Jürgen Klopp - Liverpool Legend

Ah the good old interview spelling out how it’s all going to change… and then serving up the same turgid 433 spearheaded by Bobby

I thought we’d be finished with those articles now Dejan had gone.

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Even just a small change like the Diamond he did at Westham might work.

The sub Ox for Curtis makes little sense, Ox hasn’t been profitable since Lincoln was President.

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Bad dream indeed. He can’t make any changes with all the injuries mounting up all the time. He has his hands firmly tied, and yet, he’s expected to win games. Tough times…

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But he can change the tactics, can’t he?

If you don’t have the personnel to enact your preferred tactics, you change the tactics to those that best suit the available personnel.

No?

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Like a 442 diamond which got us a win at West Ham, I got pelters for saying it’s like Rodgers… Klopp clearly has tactics he can use which are different, but he consistently goes back to his safety 433… it’s so worrying he finds a win doing something different and we don’t see it again.

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He needs to start Jota and Keita next game.

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If he doesn’t start Keita it won’t make a lot of sense, unless he is injured again.

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Klopp already conceded the league when asked last month. Wasn’t a fan of his response at the time but it is what it is. Expect a few more losses along the way. I reckon he’s put all his eggs in the champions league basket. I know i have. If Chelsea can knock out Atletico the rest of the teams left are just as shite this year.

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If all our eggs are scrambled during PL games then what eggs are left for CL?

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nah. not Klopp.

thats a mourinho or a rafa type thing.

not a Klopp or Guardiola type thing…(not this far out)

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LOL at the IfitKhar 30 second like!!!

your ace.

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The nobody wants the ball if we don’t he is talking about maybe true against the likes of West Brom but against Chelsea, Cit and United there is nothing wrong playing a 442 formation focusing on defense and not getting beaten on the break all the time.

I think that Klopp privileges the longer view when chosing how to play. It has the upside that every player knows how to play the system and that, at least in theory, with time going by, every move on the pitch becomes almost automatic. Everyone knows how the other players move etc. That worked very well until that fucking Covid break, and even more since our non-stop injury-jinx.

The downside of this way of working is that, when you have 90% of your central defence and roughly 50% of your midfield out for the most part of the season, that you have to change your back line formation every second game, all these beautiful automatisms are gone. So, everything becomes laboured, slow and a lack of precision creeps in.

That’s what we are seeing now. Klopp keeps working on the system no matter what, with the players at disposal. In the short term, you get a record series of defeats, but in the longer term, our squad in the whole will hopefully become stronger.

All these defeats are a tough mental test for everyone, but they’ll come out tougher lads because of all this, once the now shattered pieces come back together again.

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Love the optimism.

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Bollocks to “heavy metal football” in that case. Our theme tune should be this:

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You should read Kloppo’s latest interview about our current situation. The link is in this thread a bit above, and it’s very instructive.

‘Heavy metal football’ is a way of looking at it, but there is much more to Klopp’s football than that.

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I posted in the match threads that I think this is Dortmund 2.0 and I stand by that assessment. The parallels are clear. I also agree with Torc who said he was wrong in not believing Klopp couldn’t turn it around, Klopp was certainly pushed, but Torc is of the opinion Klopp should have been given time to rebuild. Which he did starting in the winter break and Tuchel ironically was the one who benefited from the changes made by Klopp then.

I think Klopp can and will turn this around but that won’t happen till the summer, he is far too invested in this approach, he is a very stubborn man. I don’t expect us to change a lot until he’s given some time to mentally step away from this team and look at it objectively. I have faith come next season we will go again, but the team won’t be the one we have today and we may need a few years to get back to being close to City.

There are several mitigating factors, the crippling injury list, the lack of signing a central defender early in Jan, all the external factors which don’t need mentioning but are important… I get them all, I truly do and yes they all have had big impacts on the team and the form…

But… They are just excuses at the end of the day. They do not explain how we have lost 5 games in a row at home, including teams like Burnley Brighton etc. If we had struggled against the top 6, it’s a fair crack we’ve have a lot go against us… But Burnley? Any team we’ve had available should be able to beat Burnley.

Also the signs of this demise was here last season, we struggled to breakdown teams… I put it down to we’d won the league at a canter and the boys were rightly taking their foot off the gas after 2 years of the pinnacle of effort and reaping their so so muchly deserved rewards.

There was hope in the early start of the season, we continued to just do enough to win games… But again the signs were there, we struggled to breakdown defenses, we spent a lot of games looking devoid of ideas… Teams sat back and let us have the ball and we typically didn’t do anything with it. A hell of a lot of us winning games or getting that important goal was the threat we had from set pieces… Fuck me I know we’ve lost Van Dijk but giving us a corner is basically giving them the ball back.

