On Jürgen Klopp

I still can't believe Jürgen Klopp is about to become Liverpool's manager, with a press conference scheduled for 10AM BST on Friday.

This feels different. And not just because it's the first time that we've seen overwhelming optimism from the fan base for the first time since 2013-14 ended. The last year has been dreary and dire. Jürgen Klopp does not do dreary nor dire.

Jürgen Klopp comes with a reputation. He is a winner. His teams are fun to watch. He is iconoclastic and idiosyncratic: an oversized, outgoing, quote machine personality who should immediately mesh with Liverpool's base.

In retrospect, the thought process which led to Brendan Rodgers named manager was similar to that which led to the signings of Origi, Luis Alberto, Ilori, Can, Markovic, etc. All those "committee" signings. A high-risk, high-reward youngster. They've never proven it at the highest level, they're comparatively inexperienced, but there's room for growth. If it works out, Liverpool exploited an inefficiency in the market. If it doesn't, well, at least they didn't waste an egregious amount of resources, I guess.

Jürgen Klopp is an actual proven commodity, an innovator, one of the top 10 managers in the world. Two-time Bundesliga winner, three-time German Supercup winner, Pokal Cup winner, Champions League runner-up. And those trophies came at a club that had underwhelmed and underperformed prior to his arrival, winning despite a rival with much, much deeper pockets. It's a résumé that reminds of Rafa Benitez.

Let's be honest: Liverpool are incredibly lucky to get him. It took a series of unlikely circumstances for this to fall in place. It took Dortmund falling apart at the exact time that Liverpool did, a necessary end for Klopp's seven-year run. It took Liverpool unable to progress from last season's nadir, made worse by the difficult start to the season. It took a dearth of other attractive jobs, at least for the moment, at least to an "incurable romantic" such as Klopp. It took Klopp wanting a sabbatical over the summer, wanting to manage in the Premier League, and wanting a "project" rather than waltzing into an already set situation. It's a similar series of circumstances which led to the signing of Luis Suarez: the kind of talent Liverpool would love to deal in on a regular basis, but one not possible the majority of the time.

He's never done it in the Premier League? Neither did Benitez or Houllier. But they came with renown, with honest-to-goodness European pedigree. You know who had managed in the Premier League? Hodgson and Rodgers. I apologize for putting Brendan in the same sentence as Roy, but experience in England is obviously not a guarantee for success, with managers or transfer deals.

There's no guarantee of success here either – if you can ever guarantee success, please immediately call Ian Ayre or John Henry – but still, it's seemingly Suarez or Torres rather than Carroll or Benteke. It's Benitez, it's Houllier; it's not Hodgson or Rodgers. Liverpool, by hook or by crook, are shopping in a store they can't usually afford.

In their heyday, Klopp's Dortmund were the football hipster's darlings. Gegenpressing – literally, "counter pressing" – became a word that English speakers actually know, and not just because compound German words are more fun. You'll want to read this, from Spielverlagerung. There are, unsurprisingly, a number of outstanding articles about Klopp's Dortmund, articulating his tactics far better than I can. Just searching Klopp's name on Spielverlagerung is a good start. So are these:

• Two interviews in The Guardian, from May 2013 and November 2013
• This video from BBC Football Focus
• Searching Zonal Marking for old Dortmund match reviews
• We Are Hooligans: Analyzing Jurgen Klopp's Tactics At Borussia Dortmund
• Michael Caley on how gegenpressing made the Bundesliga the fastest league in the world

Curiously, Klopp's preferred formation while at Dortmund – at least for the majority of his tenure, at least with his best sides – was 4-2-3-1. Otherwise known as the formation that Brendan Rodgers' Liverpool struggled the most with.

What's most important isn't the formation. It's the ability to counter-press; it's quick, vertical attacking transitions; it's getting the best players on the field. Klopp isn't dogmatic about the 4-2-3-1 – Spielverlagerung's tactical analysis of last season's Pokal semifinal against Bayern highlights Dortmund's use of a 4-3-3/4-Diamond-2 hybrid, a formation seen a fair amount last season because of the respective talents of Reus, Aubamenyang, and Kagawa – but it's still his favored deployment.



