Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool Arrival Spells Danger for Underperforming Adam Lallana

Liverpool have announced Jurgen Klopp as their new manager just shy of a week after ditching Brendan Rodgers eight games into the season.

They’ve moved quickly after the Ulsterman’s tumultuous tenure was drawn to a close, with only the “finer details” left to be settled on Thursday before Klopp took the reins on Friday.

The fanbase has met the news of the impending appointment with palpable excitement and vigour. To have a coach revered across Europe, who has won back-to-back titles in his homeland and reached a Champions League final as recently as 2013, is a marked step up from a man who counts a Championship play-off victory with Swansea City as his only managerial medal to date.

Talk has already turned to how Klopp’s projected tactical blueprint fits at Liverpool, with many coming to the conclusion that he’s a great fit. His fast-paced, counter-pressing, streamlined attacking play at former club Borussia Dortmund is, in many ways, exactly what Rodgers had pledged to bring to Liverpool—and had managed to, in patches, during the 2013-14 title run.

Robert Lewandowski, Marco Reus, Ilkay Gundogan, Shinji Kagawa, Mats Hummels...Klopp may have benefited from the use of world-class players during his time at Signal Iduna Park, but he did make the majority of his players at that level, coaching them into the stars we know today.

His 4-2-3-1 formation, which largely bordered on 4-4-2 in its most basic, pressing format, was famed for speed and incisiveness. Having a striker with a complete skill set was important, but the advanced midfield three set the tone for the performance and did a lot of recovery work in addition to their attacking duties.

The list of quality attacking midfielders and wingers Klopp presided over during his time in Dortmund was ridiculous: Reus, Kagawa, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Mario Gotze are just five of a number of names often worked into an all-star rotation. He also had loyal soldier Kevin Grosskreutz—who is perhaps, due to his soldier-like professionalism, comparable to James Milner at Anfield at this point—to utilise in whichever position he saw fit.

The good news for Klopp is that this area of Liverpool’s squad is teeming with talent; recruitment balance failures over the last few years have at least led to a seemingly surplus number of attacking midfielders on the books. That doesn’t appear to be such a bad thing anymore.

Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino, Lazar Markovic (once returned from loan), Adam Lallana, Milner and Danny Ings if required. Joao Teixeira is an understudy option, and Jordon Ibe is perhaps the only natural winger in the squad of the requisite Premier League quality. There are bodies for Klopp to use, and there’s an abundance of quality to work with.

But one player may just be feeling a little threatened by the arrival of Klopp, and that man’s name is Lallana. Doubts are already swirling over whether he can thrive in a Klopp system, and those doubts are founded due to legitimate compatibility issues between player and system on the surface.

Lallana’s Liverpool career so far has been exceptionally disappointing. After Rodgers opted to pay £25 million to release him from his contract at Southampton, his tenure in the north west has been dogged by injuries, preventing him from gaining a head of steam and proving himself worth the money.

When he has been given a fresh chance to impress, he hasn’t managed to, and due to the sum spent, he’s garnered the tag of “flop” already. He started this season in the first XI as Rodgers largely backed his own signings over the committee’s (a decision that also saw Dejan Lovren maintain a spot ahead of the superior Mamadou Sakho for far too long), but he ducked out after consecutive anonymous showings and yet another ailment sustained.

Credit: Sky Calcio

For the last month he’s been limited to Europa League action, and bar a lovely individual goal against Bordeaux, he hasn’t done enough.

That’s been the issue with Lallana at Liverpool: He hasn’t been impactful over a single 90-minute span and hasn’t offered enough on a consistent basis. At no point has he really ever threatened to look worthy of his price tag, and although injuries have played a part in that, he was generally adjudged to be wildly overpriced upon arrival.

The memories of, say, his remarkable solo goal against Hull City while still on the south coast, or the numerous times he brought a 70-yard cross-field pass down with a perfect touch on the left wing, are largely forgotten. His entire 2013-14 season was like an interactive highlight reel, but since then it’s been something of a disaster.

None of this exactly helps to spell out a positive career at Anfield under Klopp, who demands physical durability and high-energy displays in addition to the fancy flicks and tricks. Lallana was captain at Southampton but was often substituted with 20 minutes to play—regardless of the score—because Mauricio Pochettino knew his legs couldn’t take the strain. That’s fairly damning, yet also hugely revealing, as far as his physical strength is concerned.

There’s also a well-purported myth to tackle regarding Southampton’s pressing habits under Pochettino. They started the 2013-14 season harrying and chasing, but after 10-12 weeks, they pulled the handbrake on it, with the manager knowing his squad wouldn’t be able to bear the brunt of it all season long.

Credit: Canal+

The suggestion that Saints were a “high-press side” is somewhat false; Lallana, therefore, has very little experience in this sort of system, as you can guarantee Nigel Adkins and Alan Pardew didn’t introduce gegenpressing in the Championship and League One.

Lallana has benefited from the protection of Rodgers on multiple occasions—starting him against AFC Bournemouth after an anonymous showing vs. Stoke City early this season springs to mind as an example—and without the manager who bought him, and the backing Rodgers provided, he could be in trouble.

Klopp has a lot to sort through, but the good news for the large majority of the Liverpool squad is that he’s going to find a lot he likes. Coutinho can be an even snappier Shinji Kagawa, Christian Benteke has some Robert Lewandowski qualities and can be further coached into an even bigger monster, Sakho is the ideal ball-playing centre-back and Jordan Henderson the energetic central midfielder Klopp will adore.

But Lallana may not be up to the task at hand, and with a glaring deficiency of numbers in some areas of this squad (particularly when it comes to natural wingers), there’s logic in the suggestion the England international could be sold to fund January band-aids to help Klopp’s vision take place.

Everyone will be given an equal ground to prove themselves under the new man—even Jose Enrique, a defender consigned to the reserves under Rodgers due to a litany of reasons, may get a look in—and these first few weeks for Lallana are crucial.

If his muscles don’t prove durable, though, and he can’t make the impact expected of him in games, he may not be a Red much longer.

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