And we we come to my major problem with Klopp and his coaching team is the complete and utter lack of change. What are they waiting for? Why when we see the 442 work really well against West Ham do we not see it again? When you have 3 forwards fit, surely the better option for awhile is to not run all 3 into the ground and play 2 up and then bring 1 off for freshness, or switch to 3… This over reliance on 433, Bobby dropping deep, the high defensive line etc. just seem utterly madness. It’s not worked for over 6 months. When is enough enough?

And please don’t come at with me any shit like he has no time to train… Tuchel has been at Chelsea what? A month? He has managed to get over all his ideas, Chelsea yesterday were set up tactically well, they did the basics of what Tuchel wanted and had a game plan different to what fat Frank was doing. So it’s just excuses to say there is no time mid-season to tweak your tatics or formation.

I get Klopp has a philosophy, great, fantastic but sometimes you need to be fucking practical. Use the players you do have available and play them to their strengths rather than keep forcing them into a shape and intensity that is burning them all out…

Playing the high defensive line yet not putting pressure on the ball seems possibly the stupidist tactic ever, yet we see it over and over. Watching a half fit Fabinho get destroyed time and time again v’s one of the quickest forwards in the league was just soul destroying… Time and time again their midfield or fullbacks had acres of space and time to hit Werner on the shoulder. We didn’t make a single change all game, yet they must have got behind about 10 times. Thats on Klopp, he hung Fabinho out to dry. Is the midfield too tired to press? If yes then pull them all deeper, let the front 3 counter attack like we did pre Van Dijk. Condense space, give your midfield less to cover… We have 3 of the best counter attacking forwards in England, yet we never play on transition.

Add to that the tactical choice of buying Thiago one of the worlds best passing midfielders and expecting him to play like Henderson… If Thiago hasn’t got the legs or intensity to track runners then fucking drop him. It’s not as though he’s doing much offensively. If he needs 2 “runners”, then drop him till he has them… More and more square pegs in round holes.

Then when I hear comments like “Keita was probably the player we needed, but Ox and Milner had trained well” I just want to scream. There has to be a tipping point of player loyalty where it starts to work against you. Case point Bobby, Klopp with all the data available he has cannot not see he is out of form, and has been for probably 12 months + despite 10 minutes here or there of his old brilliance. How many times we need to watch him turn over posession? It lead to their goal last night, he is an actual liability, how can they not see this? The stats do not lie, the eye test does not lie… Klopp surely has to give other players a chance now, he needs to rethink and reinvent and use the players he has at his disposal.

Along with the “favourtism” is this lack of dropping players who clearly are not stepping up and the ones who let their heads drop… If Robbo is calling this out after games then they need dealing with. Trent is a huge example of this, when it’s going well he is on song, but does he really dig deep? Does he hold his defensive shape and keep us solid? Or does he go into Gerrard mode and just cross over and over?

Another comment driving me insane is hearing this comment multiple times “The most important thing is, and I said it last night and I cannot change that now overnight, the thing we have to improve is our decision-making in decisive moments.”… Yes factually that is correct we are not scoring chances, nor creating the chance by poor decision making. This is not the fucking reason we lost though, its a small element of the truth. It masks the tactical inertia, I’d much rather some honesty.

Klopp can change this, but he really needs to step outside the “bubble” he is in and start making some tough decisions, and the first one is to give up this belief his current system will come good this season…

I feel like just stop watching football, there is no fun in it any longer, I spend 90mins just shaking my head and getting angry at what I’m seeing, my mood is black for hours afterwards.

I was chatting to the misses after last night as she looked at me and was like ffs they lost again… My explanation of why it gets to me so much is because they made us fucking believe… When we were shit and trying to get into the top 4 if we failed it was like well yeah this is us now… But Jurgen took us on his magical journey, he turned me from a doubter to a believer, why let us believe for 2 seasons and then bring us crashing down to earth with a fucking fury of doom… It’s soul destroying… This is the same team primarily, it’s the same front 3, thats what eats at me, we’ve seen them be worldclass, to see this level just bewilders me. I don’t get it…

I feel he and the team are now letting us down… They have gone soft, their mentality is weak, where has the edge gone? We can’t be there to spur them on that extra 1%, we can’t lift them. I get the world is a shit place, but it is for all of us as well, and we don’t get paid hundreds of thousands of pounds… Instead of them digging a little deeper, they are making excuses… Far too many are falling short.

They all need to step up.

P.s. I could probably have gone through the team… Gini/Mane etc. And point out how they are underperforming, but I chose the ones who I feel let down most by.

P.p.s. Fucking hell Bobby I loved you… You are breaking my heart literally.

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I don’t think it’s up to Klopp the players seem to have decided.

@Draexnael That was a very long post can you highlight your main points in a Flobs friendly form (about 3 words for each point) please. :wink:

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Stop making excuses,
Change our tactics,
Drop under-performing players,
Fight for the shirt.

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