I have two questions. Well, more than two, but two big ones: the striker situation and the composition of the midfield.

When everyone's available, Liverpool's squad seemingly demands two strikers, whether it's Sturridge, Benteke, or Ings. Does that mean one of Sturridge or Ings will play from the flank? In the hole? Will Benteke be the odd man out in a heavy pressing system? Or will Klopp change: 4-4-2. 4-2-2-2, 4-Diamond-2? Klopp's Dortmund used those formations at times, mostly in his last two seasons, albeit not on a regular basis.

And who's going to be the central midfield pairing? This, admittedly, is a question that dogged Rodgers since the beginning of last season, because no two-man pairing as stood out. Liverpool pretty much had to play two midfielders ahead of a single holder, or a diamond, or three at the back to function. And even then, it was a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. I suspect Henderson and Allen will eventually win out. Jordan Henderson is, hands down, Liverpool's best midfielder, and almost certainly will remain captain. Joe Allen, perpetually underrated by Liverpool fans, seems to fit Klopp's style. Sure, he doesn't stand out in any area, but he can press, pass, run, and hold to decent effect; after Henderson, he's Liverpool's most well-rounded midfielder. But Emre Can should see much more time in the middle. Lucas remains Liverpool's best defensive midfielder. Your guess is as good as mine.

Also, spare a thought for James Milner, signed this summer because of Brendan Rodgers, because he wanted to play more as an orthodox central midfielder. Welp. I wouldn't be surprised if he's back to being a versatile jack-of-all-trades, mainly used as a right winger, especially once Henderson returns. Can, Allen, and Lucas all seem better suited to playing in the midfield base in whatever formation Klopp chooses, while Milner's work-rate, pressing, and crossing ability would fit on the flank opposite Coutinho, Lallana, or Firmino. Sorry about that, Jimmy.

Regardless, it'll be awhile before we see Klopp's preferred XI, with Henderson out for another six weeks, Firmino and Lovren out for another couple, and questions over Benteke and Coutinho's availability immediately after the international break.

I really wish we'd be able to see it sooner. Because Klopp's first six weeks will be a baptism by fire.

• October 17 - Tottenham (a)
• October 22 - Rubin Kazan (h)
• October 25 - Southampton (h)
• October 28 - Bournemouth (h) [League Cup]
• October 31 - Chelsea (a)
• November 5 - Rubin Kazan (a)
• November 8 - Crystal Palace (h)
• November 21 - Manchester City (a)

Eight matches in little more than a month; two matches a week until the next international break. Matches in three different competitions. Three of Klopp's first four league matches all away, against last season's 5th, 1st, and 2nd place sides, with a dangerous Southampton at home the fourth.

No one said it was gonna be easy.

Of course, Klopp's not here for six weeks. He's here for the next three years – we hope, at least. Klopp's methods, especially synchronized pressing and quick attacking transitions, take time on the training pitch, and Liverpool is not going to have a lot of training time over the next couple of months. Dortmund improved in Klopp's first season – one with a full preseason – but it was a 13th-to-6th improvement. Then fifth. Then the two consecutive Bundesliga titles.

Top 4 remains the goal this season, and this change was made early enough to ensure it's a still possible goal, but after a managerial change, anything tangible reward this season seems a bonus. And yes, Liverpool's fixture list looks a lot better starting in December, giving Liverpool more than enough time to push towards fourth in this goofy, messed up league as long as they at least survive the next month.

It's going to be an interesting ride. Buckle up, sports fans, it's about to get fun. We've been missing fun for far too long.

On Brendan Rodgers

Rodgers' appointment is imminent according to the BBC and Liverpool Echo, although we're still waiting for confirmation from the club.

Biography Snapshot
Born: 26 January 1973, Carnlough, Northern Ireland
Teams Managed: Swansea (July 2010 - May 2012), Reading (June 2009 - December 2009), Watford (November 2008 - June 2009)
Career Record: 151 matches (62W-33D-56L)

We might as well get the feared, loaded question out of the way up front. Is Brendan Rodgers the new flavor of the month?

