TIME FOR JURG TO CARRY ON REGARDLESS
JURGEN KLOPP has spent most of this season doing his best Kenneth Williams impression.
‘Infamy, infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ – went his famous Carry On Cleo gag as he played Julius Caesar.
Too many injuries, not enough substitutes, a chaotic fixture schedule and too little time to recover between games… something has been getting his goat for much of the campaign.
The Liverpool boss even labelled this game ‘a crime’ because his side were forced to play the Saturday lunchtime kick-off after a Champions League fixture on Wednesday.
The big grin we saw so much of last season has all too often been replaced by a scowl this time out.
It hasn’t always been easy to agree with Klopp given the fact Liverpool and the rest of the Premier League’s big boys have the resources to deal with what’s being thrown at them.
After all, does it really make that much of a difference whether a team kicks off at 12.30pm or 3pm three days after their last fixture?
But at the Amex it was hard not to feel some degree of sympathy with him after a very tight offside decision and a soft, stoppagetime penalty award, which involved a VAR intervention of course.
Beaten by Atalanta at home in midweek, it had looked like a tough week was at least going to end positively with a lovely Diogo Jota strike.
Neal Maupay’s early penalty miss also offered proof that not everyone is conspiring against him.
In the end, though, Klopp left the south coast believing that the football gods, as well as the mere mortals who make the rules, do indeed have it in for him.
The sarcastic applause he aimed at officials after Pascal Gross converted his late equaliser said as much. As did the fascinating exchange he got involved in with BT Sport’s Des Kelly.
Klopp talked in that interview about wanting to move on from his gripes and, while the questions about them will keep coming, after this weekend he really does need to do that.
Because the danger is gripes can quickly turn to excuses, which will offer his players an out for the points they are dropping.
Klopp, of course, is just trying to protect his players but his frustrations have become the narrative rather than what happens on the pitch.
Every team is going to suffer with injuries this season and every club at some point will have to handle a set of circumstances they are not used to.
Liverpool are in that moment now and they need their manager to focus solely on navigating them through it.