Got you, reeled in and landed successfully 
Awesome read and post cheers
Wouldn’t change a single word. Hopefully the team has been made aware of it as well.
Well said…
PREMIER LEAGUE | HENRY WINTER
Jürgen Klopp has been let down by Liverpool owners
, Chief Football Writer
Tuesday February 09 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Times
There is no shame in losing to a team of Manchester City’s exceptional class or being outwitted by a coach of Pep Guardiola’s endless inventiveness. The only shame is in not responding. That is the challenge for Liverpool now.
The central question is whether the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group (FSG), will respond. It is wrestling with the cost of the pandemic, and can point to investment in the magnificent training ground at Kirkby and to almost £72 million spent on Diogo Jota, Thiago Alcântara and Kostas Tsimikas in the summer.
The company is largely perceived as a good owner, partly because it is not Tom Hicks and George Gillett — fellow Americans and unpopular predecessors — nor the Glazers at Manchester United, and because John W Henry, the club’s principal owner, engages in community initiatives, speaks well and showed decisiveness when appointing Jürgen Klopp and recruiting Alisson and Virgil van Dijk.
Yet FSG is also the organisation that proposed a £77 ticket before apologising to fans who staged a mass walkout in protest in 2016, that furloughed staff last year before relenting after a supporters’ backlash, that co-drove the shameless attempted power-grab of Project Big Picture and is now involved in money-spinning plans for a European Super League.
For all the occasional romantic narrative spun around Henry, he is a businessman, looking for a fistful of dollars and more. Liverpool is not a hobby, a passion for Henry; he is prospecting in a Kop Klondike. Do the maths. Money means more. At a time when Liverpool’s squad required proper investment, Henry paused. All the indications are that the summer will be another period of retrenchment, of the seeds of success left unsown, and the fields of Anfield Road lying fallow.
For the first time, Henry has let Klopp down, forcing him to raid the middle ranks of the Sky Bet Championship and the bottom of the Bundesliga for central-defensive reinforcements, corner-shop purchasing by a household name. FSG has gone all cheap on Klopp. For an owner who prides himself on his knowledge of the club’s history, Henry should know that Liverpool traditionally strengthened when ahead.
Those of us lucky to be heading into Anfield on Sunday for Liverpool’s showdown with City, which became a meltdown, saw Sir Kenny Dalglish also arriving, striding in, always there, always supporting the team from the smart seats, just as he delivered on the pitch for them. Dalglish first arrived at Anfield in 1977, following Kevin Keegan, who was moving on to Hamburg. Henry and his acolytes will not need reminding that Liverpool won the European Cup in 1977 with Keegan in attack, then retained the trophy with Dalglish scoring the decisive goal. Momentum maintained. Always strengthen.
Thiago and his Liverpool team-mates were thoroughly bested by City in their 4-1 defeat on Sunday
Of the Liverpool team who lost the 2018 Champions League final in Kiev, seven started against City: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Andrew Robertson, Jordan Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum, Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané, while nine from the triumphant 2019 team in Madrid started at Anfield (adding Alisson and Fabinho). Even dynasties need refreshing. Even a pool of talent needs topping up.
Liverpool look tired, in need of rejuvenating. Not since the start of the 1963-64 season have they succumbed in three successive games at Anfield, to Nottingham Forest, Blackpool and West Ham United. They still finished champions, under Bill Shankly, that season but that is not going to happen this year. City are too good. Liverpool too drained.
They need substantial investment in the squad by FSG in the summer, a clearout too, perhaps freeing up some funds. Naby Keita, sadly, is too injury-prone while Divock Origi and Xherdan Shaqiri are good but not elite, although Liverpool fans will offer them thanks for the memories. Wijnaldum’s contract impasse seems symptomatic of Liverpool’s predicament: a principal owner looking at the bottom line when he should be focusing on giving Klopp the resources to be top of the table again.
If money matters most to Henry, he will surely understand the price of not qualifying for the Champions League, of the embarrassment for him among his Super League plotters. Worryingly for the majority who care about the sporting integrity of the game, Liverpool failing to dash down the Premier League platform and reboard the Champions League gravy train may simply encourage FSG to become further in cahoots with the European greed club.
Henry needs to respond the right way: speculate to accumulate. Back Klopp. In the acrimonious aftermath of Liverpool’s second-half collapse against an outstanding City, BBC Radio 5 Live’s 606 phone-in with Chris Sutton and Robbie Savage heard from some callers who had clearly divested themselves of all common sense. Klopp out, a couple ventured. Radio going gaga. Fortunately, Sutton and Savage put them in their place. Klopp represents Liverpool’s rescue plan.
