THE POTTYERIES
Klopp gets out of jail after crazy tactical switch
THE best thing about the Premier League for Jurgen Klopp? Well, for starters, he gets to learn some new English phrases.
Like ‘get out of jail.’ Asked after this game if he was familiar with the saying, he replied with a huge grin: “No, but I think I can work it out... yeah, yeah, I get it. I am sure I understand after this game!”
Klopp is one of Europe’s most experienced coaches and also a dab hand at media analysis, which he practised with professional ease in his native Germany even when he was an emerging young manager.
So he knew that by ‘resting’ Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino for this visit to the bet365 Stadium, he was leaving himself open to a storm of criticism should his team lose.
At half-time, he must have felt sick to his boots, that walk to the dressing room a journey of half-fury, halfdread. Liverpool were so bad they were lucky to get nil at that stage.
“If we had lost today then the whole world would have said ‘what have you done?’,” Klopp explained with a grimace.
“I understand 100 per cent when I make such a decision that, if it goes wrong, I will get criticism. That is my life – the life of a coach.
“My life is making decisions. Some of them are good – after the game you can see it obviously worked – and some of them are not.”
By leaving his Brazilian pair on the bench and choosing to go with a five-man defence that sat deep, and also abandoning his usual highpressing game, the German left the visitors looking nothing like a Liverpool side...and certainly not a Klopp one.
This was the least Klopp-like performance of his time on Merseyside so far, such a pale shadow of the vibrant, audacious Reds side of earlier in the season that even Stoke fans were rubbing their eyes in baffled disbelief.
In fact, the home team seemed so puzzled that it took them almost 45 minutes to capitalise on Liverpool’s obvious discomfort. Jon Walters, who makes a habit of netting against Liverpool, scored a simple goal, a header from six yards out when totally unmarked – a fair summary of the shambles in the defence he terrorised.
Yet even as he admitted it simply wasn’t good enough from his side, Klopp insisted there was little other option but to try to stay in the game for as long as possible before he could bring on the Brazilian cavalry, away on World Cup duty until two days before the game.
“I really had no other choice, especially with Roberto and Phil,” he said. “If I started them we could have lost both after half an hour. Phil lost 3kg in three days before the game and Roberto wasn’t ready.
“Maybe I’m lucky it worked out. I thought half an hour made real sense and, if it was still 0-0 then, it was OK. “But we didn’t play well, we were 1-0 down, and I had to use them at half-time. I got out of jail.”
There was an element of fortune. Without Simon Mignolet’s two brilliant saves, Liverpool simply wouldn’t have been in the game long enough for Coutinho and Firmino to produce their magic and deliver three priceless points by scoring in the 70th and 72nd minutes respectively.
Yet that’s the thing about the best managers... they always seem to be the lucky ones.