Klopp ‘full throttle’ football in high gear
THE ascending star of Jurgen Klopp collides with Steve McClaren’s hurtling meteor today as the German’s re-energised Liverpool tackle the former England manager’s freewheeling Newcastle United.
Four consecutive wins have elevated Liverpool to within sight of the Premier League top four and into the League Cup semifinals, while successive heavy losses to Leicester City and Crystal Palace have sent Newcastle careening into the relegation zone.
Newcastle’s porousness and Liverpool’s attacking incisiveness could spell another bleak afternoon for McClaren, whose position is reportedly under threat after just two wins in 14 league games.
But after a number of matches in which his team have conceded the first goal, Klopp is wary of giving Newcastle hope, warning his players: “Confidence is something like a small flower. If you
The manager has lifted all of the fans, he has lifted all of the players as well
have it, but somebody kicks it in the game, you see nothing. But if you don’t have it, you can get it easily back if the other team give you the opportunity to do this. That’s what we have to be prepared for.
“I never have a problem with overconfidence. We expect it (to win), too. To be honest, we expect it all the time, but it doesn’t work all the time and that’s the problem.”
For all Klopp’s cautiousness, his team are flying, and McClaren will be acutely aware that all Liverpool’s best recent displays have come away from home.
Even the most optimistic Liverpool supporter could scarcely have anticipated the turnaround in fortunes that Klopp has engineered in the eight weeks since his appointment as manager.
A team who had won only three of their first 11 games have now won seven of the last eight, including superb away victories over Premier League champions Chelsea and current leaders Manchester City.
Wednesday’s 6-1 demolition of Southampton yielded a League Cup semifinal spot and having risen to within four points of the top four, the chase for Champions League qualification — if not the title itself — is back on.
Perhaps equally importantly, as former captain Steven Gerrard observed recently, “the smiles are back”, six months on from the nadir of Brendan Rodgers’s reign, a 6-1 drubbing at Stoke City on last season’s final day.
“He has lifted all of the fans, he has lifted all of the staff and you can see that he has lifted all of the players as well,” said Gerrard, who has been training with his old club.
Where Liverpool were ponderous and fragile in the season’s early weeks, their play now crackles with energy and invention. —