How Jurgen Klopp Has Shown What He's Really Like as Liverpool Manager

It’s somewhat fitting that English football’s most romantic club has found something of an old romantic to lead the way. Brendan Rodgers often spoke of Liverpool’s history and gravitas, but he never quite seemed compelled by the sheer aura of Anfield and everything about it in the same way Jurgen Klopp is. 

The German’s Cheshire Cat grin is as endearing as it is telling about his feelings towards the task he has taken on at Liverpool. But Klopp’s charm offensive has become an offensive only in recent weeks, as the Reds have laboured to make the progress perhaps expected of them by now. The grin has, in some instances, become a grimace.

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Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to West Ham United was the nadir of Klopp’s short reign on Merseyside so far, with the former Borussia Dortmund coach even calling his players' commitment into question. “We have to again accept that we didn’t play like we should,” he raged, as per Sachin Nakrani of the Guardian. “Who wants to see 90 percent? You can’t win a game with 90 percent. You need more than we did today. Two-nil? It’s deserved.”

Add these comments to the remarks made about the lethargy of the Anfield crowd in November—criticising fans who left the stadium early during a defeat to Crystal Palace, as per the Daily Mail—and Klopp is starting to show his true identity. Sure, he is one of the sport's most likeable figures, but he’s almost stubborn, demanding and uncompromising.

It’s these qualities that made him such a success in the Bundesliga. Klopp understands how the environment around his team can impact on what is produced on the pitch, and so he is meticulous in his preparations and control as a coach. His reach, as he sees it, stretches from his responsibilities on the pitch to his status as a figurehead for those in the stands—and everything in between. 

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Liverpool are starting to see the real Klopp, rather than the crowd-pleasing jester he was at times over the course of his first few weeks at the club. He is much more than just a personified quote, and the Premier League are seeing that at close quarters now. In many ways, he is a paradox—flipping two sides of his personality almost on a game-to-game basis. 

There have been signs of Klopp’s character on the pitch too, most notably in the performances against Manchester City and Chelsea. Liverpool are now the Premier League’s most energetic outfit, running further and for longer than any other side. That is a hallmark of the German’s philosophy as a coach. That’s something the Reds fans will become accustomed to.

The way in which Liverpool have bounced back in light of the odd poor result that has chequered their record under Klopp is also indicative of his influence on his new team. Look at how the Anfield club overcame an accomplished Stoke City side in the away leg of Tuesday’s Capital One Cup semi-final, just days after the defeat at Upton Park.

The aforementioned loss to Crystal Palace—which drew Klopp’s ire towards the Anfield crowd—also preempted the astonishing 4-1 win over Man City at the Etihad Stadium, laying down a marker for the rest of his tenure at the club. That was Klopp—and his ways—at his best, but it has been at his worst that more has been gleaned about him.

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Losing always reveals more than winning about a football coach's mentality, and that’s certainly true of Klopp. His fast-and-furious nature ramps into overdrive in the event of a poor result, and it’s in these moments that Liverpool will be forged into the team he envisages. 

This is why progress has been so difficult to detect until now. Liverpool stand a good chance of making the Capital One Cup final, but they sit slumped in eighth place in the Premier League—six points short of the top four places and Champions League qualification. Development has been incremental, but given what Klopp has to work with, that was always likely.

The German is still working with a squad that isn’t his. This January transfer window is therefore of utmost importance to Klopp and Liverpool, as injuries pile high at the club. But the next few weeks won’t just be about plugging gaps at Anfield, but also finding a way to impose their German coach’s ideology on a squad that is someway short of being suited to it.

"It is a strange feeling because on one side it is very, very good, then we have these injuries," Klopp explained after the Capital One Cup win over Stoke City, as per Phil McNulty BBC Sport. "Two weeks ago we had three centre-backs, which is a good situation, and the season started with five, but now it is zero.

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"Maybe I could look at our training methods but we don't train—we only recover. There is no training. I'm responsible for these things, and if you want to make me responsible for our hamstring strains then OK."

Klopp has indeed found a way to get his team running harder and for longer than any other, but it seems to have come at a cost. The former Dortmund coach said before the turn of the new year that “hamstring” was his “s--t word of the year,” as per David Prentice of the Liverpool Echo. With similar injuries to Kolo Toure, Dejan Lovren and Philippe Coutinho, that sentiment won’t have changed much. 

Such an injury-list, which now also counts Daniel Sturridge, Martin Skrtel, Jordan Rossiter and Divock Origi, could cripple any chance Klopp has of making a profound impression on Liverpool this season. It might not be until he has had a chance to get the right team on paper that we start to see so on the pitch.

But while we might have witnessed the Liverpool side Klopp wants, we have at least been afforded a glimpse of what the man himself is really like.