Liverpool don’t have the energy to win the league ..even if they beat Chelsea
EVEN if Liverpool beat Chelsea tonight, they won’t win the league.
People will say it has to be possible if they get the better of the Premier League leaders at Anfield, but I honestly don’t think Jurgen’s Klopp’s men have the energy for it.
And the German certainly doesn’t have a title-winning squad.
The Merseysiders were Chelsea’s closest challengers at the start of the year but their form has deteriorated massively this month.
People can point to the absence of Sadio Mane as a possible reason, but if you have a squad so obviously lacking depth – such as Liverpool’s – it is not wise to burn your players out in the first half of the season. Klopp’s biggest crime this season was telling te Anfield fans and players that they could play that way – high-octane, heavy-metal football – and expect no physical drop-off.
That may work in Germany where you get a nice winter break to recharge the batteries, but in the Premier League no such luxuries are granted.
Look at Adam Lallana. He used to have a languid style and drift in and out of games.
Then Klopp comes in and tells him he has to run harder and faster for longer.
If it was for just 20 games that would be fine. But watch his spark vanish now.
Lallana will never have worked harder than he has this season under Klopp. Playing that way for so long saps the energy. There are no reserves in the tank. It is physically impossible to play with that intensity for a whole season. Playing Klopp’s way would leave a player knackered by January or February – and that is exactly what has happened to Liverpool. The Reds are now running less, with lower intensity. Their performances have suffered and so have their results. And they haven’t got fringe players who are strong enough to bring into the team to freshen things up. Look at the results gained by Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal in the FA Cup after they made major changes to their teams.
If you are winning ties with a weakened team by four or five goals, it shows you have genuine strength in depth.
Klopp made wholesale changes against Wolves on Saturday and his team were soundly beaten. The Mersey men simply don’t have a squad good enough to win the league and, after all the TV money that has been handed to Premier League clubs, it’s shocking that they could go into a season without 22 players of like-forlike quality. Klopp has his own philosophy, like Pep Guardiola (far left) who has not kidded us with some of his tactical innovations, such as full-backs playing in central midfield. Talk that he was a genius who has revolutionised the sport has been made to look a little silly in recent weeks But both managers should have gone into the season more respectful of English football. To say they are failures is ridiculous but maybe they should take a leaf out of the book of Antonio Conte (above). After six games he realised he needed to respect what the league was about. He realised that his approach wasn’t working and rectified it by changing his formation. So who is the best manager in the Premier League? The man who is top of it and will be opposite Klopp at Anfield tonight, Blues boss Conte.