Jürgen Klopp is not immune from criticism. Liverpool slipping from an all-conquering, title-winning machine into a plodding, morose mess has happened on his watch.
We know all the reasons why Klopp should be absolved of a bunch of the blame: The injuries, the impact those have had the managers ability to rotate the squad, the lack of fans in the stands, the funky schedule, the lack of backing in the early part of the January transfer window when the squad needed it most. And the ultimate: A manager or coach can only get his player into the final third with options. He can not pass or score himself. It is up to the players to make the right decisions; for too long now, Liverpools best, most impactful players have made poor decisions.
And we know all the reasons that are fair to criticise the manager for — not being active enough with his rotations, his odd substitution patterns. But there is one criticism that is odd: That he is stubborn.
As Mark and I ran through the post-match show after another drab defeat against Fulham, the same comment continued to pop up in the comments. Klopp is too stubborn. He has been found out. We need to adapt. Why dont we try new things?
It is the exact same series of criticism — for those keeping score at home — as those leveled at Klopp during the waning days of his Dortmund run.
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In fact, its not even an odd criticism. It’s wrong. Its a myth. And its been a myth for a decent length of time.
The idea of heavy metal football was always a better soundbite than a true elocution of Klopps footballing doctrine. At Borussia, Klopps time played all-action, high-tempo, rar-rar football. The side was mimicked by Klopp and co. in the staffs early days in Liverpool, in part to try to make up for the talent discrepancy between Liverpools team and the other top sides. By running farther for longer, by counter-pressing at a relentless clip, they thought they could bridge the divide.
They did — a little. But it took until Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker joined the Kloppolution for things to really take off. And by that point, Klopp and his staff had decided to evolve away from the all-action style that often left his team running on fumes by the middle of the season, before they were able to recharge their batteries for a final end-of-season sprint.
During the teams title challenge in 2018/19 and title win in 2019/20, they adopted a more considered, possession-oriented approach. It combined all the elements of the lightening fast, counter-pressing, high-intensity efforts with a period of sustained, languid play, in which Klopps side could rest on the ball and modulate the tempo of the game, allowing them to both ratchet through the gears whenever they saw fit (often in five-to-ten minute blurs that would win the game) and then freeing the team up to sit on the ball and see a match out by playing more of a contained style.
It worked. Liverpool blitzed their way to the league. The highlights feature a lot of those up-and-down, quick-twitch moments, but the title was won in the moments they were comfortably able to see it wins rather than getting into back-and-forth contests.
This new, plodding, not-sure-to-do-with-the-ball edition is more of an evolution of that than Klopp refusing to change up his approach or the manager and his staff being found out.
And there theres this: Klopp has adjusted. First there was the shift to a more free-form, attacking, morphing 4-2-2-2 shape. The plans to use such a look as a long-term strategy were shelved when Diogo Jota picked up his injury.
The manager has become even more creative (desperate? Inspired?) with his looks in recent weeks. Over the past three games alone he has played three different systems with a batch of different personnel. There was the morphing 3-2-5 against Sheffield United with Andy Robertson playing as an out-and-out winger, Curtis Jones in a hybrid role and Trent Alexander-Arnold playing three positions in one. It was a triumph. Then Klopp rolled out a similar, more conservative type of model similar to the Sheffield United one against Chelsea. It was a mess. On Sunday, he adapted again: he went with a split-striker look without one of his natural on-the-move playmakers in the hole behind Mohamed Salah and Diogo Jota. Instead, he rolled out Xherdan Shaqiri, couldnt figure out how to blend the tiny forward line together, and spent the first 45-minutes switching between three different shape. It was also a mess, and things only picked up a little when Alexander-Arnold and Sadio Mané were summoned from the bench.
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Klopp made seven changes against Fulham on Sunday. Some were forced, others were unforced. And given that he opted to bring on the three heaviest hitters on from the bench in the second half — Alexander-Arnold, Mané, Fabinho — it would indicate that those players weren’t ruled out by injury. It was a choice. It was either a rotation policy ahead of Leipzig game in midweek, or sending a message to some underperforming players, or wanting to give other players a shot to prove they deserved a place in the team, or, most likely, some blend of all three.
What it was not was stubborn. Klopp should have started Alexander-Arnold, particularly in the look he went with — without Roberto Firmino or Alexander-Arnold in the side, a whole host of the creative burden fell on Mohamed Salah, which was a tough ask given his role has been to be a hyper-efficient scoring machine for three-plus years now.
If anything, the stubborn argument is directly inverse to the real problem. Its less that Klopp is unwilling to change and perhaps that things have changed too much. That in choosing not to press and the same relentless level a big chuck on Liverpools creativity owed much to counter-pressing, has vanished. That in losing some of their quick transition play, most notably from their goalkeeper, one of their crucial weapons — attacking before the defensive block can set — has been ripped out of their bag of tricks.
By now, its clear that Liverpools decision to not press is just that: A decision. What was once a pressing machine that was the envy of Europe isnt just stuck in the mud, the coach and his staff have clearly decided that theyre not going to press. The half-hearted effort against Chelsea, when paired with a high-line, was borderline embarrassing.
This is less about Klopps stubbornness and more about the team lacking the underlying principles that would make any of the managers systems work: running off the ball; quality in the final third; sticking to a strict defensive line, whether thats still high up the pitch or sat deeper in their own half.
(At some point, when things are going this poorly, a manager just has to try stuff. That endpoint — ahhh, something! — felt like it came on Sunday)
There are plenty of things to question and thoughts to ponder. Of the Klopp criticisms, chief among them should be his use of his substitutions — the when, who and how. But tactical stubbornness is a criticism that does not pass the smell test. The Liverpool boss has evolved in the past. He has tried to evolve again. That it hasnt worked says less about the making of changes and asks more probing questions about why none of the new methods are working.
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