It’s a huge gap between number 2 and number 1.
Pep is a great coach, our players all spoke highly of him, and Klopp really depended on him. He had great players to work with, and it all seemed a great fit.
Now that he is out on his own, it doesn’t look good at the moment. I don’t know what Salzburg are like in terms of expectations, and also giving the manager plenty of time.
On a related note, did Pep also take the Portuguese coach we had, I forget his name now?
Kornmayer and Matos both followed him to Salzburg, yes.
“I have an FA cup winners medal because Stevie was on my team” 
Have to remember Sturm Graz are the best team in that league and where last season.
It’s more the 5-0 rather than the loss.
I’m not convinced Pep is a great coach. I love Klopp as much as the next guy, but his weakness might have been loyalty. He was willing to accept a lot of mediocrity, like Lijnders (amongst others), and he thrived in spite of it.
If Klopp had the ruthlessness of, say, Arne (or even Rafa), I’d wager he’d have won a lot more.
I think sometimes creative people need someone to reign them in and concentrate their focus to prevent them spiraling. I think Pep still has a lot of his own story to write and has time to prove me wrong, but that is kind of where I have landed on him in terms of his potential as a #1 and what he needs as a #2.
I also think that by last season we had become like a really bloated, overly modified piece of software. When you spend so long repeatedly adding new code on top of the existing to improve how it does certain tasks you get a product that does what it supposed to do, but in an incredibly complicated, resources heavy way that is increasingly difficult to debug when something goes wrong. You reach a point where rewriting it from scratch will get you a better result. That is what I started to feel last season, and what the various comments from several players about this season have reinforced. That probably speaks to your thought that Jurgen accommodated him too much.
I see Salzburg’s training sessions online, he certainly is a good coach. Players are engaged and happy, drills look high quality but not repetitive and boring etc. From the perspective of just coaching a team he looks quality to me.
My criticism was his tactical application, when he took over as the main tactical advisor to Klopp I thought we went down a level.
Didn’t he do that when Buvač left? I remember this part because people always cite Buvač as a reason why we were winning, but when we look at how we evolved the team to be better with tempo and deciding when to go heavy metal, when to sit back, how to suffocate games, that was when Lijnders had replaced Buvač. The latter left in 2018, in fact in April. So technically if we want to blame him for the last few seasons, we should give him credit for what we’ve won too, not to mention the season where bar a few minutes give or take, we would have won the lot.
Think we need something of a cross between the chaos of Buvac and the organisation of Pepjin.
2018-19 and 2019-20 suggest that we already had a good balance.
Oddly the data experts leave around then. Maybe that impacted.
To be honest there isn’t much wrong with the 21-22 season.
Our 20-21 season was also on course til Boxing Day.
Which ones? I think Spearman is still there, Graham left in 2023.
Edwards king nerd left around then didn’t he? Plus one left and came back a year ago.
Edwards left in 2022. I know us fans meme a lot about him and his laptop, but to the best of my knowledge, I don’t think he’s ever been the head of research (which is what I presume most people think of with regards to the data experts). He was head of performance and analysis, director of technical performance, and then technical director before becoming sporting director (Michael Edwards: The Making of the Man Who Helped to Make Klopp's Liverpool | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors | Bleacher Report) but I don’t think he’s been as much of a nerd data-wise as the likes of Graham and Spearman?
He’s a head of a lot of areas that would effect on the pitch performance and as I said we weren’t bad in 21-22.
The names on my 13ft wool scarf…I used to take to the game…and have wafting out of the car window on our drive to the game…hold many memories…sadly Cormack is another memory…sad news…
Joel Matip has announced his retirement from football:
