FLYING START
Klopp insists Reds WILL deliver after 4-0 Hammers thrashing
Liverpool 4 West Ham 0 JURGEN KLOPP has told Liverpool fans longing for their title hoodoo to end that his team is ready to deliver.
After Anfield’s biggest opening-day win since 1932, Kop boss Klopp refused to dampen title talk on Merseyside. “There are expectations but we have
THE programme notes of manager and skipper were predictably bullish, unremittingly upbeat.
Jurgen Klopp and Jordan Henderson, one with fresh options and the other with talented new team-mates, positively salivated over the season ahead.
Nothing that followed would have dampened their enthusiasm for the campaign about to unfurl but there is one word that is reluctant to speak its name in these parts.
Klopp and his captain are certainly loathe to mention it.
Trophy. Any decent pot, the type last deposited in an Anfield six years ago. Trophy. Any decent pot, maybe a Premier League to go with Klopp’s 2012 Bundesliga trinket, the last time the Vaunted One (left) laid his hands on a meaningful jug. Since then? Heavy metal football without the silver.
All the fun of the fair but not even a goldfish to take home at the end of the day.
Well, if there was one thing to be gleaned from a typically joyous gallop past a West Ham side as insipidly grey as its kit, it is that if Liverpool go potless through this season, it will be a failure. A thoroughly entertaining, thrill-a-minute failure but a failure all the same. On Klopp’s part, on the players’ part.
This was a familiar, Jurgen-age Liverpool but minus one or two of the frailties that have undermined them.
The familiarity came in the form of Mo Salah’s scoring resumption, Sadio Mane’s dynamism, Roberto Firmino’s ravenous devotion to hard work, the James Milner renaissance, and the steady improvement of Andrew Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
The unfamiliarity, the improvement, came in the driving, thoroughly modern performance of Naby Keita.
Fifteen minutes before the end of a contest that was finished when Mane tapped in Milner’s hook-back before half-time – doubling the lead earned by Salah’s similar tap-in from Robertson’s early cross – Keita found himself isolated in the leftshowcase
hand zone of West Ham’s penalty area. Swinging at a bouncing ball, he shanked it towards Goodison.
The miscue merited a rousing ovation. He had been that instrumental, that eye-catching.
Few teams win honours without an all-round midfield ace. Liverpool might have one in Keita. He covers when he needs to, dropping back into the holding role when the moment demands. He powers forward and generally releases at the optimum time, which is exactly what he did in freeing Robertson for the opening assist.
He was not faultless here but is strong, quick and, shank aside, has excellent feet.
In short, he will give Liverpool a dimension they have lacked. Over time, Klopp has addressed issues that clearly needed addressing.
Casually dominant against a Manuel Pellegrini team best judged after less difficult challenges, Virgil van Dijk has had a transformative effect on the Liverpool of 2018. And the summer’s recruitment allowed Klopp to assemble a bench that must have been his strongest for a Premier League match.
A thinness down the roster is no longer a mitigating factor in Liverpool’s fortunes, evidence of that coming as Daniel Sturridge bundled in a fourth a few seconds after replacing Salah.
A rejuvenated Sturridge should be outstanding back-up to a front three who looked like they had never been away, even though Mane needed a rick from the linesman to be allowed his second, Liverpool’s third, from an offside position.
Acclaim for Mane was raucous when he was replaced by Xherdan Shaqiri, Firmino having been afforded similar affection when he made way for Henderson. And with Fabinho, Adam Lallana and Nathaniel Clyne in the dugout, there you have the new strength-in-depth.
Not that it changed Klopp’s post-match tune, refusing to set targets, insisting, that the season will be “unbelievably hard.” It will, but facing a Liverpool strengthened by the likes of Keita will be “unbelievably hard.”
And a Liverpool side strengthened by the likes of Keita will not be pleased with only plaudits.