Jurgen Klopp Will Need Lots of Time to Sort out the Liverpool Mess He Inherited

In this strangest of Premier League seasons, perhaps a certain measure of confusion is only to be expected. After all, with half the league campaign gone, there’s still a sense that just about anybody in the top half of the table could put in a title challenge if they could only string together a run of seven or eight wins on the bounce.

So, the fact that Jurgen Klopp was still being asked about winning the league following the 1-0 win over Sunderland perhaps wasn’t quite as bizarre as it seemed in the wake of Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at West Ham United.

Liverpool, more than most, have been inconsistent this season. Wins away to Manchester City and Southampton were brilliant, but after that 6-1 Capital One Cup triumph, they contrived to lose to Newcastle United, Watford and West Ham in three of their following four away games.

Victory over Stoke City in the Capital One Cup semi-final first leg on Tuesday at least puts Liverpool within touching distance of a final, but there is a long way to go before this side could be considered realistic title contenders.

Up to a point, Klopp is suffering the consequences of Liverpool’s bewildering transfer policy. This, manifestly, is not his team, but neither does it seem to be anybody else’s. On Saturday, after Liverpool’s defeat to West Ham, Klopp pointed out that with good service Andy Carroll is almost unstoppable and that an opponent’s job is therefore to stop the crosses. “We could have done that,” he added, referring to Christian Benteke’s aerial strength.

It was an intriguing line. They could have done it, yet didn’t, presumably because that is not the style of football he believes in and, perhaps, because Liverpool don’t have players who can get wide and deliver crosses of the calibre of those sent in by Enner Valencia and Mark Noble.

Christopher Lee/Getty Images

It’s a similar argument to that Brendan Rodgers employed when deciding to offload Carroll in 2012. But if that wasn’t the former Liverpool manager's style then, why did he—or the transfer committee—then sign Benteke three years later? Benteke is different to Carroll, more of an athlete, quicker from a standing start and probably more mobile, but they are similar types of striker.

It’s not as though Liverpool have suddenly bought a load of wingers desperate for a target to hit. On the contrary, they’re now a team packed with No. 10s: Philippe Coutinho, Adam Lallana and Roberto Firmino (not that anybody seems entirely certain what the Brazilian is best at).

Benteke has undergone a strange fortnight, scoring two winners in games in which he went on to miss last-minute sitters and yet suffering such a loss of confidence that against West Ham the most basic tasks seemed beyond him.

He is, fairly evidently, a player whose self-belief is fragile, as was demonstrated by his horrible run of form after returning from his Achilles injury before the burst of form in the second half of last season. The issue becomes self-perpetuating: if he doesn’t get the service he requires, he will not play well, and if he doesn’t play well, his confidence will dip, which will make him less able to make the adjustments to his game that might enable him to function in a Klopp side.

Coutinho is inconsistent, but still by some way Liverpool’s most potent creative force. Lallana still can seem a little slow. But Firmino remains the biggest mystery. His best game—arguably his only really good game for Liverpool—came at Manchester City when he played at centre-forward. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Liverpool’s best two performances of the season were in that game and at Chelsea—again with Firmino at centre-forward.

He is certainly more mobile than Benteke and seems to bring the best out of those other creators, or, at least, he does when Liverpool are playing well; at Watford, when Liverpool played the front three of Lallana, Firmino and Coutinho that had performed so well against City, they simply never got the ball.

Jon Super/Associated Press

In that game, Liverpool were outfought. The second goal came initially because Troy Deeney scrapped harder than Lucas Leiva to win the ball in the centre circle and then because Odion Ighalo battled his way in front of Martin Skrtel. Klopp was angered after the defeat to West Ham by the lack of aggression. “If you fight but not at 100 per cent, 95 per cent is not enough. Who wants to see 95 per cent?” he asked.

But perhaps a slight tailing-off was always likely. Gegenpressing is hard. In that first game against Tottenham Hotspur—when everything was fresh and new and hundreds of Liverpool fans clamoured at the gates of White Hart Lane for a glimpse of Klopp descending from the team bus—Liverpool’s players ran themselves into the ground. Coutinho almost looked physically ill by the end, utterly spent. Players cannot keep doing that.

Klopp demands ferocious training. He wants his players to run more than any other team in the league—and Opta stats (h/t Sky Sports News) show they’ve been running six kilometres more as a team per game under Klopp than under Rodgers, making an average of 548 high-intensity sprints per game rather than 474.

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Since Klopp's arrival, Liverpool have been running on average six kilometres further in the Premier League #SSNHQ pic.twitter.com/yZFv56UARe

— Sky Sports News HQ (@SkySportsNewsHQ) January 6, 2016"

But to do that, players need a pre-season to prepare themselves. Such things are always matters of conjecture—coincidence does play a part—but Klopp acknowledged after Tuesday’s win over Stoke that 12 injuries, six of them hamstrings, was a worrying trend.

The possibility of players breaking down was even highlighted by Raymond Verheijen, the outspoken Dutch fitness expert who worked with Guus Hiddink with South Korea, Australia and Russia. On December 23, he tweeted:

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It will be interesting to keep an eye on Liverpool in the upcoming weeks as they are about to hit an injury crisis under new manager Klopp.

— Raymond Verheijen (@raymondverheije) December 23, 2015"

With no fit centre-backs, it may be that Kolo Toure, who pulled up clutching his hamstring in injury-time at the Britannia, is a 13th injury. Klopp may be forced into a signing or two, simply to get a competent back four out. Managing the injury problems complicates his task, but even without the current absentees, this is a squad that will require major restructuring.

It’s still not clear who took responsibility for which signings, but what is clear is that what remains is a mess. Any manager would require time to resolve those issues; Klopp, with his idiosyncratic style, will need at least a summer and a pre-season under his guidance before real progress is seen.

*All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise indicated