Klopp Needs to Find a Defensive Gear or Risk the Same Fate as His Predecessor

If legacies can turn on a sixpence, then history may forever look back on the 72nd minute of Liverpool's chaotic 4-3 defeat to Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium as being the moment Jurgen Klopp's timeline spun off at a tangent.

The annals of the footballing past—those great sprawling volumes of numbers, names and nuances—are thick with hairline decisions, reminders that for all of the finesse and razor-sharp science involved, football is at its most basic still a game of serendipity, held for a cheap ransom by fickle chance.

As James Milner swung over a corner from the left, Bournemouth's goalkeeper Artur Boruc went up for what should have been a routine catch, instead casually allowing his body to list over the line taking most of the ball with him. In a pre-goal-line technology age, we would never have got such a clear view of how close Boruc came to carrying the ball into the goal, but the image provided by the system spelled it out.

That would have been 4-1 to Liverpool with 17 minutes to play. Instead the home side were saved by the breadth of the enamel on Klopp's pearly-white smile and went on to launch a comeback for the ages.

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A goal line technology decision for a Liverpool corner made before Bournemouth's comeback. #LFC pic.twitter.com/XqWwZ4Ifr3

— Premier League Zone (@ThePLZone) December 4, 2016"

A win on the south coast would have taken Liverpool to within a point of Chelsea at the top. Following their scratchy 2-2 draw with an embattled West Ham United at Anfield on Sunday, that gap is now six points, and Liverpool's situation has undergone a sudden and concerning deterioration since they swept to the top of the Premier League with a 6-1 win over Watford on November 6, their seventh in eight games.

For most of that sequence, the richly deserved plaudits racked up by Klopp's side as they went about their ruthless business with rapier-like efficiency came footnoted with apprehensions about their openness in defence. The realisation of those reservations against both Bournemouth and the Hammers has brought a worrying complexion to bear on this team as the season enters its most rigorously testing period.

The talk before the trip to Bournemouth had been about a Plan B; how would Liverpool's fluency be affected by the absence of the injured Philippe Coutinho. Now attention must turn to the failure thus far to have established even a Plan A as far as defensive solidity is concerned. The team have defended this season in much the same way they have attacked, by instinct; therein lies much of what is troublesome about a side that is showing itself more and more to have, front to back, only one gear.

Klopp has shown in each of his managerial appointments to be a boss who coaches freedom into his players but who also educates them into making the most of that freedom. The relentless pressing off the ball with which his time at Dortmund was trademarked was a slick example. It created a first line of defence so early on in an opposition offensive that turnovers came high enough up the pitch to launch instant attacks, allowing sufficient advanced numbers for his front line to interchange at will.

At Liverpool, the increased understanding of space shown by the forward line this season has added dimensions to his team whenever they go forward. Their manipulation of movement in attack is so well understood within the team as to make it unpredictable to the opposition. That unpredictability, though, is being felt just as keenly in defence.

Michael Steele/Getty Images

There have been individual mistakes as the team have surrendered five points in seven days, but it's the failings shown on a collective level that throw up the most dexterous questions about Liverpool's title credentials. At the Vitality Stadium, the ease with which Bournemouth had the Reds defence doubting their roles with simple crosses into the box in the final 15 minutes spoke to a communal melee that strikes whenever they are called upon to form a defensive shape.

That fluid shape in attack is also observable, worryingly for Klopp, in his own back line.

This is precisely what West Ham boss Slaven Bilic was referring to when he spoke post-match of Liverpool playing "risky football," a situation he had expected his team to better exploit in the second half at Anfield.

But the flat-faced truth is that Liverpool have now shipped six goals in a week, not against their title rivals but against sides in the bottom half of the table. The chief architects of their downfall, aside from themselves, have been a player, in Michail Antonio, who began the season at right-back but led Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip a merry dance in his auxiliary role as centre-forward and Bournemouth winger Ryan Fraser, a player who spent last season on loan at Ipswich Town and is still finding his feet in the top flight.

Klopp's Liverpool have shown themselves to be a one-speed outfit, unable to break the tempo down and inject calm at either end of the pitch. They are the hipster, mono-gear fixie bike of the Premier League; in a season that on the whole is yet to fully ignite, they offer a striking alternative to the norm, whilst at times looking conspicuously unfit for purpose.

So to the Vitality Stadium and Boruc's goal-line juggling act. Liverpool's form this season has the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, one where momentum is everything. This team was always going to keep on outscoring the opposition until somebody stopped them, but how difficult will it be to re-set the metronome?

At 4-1, Bournemouth would have been a beaten side. Instead they rallied to inflict an improbable defeat, and those porous channels that run from the front to the back of this Liverpool side seem more gaping for it. The engines have spluttered out suddenly and will need re-starting, but this team lives on its nerves, and those jitters must be slaked before that swaggering confidence can return.

It's worth remembering what happened the last time Liverpool went after the title with intent. The class of 2013/14 were a less intricate model in attack than Klopp's intake, relying on the smooth synergy of far fewer components than the slick pass-and-move machine being built by the German. Brendan Rodgers was no Klopp, but in the circumstances he didn't need to be.

Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images

On the run that saw them win 14 and draw two from 16, Liverpool won 3-2 three times, 4-3, 5-3 and 6-3, before finally blowing the title with that remarkable 3-3 draw under the floodlights at Crystal Palace in May.

The entire back four plus the goalkeeper have been replaced since the end of that season, but the same frailties have persisted. That success was sustained largely on the back of the fact that Luis Suarez didn't at any point let up en route to notching 31 goals in 33 games, but this season's Liverpool rely far more on a careful symbiosis between units. That can be much more easily undone.

Klopp's Liverpool remains a work in progress, a bag of ideas that has knitted together in the final third of the pitch in a way seldom seen since Arsene Wenger's Invincibles cantered to an unbeaten Premier League title. Unlike that Arsenal side, however, they haven't yet shown that they can put the flash football on hold to play a proper defensive game.

For all their flair, they remain all too reliant on fortune's hand, that which briefly deserted them on the south coast. They may yet pay for it come May.