Liverpool's slump: a story of burnt-out brilliance and the need to go again
The story of Liverpool FC’s wild, thrillingly committed Premier League collapse has been told mainly in numbers so far. And to good effect. Deprived of crowds, staging or a wider emotional palette, that basic outline – 38 points down on last year; 68 home games unbeaten versus six defeats in six – has captured the starkness of a complete sporting immolation. This is a train that has simply stopped.
Better to burn out than fade away, and it has to be said no one has ever won and then lost the Premier League title quite like this. It is easy to forget that 14 games and nine wins into the current season Liverpool were five points clear at the top of the table.
After which, the meltdown. The next 14 have brought three wins and eight losses. Thirty-six goals in the first 14 games has shrunk to just 11 in the second. Jordan Henderson hadn’t lost in the league at Anfield since January 2017. In February he played in three defeats in three weeks. What kind of team does this? And more to the point, why?
Over time the wider details of exactly what happened here will emerge.
Our 12-volume Warren report awaits. What we have so far are ground-zero stills, our own live rolling Zapruder footage.
One thing does stand out. A brilliant team built out of Jürgen Klopp’s own restless energy have come to resemble a band of hollow men limping from stage to stage, but the manager has been more or less silent on the causes. Instead he has looked uneasy, an ancient mariner stalking the fringes – a little haunted and hollow-eyed, but passing for now on the discharge of blame. This is significant in its own right. Klopp analyses, and overanalyses. He will have his own very clear version of events. But right now he just isn’t telling.
With good reason, too. Not just because Klopp is a fundamentally decent man, not naturally inclined to burn it all down in the hope of preserving his own reputation. But this is also a story that points into some difficult areas. It has been tempting to look for intangible causes, some kind of dark magic at play. In dank corners of the internet it has been suggested that ending that 30year wait for a title has brought its own ill wind, strange humours, some kind of avenging emotional payback.
In reality this has been a matter of structure and planning, of cause and effect. This was always a project built on the finest margins, a pared-back punkish setup, a team built to play in a way that would eventually stretch them to the edge of their own capacities. Not to mention a team built to feed on the synergy with their home crowd, and to chase the grail of another league title. What happens when both those things are wiped away at a stroke?
This is why Klopp gets a pass here. What this season’s collapse tells us is that this model has built-in limits and brutally fine margins for error. In many ways it casts an even more favourable light on Klopp’s achievement in building that team in the first place.
To get the clearest view it is worth going back to where this began. Klopp’s team found their definitive shape in the spring of 2018, not long after the departure of Philippe Coutinho and the arrival of Virgil van Dijk. That February Liverpool went to Porto and won 5-0, a giddy, gleeful kind of game where suddenly the front three, the full-backs, the midfield axis were all in place and it all looked thrillingly slick, a team fizzing with possibilities. A month later Mohamed Salah scored four in the 5-0 defeat of Watford. A month after that Liverpool went 3-0 up in half an hour against Manchester City, the acme of that attacking blitz style.
From there a 97-point league season in 2018-19, with the Champions League won, bled straight into the titlewinning year. A peak arrived with the World Club Cup victory and the breathless return, crown slung over one shoulder, to thrash Leicester City 4-0 on Boxing Day 2019. This was a team playing with a kind of light around them.
The real stutters and stumbles ar
rived just after Christmas this season. Injuries were the catalyst. The real issue is the lack of cover, those fine margins again. Liverpool began the season with three battle-hardened centre-backs, two of them prone to injury. Most teams at their level have four, or in Manchester City’s case six. Even Arsenal have five. What happens when your own three are suddenly unavailable?
This is where Klopp blinked, where he will draw criticism for dismantling his champion midfield to fix his defence. What could he have done differently? Klopp saw the future in the draws against West Brom and Newcastle, in the FA Cup defeat by Manchester United when Rhys Williams, a non-league footballer the year before, was traumatised by Marcus Rashford. He was right to be spooked.
The truth was out. Liverpool’s replacements are a very obvious step down. These are not players ready to chase the best in Europe. No planning, no succession had been laid down. Eight out of 10 starting outfield players in the 2018 Champions League final are still in Liverpool’s best team now. With Henderson and Fabinho jiggled into the centre-back roles, with Diogo Jota injured – a rare high-grade reinforcement – there was nowhere to go, no room to wriggle.
The bizarro world arrived at the start of February with the current run of six defeats in seven league games. Klopp may be keeping his counsel, bruised by events beyond football, a little sad and tender on his touchline, with the sense that someone has shaved Aslan’s mane. But the peaks of the last two years are not diminished by this.