He will respond to the adversity. It is in his nature. He will be furious about Liverpool’s supine defence of their league crown, even if amid the bonfire of the sanities on Sunday evening it was forgotten that there have been far worse title defences, going back to Blackburn Rovers, finishing 7th in 1995-96, Chelsea 10th in 2015-16 and Leicester City ending up 12th a season later.
Klopp, such an intelligent man, will scrutinise and analyse himself and others. He needs to be less twitchy in interviews and more bold with his substitutions. He needs to hold his nerve, keep showing the courage that defined his 2019 and 2020 teams. Removing Curtis Jones, who was playing well against City, was bizarre, running against Klopp’s identity.
As well as reinvigorating his squad, Klopp should also consider continuing to refresh his coaching staff, bringing in a new voice for players to respond to. Sir Alex Ferguson was the master of recruiting players to challenge the squad and coaches to challenge the status quo.
Some new faces will help but anybody with any familiarity with some of the characters in Klopp’s dressing room will know they will still respond. Experienced campaigners and driven individuals such as Henderson, Robertson and Mané will respond. At 35, James Milner’s legs are going, but not his hunger. Alisson is too conscientious a professional not to refocus and immerse himself in training to eradicate the errors of distribution that scarred the second half on Sunday.
A supreme talent like Alexander-Arnold, only 22, will respond, working on his defensive attributes to complement his phenomenal attacking strengths. A fearless youngster such as Jones, only 20, will respond. Absent friends like Van Dijk and Joe Gomez will return at some point this year, and respond, providing the pacey cover that allows Robertson and Alexander-Arnold to push up more confidently. Jota will return and respond.
Liverpool will be back and they will respond, but they need backing from FSG.
Lazy and superficial, completely overlooks the effects of the pandemic and the fact that Liverpool is not run like a billionaire’s plaything.
Couldn’t have said it better. I found myself shaking head all the time while reading this drivel.
Yep even has a little subtle dig that the Anfield Road expansion got put on hold in a global pandemic… Terrible journalism.
It’s from The Times, a paper owned by News UK and, therefore, a sister paper to The Sun.
Does anyone honestly expect objectivity when it comes to Liverpool Football Club?
Henry Winter is a wanker tbh,he’s such a stuck up smug cunt,i used to hate watching Sunday Supplement when he was on it,posh prick.
I hope Klopp has read that fair assessment so that he knows not everybody has abandoned him in his hour of need He can put up with rivals fans jibes but when your own following goes bonkers on social media it is a bit harder to take but those people have to be careful what they wish for
I don’t understand why that was posted on here I don’t buy nor read those papers?
Klopp is brilliant. Wouldn’t swap him for any other manager in world football.
We are in a lull right now. It happens. Everything went wrong in central defence. We have also suffered uneven refereeing and some very dodgy VAR calls that have cost us points.
No team can do 3 x ~100 pt seasons in a row. City last year lost by 20 odd points to us. That will be reversed this year.
The key is to keep some perspective. Regroup, make sure of top four - and I think we will, and go again for next season. Ideally Klopp gets a sunshine break in there somewhere, to recharge the batteries, drink a few beers, and come back raring to go. And ideally that coincides with fans coming back, or near as damnit anyway.
If someone wants to make a fair assessment of our title challenge you wouldn’t leave out the injuries we have been dealt.
Anything but the very worst run I’ve seen from a Liverpool side and we would still be in it.
The sad thing is, all I can come up with as an answer is a recharge and that won’t come til the Summer.
The twat conveniently forgot we outlaid pretty big on Jota and Thiago (I know the terms of the deals were good but it’s still money to be paid after excellent negotiation) combined at the beginning of the season and are paying our squad top dollar now with the extensions and incentives.
We can argue the CB situation but it’s not unreasonable what the Club did in bringing in some reinforcement while keeping our powder dry for the next window. To think people get paid to write such nonsense.
It’s interesting that Winter made such a fuss of highlighting the need for reinforcements, without really talking about why those reinforcements are needed.
And Kabak isn’t a clogger plucked from the bottom of the Bundesliga. We were interested in him in the summer, but he was deemed to be worth £40m.
Absolute horseshit article.
Anyone reading that Winter article without knowing he was a journalist… could be forgiven if they thought that it was a brave attempt at a homework essay, set by a teacher to some young teenager.!
Appalling writing depicting fiction, rather than fact.
That’s unbelievably sad. If only we could all give Jurgen a hug right now.