Liverpool stuck in it with Klopp – there is no easy way out

Roman Abramovich always knew what to do if he thought the players weren’t listening to the manager. He sacked the manager.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp. Picture: AFP

Roman Abramovich always knew what to do if he thought the players weren’t listening to the manager. He sacked the manager.

It wasn’t fair, but it was less problematic. Abramovich blamed the players for the failure of Andre Villas-Boas, for instance. Still, it was easier to replace one of him than 11 of them.

Liverpool will have to do it the hard way. There is, sensibly, no desire to part with Jurgen Klopp, so the only road back from here is to set about dismantling and re­assembling his team. An already torturous transition may not yet be the half of it, then. For whether his players no longer listen, or hear but are incapable of delivering, change is needed at Liverpool.

Competing with Manchester City across the “mentality monster” years has taken a toll.

Klopp’s Liverpool appear exhausted, in need of fresh legs and fresh minds as much as fresh ideas. And it is no longer just City who are proving hard to catch. The clubs immediately above Liverpool in the table are Brentford, Brighton & Hove Albion and Fulham. Sovereign wealth funds cannot be blamed for that.

The numbers tell their own story. There are 19 league games left and even if Liverpool win them all they will still be six points short of their total last season, 13 points shy of 2019-20 and 11 south of 2018-19. So Klopp has set standards nigh-on impossible to maintain. Any drop-off will be deeply felt, given that in three of the past four campaigns Liverpool have exceeded 90 points. Indeed if Liverpool merely replicate the first half of this season, they will amass their third-lowest points total of the Premier League era.

Those other two campaigns, 1998-99 and 2011-12, cost Roy Evans and Kenny Dalglish their jobs.

Again, not an option with Klopp. Liverpool are for sale, so having one of the finest managers in Europe under contract until 2026 remains a rare point of stability, certainly with two sporting directors and a head of analytics gone, and with the influential and admired Mike Gordon stepping away from boardroom duties. The last thing Liverpool want now is to be searching for a manager too.

So Klopp stays, and others go, but at what cost? Certainly, as Chelsea inflate the market with their offer for Enzo Fernandez, this does not seem to be the time to be crafting a new midfield, or to be dropping out of the Champions League, as seems likely given the 10-point gap to Manchester United in fourth place. Liverpool fancied their chances with Jude Bellingham, but what if they cannot offer European football? The timing could hardly be worse.

Could Klopp have seen this coming? Yes and no. Jordan Henderson will be 33 this summer, but Fabinho is 29. Who foresaw his sudden decline in form? And however bitterly Liverpool may complain of spending elsewhere, the fact remains that, since September 2020, Klopp prioritised forwards and spent in the region of £220m overhauling his front line.

A similar spend may now be needed to revamp his midfield.

Even with Stefan Bajcetic impressing, it is perplexing that Liverpool are not often mentioned in the battle for Declan Rice, particularly if there is any hope of teaming him with Bellingham. Liverpool miss the sheer energy and hard running of Georginio Wijnaldum, Adam Lallana and a younger Henderson, the players that first made Klopp’s system work. He knows Liverpool must regain that fire too.

Throughout the season Klopp has complained of a drop in competitive levels, whether it was failure to win enough challenges against Wolverhampton Wanderers or poor body language in the FA Cup loss away to Brighton. He described the league defeat at the Amex Stadium as the worst game of his Liverpool tenure.

And, yes, there are injuries, and, yes, a team in transition is always problematic.

Yet for Klopp it’s worse, because this is a club in transition too. He’s as stuck with them as they are with him; and unlike Abramovich’s Chelsea, there is no easy way out.

JORGINHO DEAL SHOULD PUT BRAKES ON ARSENAL

All season, rivals have been looking for ways to slow Arsenal. This week, the Gunners paid £13m for Jorginho. That should do it.

THANKS, VAR, FOR THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS

VAR: can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

The Professional Game Match Officials Ltd decided that Liverpool’s Fabinho should have been sent off for his tackle from behind on Brighton & Hove Albion’s Evan Ferguson on Sunday. With David Coote, the referee, having issued only a yellow card, Neil Swarbrick, the VAR, should have advised an upgrade to red.

This is really no surprise, as just about every observer called it, if not in real time, on first sight of a replay. So VAR messed up. Yet at roughly the same time in Stoke, the hosts were killing off a tie against Stevenage thanks to a travesty of a penalty award by referee David Webb.

Steve Evans, the Stevenage manager, said that Webb knew he had made a mistake on looking at the big screen after the kick had been converted, and even told the players so. Yet, with no VAR to guide him, the decision stood. So now we’re furious when VAR is in play, and furious when it’s gone. Somehow we’ve delivered the worst of all possible worlds.

‘NEUTRALITY’ WAS LOST WITH SABALENKA WIN

Aryna Sabalenka helped to deliver an outstanding women’s final in Melbourne, and then a devastating appraisal of the worthlessness of “neutral participation”. “Everyone still knows that I’m a Belarusian player,” she said.

Of course they do; certainly in Belarus, where her victory was celebrated by president and Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko, as it was always going to be. We know from our own experience the way politicians patriotically attach themselves to any sporting success. Had Sabalenka’s opponent, Elena Rybakina, won it would have been claimed by Russia, even though she now competes for Kazakhstan, as happened when she triumphed at Wimbledon.

Supposed athlete neutrality, or mealy-mouthed team rebrandings, are dismal gestures. We all know who had the second-highest number of podium finishes at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. It wasn’t the “ROC”. It was Russia. And it was Russia again that won 71 medals in Tokyo. Wimbledon’s stance in banning Russian and Belarusian players has been undermined from the start. The tours, the slams, they merely pretended to take a stand. So Wimbledon should expose their hypocrisy again, by letting the players be exactly what they are: Russian and Belarusian. Anything else is self-serving pretence, as it was in Australia.

RASHFORD AND PARIS AN IMPERFECT MATCH

Why would Marcus Rashford sign for Paris Saint-Germain now? Then, sure. Then, we get it. There was a time, not so long ago, when Rashford rebuilding his career away from Manchester United made perfect sense. But not now. Erik ten Hag may have delivered a neat line in self-deprecation when he declared he was “not Harry Potter” in the way he has transformed Rashford this season. Yet there is an element of Specialis Revelio – the spell that reveals hidden magical properties in an object – about the way Rashford has been rejuvenated on his watch.

And Ten Hag is at United to stay. Can the same be said of PSG’s Christophe Galtier, were his team to fail to make it past Bayern Munich in the Champions League round of 16? Equally, where would he stand at a club where Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Neymar already vie for supremacy? Rashford can never be as important in Paris as he is in Manchester, the shining light of his club’s youth policy. Famously, United have named a homegrown player in every squad since October 30, 1937 – but few now make the first team as regularly as Rashford.

He matters. And, since returning from the World Cup, his record of ten goals and three assists makes him the most potent striker in Europe. Rashford is four short of his best season’s goalscoring tally, and United are still in four competitions. He is no longer the lost boy, no longer the player, it was thought, who had to leave Old Trafford to rediscover his spark. Even if United invest in a central striker this summer, there will be a place for Rashford in the forward line. More than ever, he looks like the young man who burst into the team under Louis van Gaal, first as a battlefield promotion after a pre-match injury to Anthony Martial, then as utterly indispensable, his teenage talent shining.

This is the player Ten Hag has rediscovered, as he builds a team to contend for the title. Why would Rashford care to be anywhere else? Forget Paris.

The Times