There's no comparison – whether in tactics, personality, résumé, or otherwise – to the last time Liverpool hired a flavor of the month. But could Rodgers end up as this season's Owen Coyle?

No matter who FSG chose to replace Dalglish, it would have been a gamble. Martinez? Almost as inexperienced, although Rodgers has a "big club" background due to his time with Mourinho's Chelsea. Villas-Boas spectacularly failed in his last job, and was seemingly ruled out earlier in the process. The fans' choice, Rafa Benitez, was a non-starter; FSG had already been burned by reaching backwards, although Hodgson's inability to do anything right forced their hand in regards to Dalglish. They weren't going to make that mistake again, especially considering the baggage Benitez carries with a distinct segment of Liverpool fans and the British press, as well as his renowned demand for total control. Guardiola, Klopp? Not interested. Capello? Another who'd probably demand more control than FSG were willing to give and with little room for growth given his long CV.

It appears that the choice came down to Martinez or Rodgers. Two of the youngest managers in the league, one who's been in the league for just one season, the other who's never finished above 15th in his three top-tier seasons. FSG are obviously building with the long-term in mind.

Rodgers, unlike Martinez, has a preferred system. His sides play 4-3-3. Martinez's Wigan played every variation of 4-5-1 under the sun in addition to the much-written-about 3-4-3, with varying levels of success. Rodgers' Swansea side used the same formula in nearly every fixture this season: a moderately high defensive line focused on short passes and building from the back, three central midfielders, two fleet-footed wingers-cum-forwards, and a central striker.

Sure, call it 4-2-3-1 if you want – that often what Swansea looked like without the ball, Allen got forward from midfield more than Gower or Britton, and Dyer and Sinclair were as much wingers as wide forwards. Unlike other 4-2-3-1s, even when Allen got forward, he looked more a part of the central midfield than one of the attackers. This probably wouldn't be Rafa Benitez's 4-2-3-1, the style still used to define that formation in most Liverpool fans' minds.

More important than the formation are the ideas behind it. Rodgers, whose managerial lineage traces directly back to Jose Mourinho, is clearly a devotee of Barcelona and Spain's tiki-taka football – mentioned in almost anything written about Rodgers' Swansea and excellently summarized by the first half of this blog post. Two recent interviews are required reading: from the Telegraph in January and the Guardian prior to the May meeting with Liverpool, which are the sources of his subsequent quotes.

“I like to control games. I like to be responsible for our own destiny. If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game. For me it is quite logical. It doesn’t matter how big or small you are, if you don’t have the ball you can’t score.”

For fans reared by Benitez's Liverpool, this is a comforting quote. His Liverpool sides also dictated possession, albeit using different means. Swansea were often more ponderous in possession, but Swansea's players were almost totally Premiership novices. As Who Scored wrote soon after the news broke, only Barca (88.5%), Bayern (86.3%), and Manchester City (85.9%) had a better pass success rate in the top 5 leagues this season than Swansea's 85.7%.

It's self-serving to link my own earlier work, but the frustration over how Rodgers' Swansea stifled Liverpool in both meetings still oozes from the screen. And Liverpool weren't the only side to succumb to Swansea in such disheartening manner.

“My template for everything is organisation. With the ball you have to know the movement patterns, the rotation, the fluidity and positioning of the team. Then there’s our defensive organisation. So if it is not going well we have a default mechanism which makes us hard to beat and we can pass our way into the game again. Rest with the ball. Then we’ll build again."

And there's the Mourinho heritage. Organization, movement patterns, positioning. Not quite a rigid chessboard, but definable routines. I doubt it's coincidence that FSG refused Steve Clarke's resignation after Dalglish's sacking. Clarke worked with Rodgers under Mourinho, with Rodgers crediting Clarke for bringing him to Chelsea.

"I believe if you give a bad player time, he can play. If you give a good player time, he can kill you. So our emphasis is based around our positioning both with and without the ball. And for us, when we press well, we pass well."