The opposite, in fact. An unspoken truth about Klopp’s title-winning Liverpool is that they don’t contain many obviously great individuals. Only three players in the squad – Van Dijk, Salah and Alisson – possess the kind of galáctico chops that might make them standalone stars at one of Europe’s mega-clubs. This is instead a feat of high-end coaching, shared commitment and a system perfectly geared to these parts. Very good footballers have been encouraged to reach out into the far limits of their talent. But the system also requires rest and reinforcement to sustain its levels. Neither of these came.
Last season Van Dijk, Roberto Firmino and Trent Alexander-Arnold played in every league game. Georginio Wijnaldum played 37, Andrew Robertson 36, Sadio Mané 35, Salah 34. The entire first XI played at least 10 midweek games. The same happened the year before – and this in a team where the tempo is always superheated. Opponents found being on a pitch with those red shirts a horribly draining experience. Liverpool had to be Liverpool every week.
Signings have been made in moments of need. But the fact remains Liverpool have spent £12m net in the past two seasons. Net spend on transfer fees – not wages and bonuses – in the last four years is £60m. This is excellent business. But it isn’t a recipe for resilience. In the long term you need more space to fail.
Pep Guardiola has regeared his team brilliantly. He also has the resources to do this, because City spend around £100m net on new players every year, with the freedom to buy the ones you want, not just the ones you need because the red light that says panic is flashing.
And so we have this, a fine-margins project that reached a rare pitch because of the brilliance of the system, the first XI, the shared energy from the stands. But which has, in the past 14 league games, found its own edges. This can hardly come as shock to Liverpool’s owners, or indeed to Klopp. The refusal to gorge in the good times, to splurge on Timo Werner, is not neglect or poor husbandry. This is hard-nosed financial management. Assets will be sweated. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There will be no waste, no sop to chasing glory. If the team burn themselves out while creating one glorious, low-cost brandburnishing mini-era, well, so be it.
Plus, of course, that first XI is still on site. There was a glimpse of that power with Fabinho returned to midfield against RB Leipzig in midweek. The pieces could quite easily fall into their slots once again, the tempo resurrect itself, the habit of winning replace the habit of losing. But there can be no illusions now over what Klopp achieved with that high-functioning, high-wire group of fellow travellers; or what will be required to build it again.
An unspoken truth about Klopp’s titlewinning Liverpool is that they don’t contain many obviously great individuals
ibly understanding. On 13 March we broke the news to the world.
While other sports postponed, the Cheltenham festival completed its final day, including its standout race, the Gold Cup. On Tuesday 17 Marchracing was suspended.
Dr Jerry Hill, chief medical adviser, British Horseracing Authority: I was at the festival for a couple of days and at that time I was still working for the Football Association. On the last day of the festival, I had to go up to St George’s Park to look after an England squad there, and I remember being on the training pitch when we got the call from Uefa to say that competitions had been cancelled. I had a conversation shortly afterwards with Dr Iain McNeil, the Racecourse Association’s medical adviser, and we almost said simultaneously: “We’re going to have to advise to suspend racing.” Then there were very difficult conversations with stakeholders to get them to understand the importance of this, and what was coming over the horizon. After that, it’s been absolutely relentless for a year.
Gareth Davies: While we were conscious it would be a big hit financially – around £10m – our discussions weren’t based on finance. It was simply about reaching the correct decision. Everyone criticises politicians but they have to deal with things like this 365 days a year.
On 9 March, the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament in Indian Wells became the first major professional sports event in the US to be cancelled. With the Miami Open scheduledtwo weeks later, some European players remained in the US before rushing to get out of the country when Donald Trump suspended travel from Europe on 12 March.
Garbiñe Muguruza, tennis player: I was in shock. My whole team was in shock. We were kind of laughing because we said: “Oh man, we’re here in Indian Wells, it’s a tournament that we all love. OK, let’s take a break and let’s see each other in a couple of weeks.” And six months later, everybody was in their own country and couldn’t get to each other. “See you in a few weeks” became six months.
Coco Gauff, tennis player: Actually, I liked it at first just to have time home. And then I remember the last month or so I was anxious to play – practising and staying motivated was just a little bit tough because you set goals for yourself and that’s how you stay motivated. But there were no goals to look forward to so it was hard to stay motivated.
Dominic Thiem, tennis player: In the beginning, well, I thought that the tour is going to be back in two or three weeks and everything is going to be normal again. But slowly, of course, me and also everybody else realised that it’s a serious, dangerous thing going on and that there is going to be a longer break.
Lucy Bronze, England and Lyon footballer: It was fortunate that I managed to get out of France quick enough. I think my experience of the pandemic would have been very different if I’d stayed in my sweaty hot apartment in France for the entirety of lockdown. I was injured at the time and wondering which team I was going to be at next season [Bronze moved to Manchester City in September], so there were a lot of things going through my head. My focus was all over the place at that point to be honest. I felt the stress of the situation really highly.
