Cocktail of problems that ruined Liverpool and why Klopp is the only man who can turn things around

“Make no mistake, Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool are a great football side,” I wrote that May evening in Paris, noting how their run of three European Cup finals in five seasons had equalled Manchester United’s at Sir Alex Ferguson’s peak, and that they had been a hair’s breadth from winning the Premier League, too, and completing an immortal quadruple. I quoted Pep Guardiola who, a few days before, had said: “I’ve never seen a team like Liverpool in my life.” That is where Liverpool were a mere eight months ago and only Thibaut Courtois having the game of his career stopped them beating Real and going down as one of the all-time great sides. Now? With the same manager, same backroom staff and almost the same players, they limp into a Merseyside derby with only one more win than when Roy Hodgson was relieved of his duties 20 league games into the miserable 2010-11 season.

The almost all-time side are now “passive” and “lack confidence” and gave a performance in defeat away to Wolverhampton Wanderers last week for which “there are no words”. This is not the verdict of a critic, but of a baffled, beleaguered Klopp himself.

So what has happened? Let’s start back in Paris. Involved that night were Jordan Henderson, who was about to turn 32, Mohamed Salah who was about to hit 30, Thiago Alcantara, 31, Virgil van Dijk, now 31, Roberto Firmino, now 31, Joel Matip, now 31, and an unused substitute was James Milner, now 131. Or something. The workload of most of those players had been incredible, not only in the 63-game season the club had just played, but over the three or four-year cycle of the team’s genesis.

Take Salah, who since joining in 2017 has played in 96 per cent of all the league and Champions League matches (262 out of 273) contested by his club. The Egyptian has played 23,347 minutes for Liverpool. For perspective, that’s well over 9,000 minutes more club football than Erling Haaland has played in his career.

Henderson ended 2021-22 with more club appearances (57) than any player in Europe’s big five leagues and amid all the talk of Liverpool’s Quadruple chase, few paid attention to Klopp on the final day of the league season, when Manchester City shaded the title race. “We’ll build a team again and we will go again,” he said at the time.

Klopp knew there and then – before Paris – that a rebuild was needed. He talked in pre-season about “fresh blood” and wanted transfers to provide the infusion. Liverpool went “all-in,” a source said, for Aurelien Tchouameni but were again pipped by Real, who signed the defensive midfielder from Monaco. Liverpool instead signed the striker Darwin Nunez, for a club record pounds 85.3 million from Benfica.

In reality, a new striker (with Sadio Mane departing) and midfield reinforcements were needed but Klopp has always respected, and worked with, the “self-sustaining model” of Liverpool’s owner, Fenway Sports Group (FSG), and was especially hot on Nunez . When he did the analysis on Benfica before meeting them in the Champions League quarter-finals last season, he is said to have exclaimed, “wow, this guy is perfect” and Nunez followed up with superb performances in the tie.

Liverpool had also failed to score across 330 minutes in their three finals (they won the FA Cup and EFL Cup on penalties) and Klopp’s counterpressing starts with the work of the front three, which were further reasons to prioritise signing a striker. A mantra of the Klopp regime is “training is our transfer” (it’s a chapter title in his No 2, Pep Lijnders’, book Intensity) but the summer brought a truncated pre-season (with Liverpool back in action on July 30, in the Community Shield) and a tour to Asia.

It contrasted with 2021, where Klopp had time and space to re-energise his players in his favourite pre-season destination of Evian. That summer was so happy that, on returning from France, Klopp and Lijnders got Liverpool’s head of nutrition, Mona Nemmer, to organise barbecues on the terrace at the club’s AXA Training Centre and the head of first-team operations, Ray Haughan to put table tennis tables in its hallway, to keep the Evian vibe going.

It’s clear from Intensity that the mood was ebullient. In contrast, a contact who encountered Liverpool staff at The Titanic Hotel, the club’s base before home matches, three games into this season was struck by how tired they already seemed.

Liverpool won only two of their first seven league games. This put them 11 points off the top and seven in arrears of City. Having finished second to City with 97 points (2018-19) and 92 points (2021-22) experience told Klopp’s players that already the title was all but gone and, for a group with such high self-expectations, it seems this was hard. For years, they have run through brick walls for Klopp – but is fourth spot something you run through walls for when you’re used to chasing trophies?

One observer likened it to 2009 when, having so nearly been champions under Rafa Benitez, Liverpool lost a key player in the summer (for Mane read Xabi Alonso) then started the new season badly, quickly ruining what had been big title hopes. It was “like all the air went out of the balloon” – a dismal campaign ensued. Similar happened after Brendan Rodgers’ side’s 2013-14 title tilt.

