‘ Jur only hope, Liverpool’

> As a man who does not jump to conclusions, Klopp remains Reds’ biggest cause for hope. His flaws have been exposed for all to see this month but the German manager, with his ability to sweep away impatient judgement and maintain a level perspective, isn

WHAT is this ‘blip?’” Jurgen Klopp asked early in his press conference yesterday, his unfamiliarity with that term providing a moment of heavy, unscripted irony.

And well he may ask. This is the manager who had not lost two consecutive domestic matches at Liverpool until last week and yet will have suffered the ignominy of four on the trot at Anfield if Chelsea have won there overnight.

The suddenness of the setback has shocked even more than the event itself.

Klopp’s capacity to contend with it is helped by the fact that he always saw it coming. It was a year ago this month that he stood in a small side room on Melwood and predicted that the days of wine and roses which followed his reception as Liverpool’s new Messiah would run out in time.

“First it’s ‘yeah!’ (thumbs up) then it’s ‘erm’ (thumbs to the side) then it might be ‘ooh’ (thumbs down); so then I am alone and you will feel completely different,” he predicted back then, in the course of a discussion about Louis van Gaal, who was being publicly eviscerated at the time. There are certainly questions to be asked about his football judgement. It was Steven Gerrard’s assessment on BT Sport, in the minutes after Saturday’s defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers, that Liverpool’s fullbacks were playing so high as to invite the counter attack which destroyed the team. There have been technical deficiencies at the back, too, at times, and a lack of leadership there which makes so many yearn for those days of Jamie Carragher. Alberto Moreno, Dejan Lovren and Joe Gomez have all had their moments. But Wolves so transparently sought out the counter attacking option that you could see their strategy was cooked up in their video analysis room.

A flaw is being repeatedly exploited.

In that same, small Melwood room yesterday, Klopp was reminded of the dreadful autumn of 2014 in his last season at at Borussia Dortumnd, where six consecutive Bundesliga losses sent the side from eight to 17th in the table – their worst standing since he had arrived at the club.

There was talk of the hole Robert Lewandowski’s departure to Bayern Munich had left, which Ciro Immobile simply did not fill, though what really underpinned Dortmund’s fall was opposition teams figuring them out.

Opponents were simply parking the bus and stifling them to death.

Shinji Kagawa and Nuri Sahin struggled, though in the Champions League – where Klopp’s players were not so constrained – the side continued to flourish.

Klopp did not genuinely find an answer before he called time on his time at the club, the following summer. Klopp wafted this talk away

yesterday, reflecting on BT Sport’s how that had been “the strangest football season ever,” with Dortmund second to Bayern by almost every statistical measure except results.

“We had most possession, we ran the most, our opponents had less chances than us but we were 17th or 18th in the league table,” he said.

In the white heat of the Premier League, where no new winning style goes unchallenged for long, there is an even greater need to keep finding new ways to find new competitive advantages before the current ones are sussed out.

A deeper squad would help: a midfielder with the capacity to control games in something resembling the way Steven Gerrard did, as well as defenders who lead and defend.

Liverpool bought shrewdly in Joel Matip and Sadio Mane but it is not enough.

What is significant about Klopp’s last season at Dortmund, though, is the way that the gegenpressing continued, though thick and thin. Win or lose, he still motivated his players.

“I’m not interested if people say ‘This is the lowest point under Klopp’,” the manager said.

“It is really not nice but from my side I love driving to Melwood in the morning. I love working with the players even when it is difficult because part of this game, even though nobody around Liverpool wants to hear it, is losing.

“If you lose you cannot stop. You have to go for the next game.”

There was much more of this and it was impressive.

With humour and verve, Klopp swept away that tendency we all have to rush to judgement.

He sought to bring perspective to that so-fervent wish for the title which makes patience hard to find at times in the red half of Liverpool.

“I cannot always be new,” he concluded. “Before I did anything (here), everybody thought: ‘Yes! Now it works.’

“And now we lost a few games, maybe people think: ‘That’s really disappointing.’ So I cannot change things.

“Even if we did win the league this season and we didn’t next season, they will still be disappointed.

“Who thought we would change everything in a second in (this) season.”

So speaks the man for whom ‘blip’ is not in the vocabulary, and who – whatever the size of this challenge – is comfortably Liverpool’s biggest cause for hope. – The Independent