Jurgen Klopp: Liverpool manager defends record amid underwhelming season - BBC Sport
“I didn’t become a bad manager overnight. I was never as good as people probably said and not as bad as some people might think,”
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This guy 
Anyone still a doubter rather than a believer…
I have my views and it may upset the pussies 
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Can someone tell me why Klopp has some sort of fascination with playing a slow as fuck midfielder as wide left forward? All his best football has been based on fast and aggressive frontfoot forwards… Don’t get it at all, setting us up to fail.
And for any clever dick about Elliot scoring… He scored by coming central…
Klopp don’t like pigeon holing players, don’t you see Trent and Andy swapping places during certain parts of out play, defenders score goals and even the odd goalkeeper, it’s obvious Klopp wants better on our right side but still wants Elliott on the pitch, today I saw him drop back and make it four in midfield a few times.
Not sure what any of this has to do with my point? Elliot’s first touch and pass is backwards and he has no pace to beat his man or cause any sort of threat. He is far better on the right as he picks up the right pockets of space between the lines… On the left he is static on the touchline, recieves and passes it back to Robbo,
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Cutting in from his position on the left. Pointing it out is not being clever, it’s just describing what actually happened and what the reality fo playing in that position is. How much of Klopp’s dortmund did you watch? This is essentially the role that made Reus a star…one that was ostensibly on the left, but allowed freedom to come inside to link up given the immense workrate of the winger come LB playing behind him.
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Klopp don’t want him on the weak side of our play. 
This is such a leep, he comes inside from 10 yards within his own half, his run is from the middle to the outside right for the pass.
Just like when he picked the ball up in the middle to make the pass for Gakpo.
He was terrible against Chelsea on the left, he was terrible on the left today. Oxlade again is terrible on the left.
We bought a left sided forward to stick him in the middle… Countless baffling strategic decisions over the last year.
The point being that playing on the left doesnt limit him to sticking on the left. Him having licence to come inside is not evidence of him not being for for the role, but an illustration of what he’s allowed to do in the role.
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He is better as a forward than a midfielder. Off the ball, he is absolutely useless which is why I don’t ever see him been a midfielder. More than likely Nunez isn’t fully match fit to start yet so there was no other option.
The formation Klopp used with Reus playing that role was a 4231, not a 433… And Elliot is nowhere near Reus yet.
You know what I want, our wide players to play with pace, power and properly go at their fullback… We won a few things that way.
This team is going to break Jurgen, and that will be unforgiveable.
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The goal he scored today was very different from the others he’s scored.
Broke away with Mo and he actually made up a lot of ground to break Brighton’s last line of defence through the middle, which is something he’s rarely offered this season…if he can offer more of this it’ll be very beneficial.
For me Harvey can only operate at his best in a 4231 or diamond type formation which has a #10, as few have said he doesn’t have the pace or skill to beat a man or create from wide areas and in midfield he simply doesn’t have the defensive capabilities to be trusted.
Jurgen is the best thing to have happened to our club since the late eighties (or 1990 last title before klopp) when the end of our run of domination ended, he is being seriously hamstrung by these owners who dont give him the backing he deserves in the transfer market, and all the while he is towing the line with soundbites regarding transfers etc, given the right backing he would no doubt be able to turn this around but our owners are burying him, i just hope he does not decide enough is enough and decide to walk on his own terms, the man in my eyes is a legend.
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Ok, you want that, but right now we dont have the players for it. Diaz and Jota have been medium term injured, and Nunez hasnt been fit for a few weeks and is only now coming back. Gapko can play on the left, but doesnt play that way even when played there. It seems likely he has bought with a view to using him more centrally given how good our options are already on the left (including Nunez) so you can see some sense in trying to use other players to fill that spot if we’re using Gapko more in the role we want him to play in. Regardless of that, even Gapko there doesnt solve the problem the way you want it solved.
So, even ignoring any need to defend Elliott’s selection there, I dont get the premise - that he is insistent on playing a slow midfielder there when the reality is he is scrambling right now to put a side on the pitch and using the options he has to call on.
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Who could be our new owners…just watching Wrexham and Ryan Reynolds…who could be ours…I wonder…
Why do you think he would have the defensive capabilities to be the 10 in a 4-2-3-1 but not the 8 in a 4-3-3? Klopp is hardly the type to play with a guy behind the striker who is allowed to coast defensively.
I thought by now, Klopp, in an attempt to make us difficult to beat, would be experimenting with a significantly different set up and approach…because we don’t have the personnel or the legs for his marquee style and all that…
Instead he is less worried about short term results and appears to be drilling his style by sticking with a significant training investment with the same personnel coupled with some young and newly acquired players.
I don’t know what’s best, but it certainly feels like his “rebuilding” will be focusing on consistent, long term benefits. And it’d be based on fitting and developing players within his proven playbook. Even if competitors have “figured out” our style.
I hope all of us and our owners (present and future) find and exercise the patience Klopp deserves.
