KLOPP CREATED THE BEST LIVERPOOL TEAM I’VE EVER SEEN

I FEARED all along that Jurgen Klopp would leave England with only one Premier League title to his name. Manchester City’s era of crushing dominance has seen to that. The value of football is not only measured by trophies, though. If it was, then 90 per cent of the Premier League clubs may as well stop playing. So Klopp’s single title success from nine years on Merseyside doesn’t stop me from thinking that the German built and developed perhaps the greatest team to represent Liverpool. It’s a bold statement and one that devotees of Bill Shankly’s time and certainly of the remarkable Bob Paisley era would contest. Paisley’s finest team was perhaps the one who almost won a treble in 1977. Ray Clemence, Emlyn Hughes, Terry McDermott, Kevin Keegan and the rest. Well, Liverpool lost eight of their 42 league games that season. They lost to Tottenham — who finished bottom — and also to Birmingham, West Ham, Ipswich, Norwich, Aston Villa (5-1 away), Newcastle and Bristol City. Under the modern three-points-for-a-win system, they would have finished with 80 points.

Kevin Keegan was the top scorer with 12 league goals. In 2021-22, Klopp’s team briefly had four trophies in their sights. They ended up with only the two domestic cups, losing the Premier League to City by a point on the last day of the season and the Champions League final to Real Madrid in Paris. But they amassed 92 points from 38 games that season and in all competitions lost only five times in 75 matches between March 2021 and May 2022. That Liverpool team, with Alisson in goal, Virgil van Dijk at his peak as centre half, two remarkable full backs and an attacking threat carried by Mohamed Salah and the criminally unheralded Sadio Mane, would, I suggest, have been too much for any of the Liverpool line-ups that passed before. The purpose here is not to denigrate Paisley’s great team. That was a side who broke new ground for the club in Europe. But a look back at 1977 is instructive as it enables us to place Liverpool’s football under Klopp into context. What is clear is that the greatness of his best Liverpool side is beyond doubt. It doesn’t need trophies to prove the point.