

“That’s a massive challenge because the things you want to change on the pitch, you don’t get the time to change them.

“You need long, long, long meetings and there’s no chance of that! So it will be interesting for him.

“Every coach in the world needs time to train with his team and Ralf will pretty quickly realise he has no time to train because they play all the time, so that makes it trickier for him.”

Klopp has long complained about the overcrowded fixture list in England and has called for the game’s governing bodies to stop working players until they drop.

He has frequently spoken with Rangnick (below, before the German Cup final in 2019) since that first phone-call back in 2001 when he took over at Mainz and still remembers how the experienced German coach owes him one.

Klopp, whose titlechasing side face 10 games between now and New Year’s Day, said: “We faced each other for the first time when I was a really young coach – he called me the young manager of Mainz and I remember he asked me plenty of questions.

“I was happy that big Ralf Rangnick was calling me but he got all the information he needed. They got promoted and we didn’t so he owes me!”