Christian Horner: I am proud of how we responded. Very quickly the team and F1 applied itself to the challenge of building ventilators to battle Covid. We had a group of engineers that turned around in three weeks what would usually take three years to get an up-and-running prototype ventilator in collaboration with other UK-based F1 teams.
Lando Norris: The months after were spent at home. It was weird, it was the longest period of time that I’d not been in a race car or doing any kind of driving on track since I was seven years old. Mentally I felt OK, as I don’t mind spending time on my own and could still do things I liked. It was more the periods of time when you were able to go outside and see your mates as things opened up a little that were more challenging for me, since I couldn’t risk anything so didn’t go out to see anyone. I felt like I was missing out on feeling “normal”, which was tough. I couldn’t see my parents or friends in person for quite a while, but it never got to a really bad point.
Ian Poulter: I had the opportunity to have pure family time. That sounds extremely selfish but I enjoyed that break. I’ve been a pro for 22 years and never had that time at home simply because of my job. In some respects, it was the most wonderful five months I’ll ever have with my family.
Horse racing returned in the UK on 1 June. F1 hosted its first race in Austria on 5 July.
Jerry Hill: The thing that’s really got us through this is working together as a sport. I think if we’re going to take something positive out of this very, very difficult year, it’s that.
Christian Horner: Once we were racing everyone dealt with the new reality incredibly well. You had to roll with the punches and take on the challenge. There was the constant testing, the occasional positive case, team members were away from home, they were locked in hotel rooms in the evenings, it was tough conditions, we did three triple headers in a row. It was a brutal schedule, but there were no complaints, everybody just got on with it for the good of the sport. The fact that we did manage to fit in 17 races effectively between lockdowns was a great achievement by the whole sport.
Golf restarted in June, cricket in July, rugby and tennis in August.
Joe Denly: When cricket eventually resumed in the bubble I found it tough at first. I missed the buzz from the crowds and not being a golfer, or into computer games, it wasn’t easy to switch off on days off. Not being allowed to shower in the dressing room after a long day in the field wasn’t great, either. With England we were staying on site, at least, but back at Kent it was a case of jumping in the car for a disgusting drive home!
Ian Poulter: What a year it’s been. A year of understanding so many new things; face masks, having sand sanitiser in your car, different states with different rules. Then when it means from a global golfer’s perspective. I feel like I’m still in a bit of a whirlwind because I’ve played so few events.
Gareth Davies: For rugby the next few years are going to be tough. It’s going to be an ongoing challenge for every union worldwide. The only slightly disappointing thing for me is that it’s presented an opportunity to get a lot of other things together, such as a global season, and I’m not sure we’ve taken full advantage of that.
Hugh Brasher: I’m proud of what we did next. Within 22 days we went from conception to delivery of the 2.6 mile challenge – on the date where the London marathon would have been held – which raised £11.5m for charity. We then had another setback when October’s mass participation race was called off, but we were able to announce an elite race behind closed doors and a “virtual” London marathon across the globe that attracted nearly 38,000 runners worldwide.
The 2019-20 WSL season was abandoned and Chelsea were awarded the title. The 2020-21 season began in September. The Premier League and EFL restarted in June.
Lucy Bronze: There’s that old saying, we say it a lot in football, we always say it at England camps, that you can only control the controllables. A game might get cancelled, or my house might have been delayed or something else, but I can just control what I can control. I can imagine there are people in the world that are a lot worse off, too, and so I’ve just tried to stay as positive as possible about the situation that I’m in. I’m very fortunate to be a professional football player and to still go to work, even in these times, to do the thing that I love. Not many people can say that at the minute.
Mark Gonnella: It has been the most brutal 12 months of my working life, but also the most complex and stimulating. We have played 41 competitive games since mid-September and it puts an additional strain on people. Winning the FA Cup was a real boost for everyone, even if we all felt the absence of fans at Wembley and the traditional parade through Islington. It was also a special moment to welcome 2,000 of our home supporters back for two games in December. If it needed reinforcing, those nights emphasised that the fans are fundamental to everything we do.
Rick Parry: Health always came first. We never cut corners, but we also had to be mindful of practicalities. Despite discussions with government and authorities about neutral grounds we always thought the best approach was to play on home territory. Who would know better how to keep the ground secure and sterile than the club that owned it? Others were taking different views but we stuck to our principles on that. When you live through the ultimate challenges it’s day by day. The credit has to go to the clubs. They’re the ones that made it happen, they’re the ones who rallied round.