Running through walls is also hard to do from the physio’s table. While all teams have had the World Cup, and injuries, to deal with, these factors have hit Liverpool unusually hard. Out for significant periods before the Premier League paused were Luis Diaz, Diogo Jota, Thiago, Ibrahima Konate, Matip and Naby Keita. Since, there have been issues with Firmino and Van Dijk, while Henderson and Fabinho have seemed respectively physically and mentally drained. Klopp has tried different formations to mitigate absences and reboot his team: traditional 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1, 4-1-4-1, 4-4-2 with a diamond.

None has brought particular joy, and, for a coaching team for whom “training is a transfer”, the most alarming thing about the recent defeats by Wolves and Brighton & Hove Albion (twice) is that they came after Klopp and Lijnders had a full week to work with the players.

It was a question touching on this that made Klopp snap at a respected Liverpool correspondent after the Wolves defeat and, on Friday, happier and calmer, he tried to explain to journalists that “it’s not always easy” to do press conferences when the team is in a trough and people are looking for new explanations for the same old mistakes. He is indignant about some of the recent Liverpool coverage, notably articles suggesting friction within his staff and that Andreas Kornmayer, his head of fitness and conditioning, is hard to work with.

Klopp is protective of the people around him and feels it is unacceptable – without on-record accusations that can be answered publicly – to call out backroom employees who have no platform to answer back. Lijnders has been criticised too but he, Kornmayer and others were there while Liverpool were winning titles and Champions Leagues and pushing for a Quadruple, so why are they suddenly a problem now?

What is inescapable is that this is a period of behind-the-scenes instability and churn. In the past 18 months, Liverpool have lost the club doctor Jim Moxon, key analyst Mark Leyland and – biggest of all – Michael Edwards, the Midas-touch sporting director who worked hand-in-glove with Klopp and the FSG president, Mike Gordon, to build the golden era.

Julian Ward, Edwards’ successor, is stepping down at the end of the season, as is the director of research Ian Graham, the Cambridge physics PhD who built Liverpool’s renowned data science department. However the club are close to plugging that gap: it is understood that a leading data specialist, already working at a high level in football, is lined up as Graham’s replacement.

By far the biggest loss is that of Gordon who, it was announced in November, has stepped back from a hands-on role running the club. Gordon is a special individual, someone of deep intellect but also with great people and listening skills. His relationship with Klopp is close and the dynamic between Edwards and Klopp – two strong-minded characters, who didn’t always agree – for a long time worked because of Gordon’s knack for bringing people together.

Billy Hogan, whose responsibilities increased when Gordon reduced his, has a good relationship with Klopp but the dynamic is different: Hogan is Liverpool’s chief executive, whereas Gordon was part of the ownership. There is instability in that regard, too, with FSG inviting offers for Liverpool in November, and still exploring new investment.

Having lost five and won three of ten games since the World Cup – a bleak run, during which Leicester City’s Wout Faes has been Liverpool’s top league scorer – Klopp is determined to draw a line. After Wolves he said: “It’s clear [last season’s 63 games] has influenced the first part of the season, but how long do we want to suffer off that?” Boosted by receiving indications that he will be backed to significantly improve his squad, the hope is to finish strongly and in the summer be finally in a position to “build a team again and go again”.

To further improve his mood, Jota is in contention for the Everton game having been out since October with calf issues. Firmino and Van Dijk are also close to returns and Diaz, running again after a knee injury, could be available next month.

Diaz, Jota and Firmino do not only add to Liverpool’s cutting edge but are important to their pressing. A theme of Intensity is how Klopp and Lijnders see the game in collective terms. Defence starts with the attack, just as attacking starts with defence, and if Liverpool have been jaw-droppingly easy to play through at times, it’s not only down to midfield or back four.

For the rebuild to work, Klopp needs to find new chemistry at the top of the pitch, having lacked it since the underrated Mane departed. The bet on Nunez needs to come good and Cody Gakpo, a pounds 44 million arrival from PSV Eindhoven, must show his slow start is due to coming into a malfunctioning team, rather than personal shortcomings. Crucially, Gakpo and Nunez are 23 and point to a policy shift towards younger signings.

That is overdue. Jamie Carragher criticised Klopp for showing too much loyalty towards his old guard, including Henderson, rewarded with a four-year deal in 2021. Carragher has said Liverpool remind him of Arsenal late in Arsene Wenger’s reign: a team once unplayable because of its pace and physicality that had morphed into a softly-softly technical side.

Watching Liverpool recently, there seems truth in this, but the fact that the dynamic Jude Bellingham is his principal target suggests Klopp sees it too. What has happened to the almost-Quadruple winners? There is not one big problem with Liverpool, more a cocktail of many smaller ones.

Walk on … through a perfect storm – but, surely, if anyone can do it, it’s still Klopp.

Originally published as Cocktail of problems that ruined Liverpool and why Klopp is the only man who can turn things around