Liverpool gave plenty of bad players time to kill them this season, whether by standing off in the final third or in refusing to press when the opposition reclaimed possession. Brendan Rodgers' sides rarely fail to do either.

"You work on zonal pressure, so that when it is in your zone, you have the capacity to press. That ability to press immediately, within five or six seconds to get the ball, is important. But you also have to understand when you can't and what the triggers are then to go for it again because you can't run about like a madman.

"It's decision-making and intelligence. And this was always the thing with the British player, they were always deemed never to be intelligent, not to have good decision-making skills but could fight like hell for the ball. I believe they have all of the [attributes] and, if you can structure that, then you can have real, effective results."

Liverpool also had a problem with a lack of intelligence from some of its British players, especially those acquired in the last 18 months, but the less said about that, the better. I suspect training, something that Rodgers takes full part in, will be an interesting place for the next few months. The Guardian interview, which is where that previous quote came from, is a priceless insight into how Rodgers sees and runs training sessions, and fits totally into the predominant belief that Liverpool are looking for a head coach rather than an all-consuming manager.

“When we have the football everybody’s a player. The difference with us is that when we have the ball we play with 11 men, other teams play with 10 and a goalkeeper.”

That should be music to Pepe Reina's ears. Reina's distribution (and overall form) suffered under both Hodgson and Dalglish, for various reasons. Liverpool's increasingly deep defense – whether Carragher started or not – almost assuredly hindered his talents. Returning to the 'sweeper-keeper' role he thrived in during Benitez's reign will hopefully see Reina's reclaim his place as one of the best goalkeepers in the league.

It's not incredibly difficult to see Rodgers' Swansea grafted onto Liverpool.



Short passes from the central defenders, building the attack from the back. Rodgers' Swansea never pressed as fervently as Barcelona, nor did the back four play as high a line – few, if any, do – but those are still predominant traits. Agger, Skrtel, Johnson, and Enrique should all do well in this system.

It'd be a fairly typical "runner, creator, destroyer" troika in central midfield, although the runner is usually the furthest-forward, with the two deeper central midfielders as deep-lying playmaker and holding tackler, although both midfielders need to have the ability to do both. Gerrard and Henderson can play as the most-advanced midfielder or both can play as the more-creative of the two deeper. Adam and Gower – Swansea's chance creation machine – could be similar in a deep-lying playmaker role, while Lucas is a vastly superior version of Leon Britton. As hinted at in the above formation diagram, after writing him off for the past two seasons, Aquilani could well find himself back in Liverpool's plans; a player who could star in Rodgers' system.

For Swansea, Sinclair cut inside from the left while Dyer or Routledge stretched play on the right. We could see a reversal of that with the disappointing Downing as an orthodox winger on the left and Suarez wreaking roaming havoc from the other side. The Uruguayan has played as a wide forward for both country and his previous club, and is capable of filling any forward role. Carroll is an archetypal English center-forward, better with the ball at his feet than he's given credit for, although he'd assuredly have to improve his movement and finishing to fit naturally into the system. But that's what training's for, right?

Yes, there are clear holes in Liverpool's version of this set-up, most notably in central midfield and up front. Which are obviously priority areas no matter the formation. There are clear holes in Liverpool's squad regardless of the set-up, as painfully proven during the duration of the previous campaign. I thought a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 formation was the way forward last summer, and I still think similar now. But this is predominantly a conversation for another day. We've got all summer to fret about summer spending.

We still don't know the overall set-up of the club going forward. The Van Gaal (who was one of Mourinho's mentors) as Director of Football rumors seem to have slowly faded away, but whether that means Pep Segura and Rodolfo Borrell will split Technical Director duties with Ayre in charge of the purse-strings, whether Van Gaal's still in the frame, or whether Rodgers will have a closer-to-usual Premier League manager power over his domain remains to be seen. I suspect it'll be the former, but I won't pretend to have any inside insight either.