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We’ve done nothing to improve since day one of the season when we looked disjointed, disorganised and disinterested.
We didn’t do the business in centre midfield in the summer that we needed to and that most people could see we were crying out for. We didn’t correct that issue properly even as the injuries stacked up and we haven’t corrected it in January despite spending £40m odd. Money has been spent, not City/Chelsea/Arsenal sums but enough that we should have tried to address the shortfall in there.
You could point the finger at FSG for not providing more funds but we seem to have lost the magic touch in the transfer market. Responsibility for that side of things has moved away from those who were doing it so well and more towards the manager and the coaching staff. I doubt that that is something that has been forced on them and is instead something they’ve pushed for more control over and so far it’s looking like a poor decision to let that happen.
We spent a fortune on Nunez who has been okay but I think we all expected more from. We’ve then gone out in January and bought another left sided forward (having bought one last January too) but have been playing him centrally with Salah on the periphery out right and then Elliott or Nunez on the left. None of that makes much sense to me, it doesn’t appear to be working and it certainly isn’t something you can blame the owners for. That is on Klopp and the coaches.
The decision to hand Henderson a long term extension looks worse and worse by the week. If we hadn’t extended him he’d be coming up to the end of his deal this summer. We could have then offered him a short term deal based on his current performance level. Instead we’re paying him £10m a year for another two years.
Part of his decline is likely down to the ridiculous number of games he’s been asked to play over the last five years in a side that relies on the midfield to do a lot of heavy running. Same for Fabinho. Fallen off a cliff having been asked to play 90 minutes twice a week, every week pretty much since the day he settled into the side. Again, you can point the finger at FSG and say they haven’t given Klopp enough money to allow him to do more business but ultimately that decision to relentlessly play the same players and not replace the likes of Wijnaldum lies with Klopp.
And whoever is deciding to let all these players get to the last 12 months of contracts whilst still chasing to sign some of them on new deals and not pushing the others to go whilst they have some value is causing serious issues with the squad refreshing efforts. Naby and Ox could have gone last summer or the summer before. Players who offer very little in any consistent way. Get them off the wage bill whilst we can get something for them instead of paying them millions for another year or two whilst offering nothing. Maybe that’s Klopp wanting to keep them round, maybe it’s us not being able to find buyers but the whole situation seems very poorly planned.
No one at the club has excelled this season and the signs were there last season too. We needed to do a bit more business in the summer and didn’t for whatever reason, I image a mix of limited funds and loyalty to current players from Klopp. We needed to move on from some players. Ox, Naby, Phillips, maybe one or two others. We needed some fresh ideas and new voices in the coaching team but we appear to be giving Lijnders a bigger and bigger role. We needed to make sure we stayed on top of the transfer game after Edwards left, instead we seem to have marginalised a lot of people who did the great work for us and now they’re leaving in droves. We also needed a better pre-season as this one has clearly been a disaster and the world cup break has not helped those who weren’t in Qatar either.
Call it a transition season if you want but it’s more than that. We’ve tried to change the way we play, we’ve brought in new types of forwards, we’ve stopped the data driven recruitment and given more control to Klopp and the coaches and now the owners are looking to move on too.
That’s not an off season whilst we refresh the squad, that’s wholesale changes in a lot of areas and not enough changes in some of the squad areas that was needed. It’s a worrying time and a lot of the issues increasingly look like they fall at the feet of Klopp. He’s not been able to find a solution to tactical issues in over half a season and with a months break to work on it. He doesn’t seem to be able to lift the players out of this slump. His tactical changes have marginalised our most potent goal scorer and the creativity from the fullbacks has all but vanished. He is being out-coached on a consistent basis by lesser managers with a poorer squad at their disposal.
He’s been too loyal to players that should have been moved on a while ago and if it’s true that he has a greater role in recruitment then you have to question some of the decisions being made in that area in too. Yes, more money may help but he’s struggling to get a solid tune out of Nunez, Carvalho and Gakpo at the minute so more business isn’t going to magically fix things either.
We’re starting to get to the point where some serious questions need to be asked.
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You are trying to explain our results through tactics and coaching alone. The biggest factor, and even what the players are saying weekly, is how the team is lacking in confidence. BTW, letting the world know you are lacking confidence as a team is not something you really should share with the world unless its absolutely obvious for everyone to see. Which it is in this case. And to me is the biggest overriding factor this season. Which is why I think the only way to overcome this is not in the transfer market, but through playing ourselves into form.
I agree with Klopp in playing the strongest team possible. With Fab and Hendo terribly low on confidence it may seem a strange thing to say that Bajcetic is part of our strongest team but I think its about right. We need to fight out of this. Blooding youngsters (the evidence is that this hasn’t happened, at least not in the league) and losing games at the cost of even more confidence and hoping that the hard reset of the start of a new season in August will get us out of it is a bit of a gamble.
Our problem is between the ears. Confidence. Keep playing the games given to us. Try to use something in each game to take to the next and try to build something. That’s all the players can do. And we as fans can only wait patiently.
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