When Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool visit Arsenal on Sunday, they can be forgiven for reminiscing, for seeing in their hosts a bittersweet reminder of their younger selves. Fresh, hungry, fearless, brimming with ambition, sold on their manager’s vision and emboldened by the returns on that investment.
Currently, it must all seem a very long time ago.
While Mikel Arteta has been in charge of Arsenal for almost three years and finally has a team forged in his image, tomorrow sees the seventh anniversary of Klopp’s arrival at Anfield and present circumstances mean the celebrations may be a little muted.
Despite the considerable success the German has enjoyed on Merseyside – a first league title in 30 years to go with a sixth European Cup, an FA Cup and League Cup – a spell which has seen the club establish itself as perennial trophy challengers at home and abroad, right now Klopp’s team find themselves mired in mid-table. They have a leaky defence, misfiring attack and serious questions about their future direction.
After reaching an inflection point over the summer, both club and manager find themselves in uncharted territory.
Klopp spent seven-and-a-half years at Mainz, his first job in management, and seven seasons at Borussia Dortmund, his second post. If the German sees seven years as the natural shelf life of a managerial reign, his time in charge at Anfield would likely have expired at the end of last season.
Instead, Klopp decided to stick around, signing a contract extension until 2026, and embarking on a course of action designed to partially rebuild and rejuvenate his team while remaining competitive.
Klopp and the club made important, far-reaching decisions on two of the most influential players of his Anfield reign, allowing Sadio Mane to leave for Bayern Munich while reaching agreement with Mohamed Salah on a lucrative new contract.
With the Egyptian now tied up until the summer of 2025, when he will turn 33, Liverpool have elsewhere moved to rejuvenate their forward line with the arrivals of Luis Diaz, 25, and 23-year-old Darwin Nunez. While the former, signed from Porto for around £38million in January, made an immediate impact, Nunez – who joined from Benfica in the summer for around £65m – has found it harder to impress.
In midfield, Klopp has sprinkled some youth into the mix with 20-year-old Fabio Carvalho arriving from Fulham, while his former Cottagers club-mate Harvey Elliott, still only 19, continues to develop into one of Liverpool’s key players.
But, despite an over-reliance on 30-somethings Jordan Henderson and James Milner, and continuing concerns surrounding the fitness of Thiago Alcantara, 31, Klopp refused to pull the trigger on a mega deal in the summer with his primary targets – reported to include Dortmund’s Jude Bellingham – unavailable.
At the back, injury has deprived Liverpool of last summer’s big defensive signing, Ibrahima Konate, and Andy Robertson.
But it is reliability rather than availability which has proved Klopp’s greatest concern with Virgil van Dijk no longer the figure of invincibility he resembled before suffering a serious knee injury almost exactly two years ago and Trent Alexander-Arnold continuing to display the defensive fragility which has seemingly jeopardised his place in England’s World Cup squad.
Liverpool in 2022 are a team of new players yet to realise their full potential and established players not currently performing to their expected levels.
The result is disjointed displays, sub-standard results, a place in mid-table and a malaise not seen since a wave of injuries shattered the club’s Premier League title defence two years ago.
As left-back Kostas Tsimikas put it before the morale-boosting Champions League win over Rangers on Tuesday: ‘It is a bad moment. It is not a tactical issue or something because we do exactly the same thing like the previous years, with the same players.
‘It’s not possible that everybody forgets the tactics and game-plan of the manager.’
Against Rangers, the game-plan was slightly different, with a 4-2-3-1 formation which featured an extra attacker and yet still managed to afford more protection at the back.
The opposition may have been modest but Klopp will take positive results wherever he can get them right now.
‘It was a really good defensive performance in a new structure and offensively, we created an awful lot,’ he said.
‘Trent has no defensive problem. We had a defensive problem – hopefully “had”.’
The win over Rangers was as vital for the club’s peace of mind as it was their prospects in the European Cup. If confidence returns, Klopp believes, things can quickly improve.
‘It is the same job I had in the time when you win 10 or 12 games in a row, you have to stay on top of it and work on the details. That is what we do now, just with a different confidence level,’ he said pre-match.
‘In a time when you win a lot of games usually not everything is going your way but there is no impact – we may have made a mistake but no one has it in their mind. That is different in the moment.
‘We have to increase the amount of good moments and decrease the amount of not-so-good moments until you can make mistakes again and they are not as impactful as they are at the moment.’
If not, Klopp may find himself looking back to a time earlier this year when he decided to stick rather than twist and regard it as a not-so-good moment.
MORE : Jurgen Klopp praises five Arsenal players before Liverpool showdown
MORE : Jamie Carragher compares William Saliba to Liverpool star Virgil van Dijk
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