Regardless of the set-up, this appointment needs to be given time and backing. You can't overhaul the structure and appoint a young manager while expecting immediate results. Expectations were too high in each of the last three seasons, and Benitez, Hodgson, and Dalglish paid for it. Next season may well be painful. Maybe even as painful as the previous season was, although I both doubt it and certainly hope not. But unless we're forced to suffered through Hodgson-esque perpetual doom and gloom with absolutely no hope of improvement (or even an attempt at improvement), Rodgers will need license to fail before he can succeed.

Two weeks after Dalglish's exit, FSG seems to have gotten their man for their project. A young manager, more a head coach than club Godfather, who will develop alongside his increasingly younger squad. Even if we're unconvinced by or unhappy with the choice – which I'm not – this project needs to be given full patience for every chance at success.

EXCLUSIVE!!!!1! LFC MANAGER SEARCH PROCESS REVEALED

I hate this summer, these owners, and Purslow so much. This is why I keep doing World Cup match reviews, and why there have been few posts about Liverpool. Because there's been no news from Liverpool – just obfuscation, smokescreens, and unfulfilled promises.

It's Dalglish. No, it's Hodgson. No, it's Pelligrini. No, it's Hodgson. No, wait, we're after Rijkaard or Deschamps, we promise. Ugh.

Wake me up in August.

Who's Next?

I reckon it's safe to contemplate who I'd like to replace Rafa. Something I never thought I'd end up doing. This isn't a true wish list; I'm trying to be realistic with these three names, but I'm still probably aiming too high. Writing about anything Liverpool these days is not helped by my natural pessimism. Nonetheless, I've seen all three mooted at some point by actual media outlets over the last few days. Of course, we've also seen the likes of O'Neill (sigh), Hughes (Manc), Redknapp (S*n columnist), and Eriksson (please kill me) similarly mentioned.

So anyway. I'd go for one of Manuel Pellegrini, Michael Laudrup, or Slaven Bilic.

Pellegrini's record at Villarreal and Madrid speaks for itself. Villarreal's a tiny club that only became a La Liga fixture in the last ten years. Now they routinely finish in the top half. In Pellegrini's first season, they finished third, qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in the club's history. The next season, they narrowly lost to Arsenal in the semi-finals of the competition after beating Benfica (who ultimately knocked out defending champions Liverpool), Rangers, and Inter. The club never finished lower than seventh under Pellegrini (3rd, 7th, 5th, 2nd, 5th). Then came Perez and Madrid. I'm sure I don't have to go over last season in La Liga – one Sid Lowe rightfully called "fucking barbaric." Despite leading Real to its highest points total ever, he was fired a few weeks ago. Finishing second and going out of the CL in the first knockout round (as usual) just won't satisfy Florentino (are you listening, Mourinho?).

Laudrup was a brilliant player, schooled in the Ajax academy, who did surprisingly well with Getafe only to resign after one season. He doesn't have a ton of experience, but his teams played aesthetically-pleasing attacking football – something many Liverpool fans are clamoring for. It's also worth noting he played a key part in Agger's development while at Brøndby. But he spent less than a year in his last two jobs – Getafe and Spartak Moscow – and hasn't taken a new gig since being sacked by Spartak in April 2009. Which is weird.

And Bilic, despite being a shade over 40 with a short resumé (as well as a former Evertonian), is a personal favorite of mine, simply for being outrageous. A man who sent England into hysterics during Euro 2008 qualification while chain-smoking on the sidelines is a man after my own heart. Plus, it's not as if the blue half of Merseyside remembers his playing days fondly. The Liverpool job, even with the situation the club's in, is probably too much too soon for Slaven, but I've got a soft spot for the psycho. He has a tremendous record with Croatia, and I'm almost positive his contract runs out after the World Cup. Compensation prices matter, which is why I'm contemplating three men Liverpool wouldn't have to pay for.

Obviously, I like my foreign managers more than the Brits on offer. But if we're limited to them Isles, I'd plump for Roy Hodgson. Which is ultimately what I expect to happen. That and I still question why any of the above three – let alone "bigger" names – would take the job when it's seemingly a semi-permanent one.

Once again, the sooner Hicks and Gillett sell up, the better.