Liverpool's slump: a story of burnt-out brilliance and the need to go again | Barney Ronay

The story of Liverpool FC’s wild, thrillingly committed Premier League collapse has been told mainly in numbers so far. And to good effect. Deprived of crowds, staging or a wider emotional palette, that basic outline – 38 points down on last year; 68 home games unbeaten versus six defeats in six – has captured the starkness of a complete sporting immolation. This is a train that has simply stopped.

Better to burn out than fade away, and it has to be said no one has ever won and then lost the Premier League title quite like this. It is easy to forget that 14 games and nine wins into the current season Liverpool were five points clear at the top of the table.

After which, the meltdown. The next 14 have brought three wins and eight losses. Thirty-six goals in the first 14 games has shrunk to just 11 in the second. Jordan Henderson hadn’t lost in the league at Anfield since January 2017. In February he played in three defeats in three weeks. What kind of team does this? And more to the point, why?

Over time the wider details of exactly what happened here will emerge. Our 12-volume Warren report awaits. What we have so far are ground-zero stills, our own live rolling Zapruder footage.

One thing does stand out. A brilliant team built out of Jürgen Klopp’s own restless energy have come to resemble a band of hollow men limping from stage to stage, but the manager has been more or less silent on the causes. Instead he has looked uneasy, an ancient mariner stalking the fringes – a little haunted and hollow-eyed, but passing for now on the discharge of blame. This is significant in its own right. Klopp analyses, and overanalyses. He will have his own very clear version of events. But right now he just isn’t telling.

Jürgen Klopp is not inclined to cast blame on others in order to preserve his own reputation.



Jürgen Klopp is not inclined to cast blame on others in order to preserve his own reputation. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

With good reason, too. Not just because Klopp is a fundamentally decent man, not naturally inclined to burn it all down in the hope of preserving his own reputation. But this is also a story that points into some difficult areas. It has been tempting to look for intangible causes, some kind of dark magic at play. In dank corners of the internet it has been suggested that ending that 30-year wait for a title has brought its own ill wind, strange humours, some kind of avenging emotional payback.

In reality this has been a matter of structure and planning, of cause and effect. This was always a project built on the finest margins, a pared-back punkish setup, a team built to play in a way that would eventually stretch them to the edge of their own capacities. Not to mention a team built to feed on the synergy with their home crowd, and to chase the grail of another league title. What happens when both those things are wiped away at a stroke?

This is why Klopp gets a pass here. What this season’s collapse tells us is that this model has built-in limits and brutally fine margins for error. In many ways it casts an even more favourable light on Klopp’s achievement in building that team in the first place.

To get the clearest view it is worth going back to where this began. Klopp’s team found their definitive shape in the spring of 2018, not long after the departure of Philippe Coutinho and the arrival of Virgil van Dijk. That February Liverpool went to Porto and won 5-0, a giddy, gleeful kind of game where suddenly the front three, the full-backs, the midfield axis were all in place and it all looked thrillingly slick, a team fizzing with possibilities. A month later Mohamed Salah scored four in the 5-0 defeat of Watford. A month after that Liverpool went 3-0 up in half an hour against Manchester City, the acme of that attacking blitz style.

From there a 97-point league season in 2018-19, with the Champions League won, bled straight into the title-winning year. A peak arrived with the World Club Cup victory and the breathless return, crown slung over one shoulder, to thrash Leicester City 4-0 just after Christmas. This was a team playing with a kind of light around them.

James Milner is congratulated after scoring at Leicester



Liverpool at their peak: James Milner is congratulated after scoring at Leicester in the swaggering 4-0 win at Leicester on Boxing Day 2019. Photograph: PA Wire/PA

The real stutters and stumbles arrived just after Christmas this season. Injuries were the catalyst. The real issue is the lack of cover, those fine margins again. Liverpool began the season with three battle-hardened centre-backs, two of them prone to injury. Most teams at their level have four, or in Manchester City’s case six. Even Arsenal have five. What happens when your own three are suddenly unavailable?

This is where Klopp blinked, where he will draw criticism for dismantling his champion midfield to fix his defence. What could he have done differently? Klopp saw the future in the draws against West Brom and Newcastle, in the FA Cup defeat by Manchester United when Rhys Williams, a non-league footballer the year before, was traumatised by Marcus Rashford. He was right to be spooked.

The truth was out. Liverpool’s replacements are a very obvious step down. These are not players ready to chase the best in Europe. No planning, no succession had been laid down. Eight out of 10 starting outfield players in the 2018 Champions League final are still in Liverpool’s best team now. With Henderson and Fabinho jiggled into the centre-back roles, with Diogo Jota injured – a rare high-grade reinforcement – there was nowhere to go, no room to wriggle.

The bizarro world arrived at the start of February with the current run of six defeats in seven league games. Klopp may be keeping his counsel, bruised by events beyond football, a little sad and tender on his touchline, with the sense that someone has shaved Aslan’s mane. But the peaks of the last two years are not diminished by this.

The opposite in fact. An unspoken truth about Klopp’s title-winning Liverpool is that they don’t contain many obviously great individuals. Only three players in the squad – Van Dijk, Salah and Alisson – possess the kind of galáctico chops that might make them standalone stars at one of Europe’s mega-clubs. This is instead a feat of high-end coaching, shared commitment and a system perfectly geared to these parts. Very good footballers have been encouraged to reach out into the far limits of their talent. But the system also requires rest and reinforcement to sustain its levels. Neither of these came.

Last season Van Dijk, Roberto Firmino and Trent Alexander-Arnold played in every league game. Georginio Wijnaldum played 37, Andrew Robertson 36, Sadio Mané 35, Salah 34. The entire first XI played at least 10 midweek games. The same happened the year before – and this in a team where the tempo is always superheated. Opponents found being on a pitch with those red shirts a horribly draining experience. Liverpool had to be Liverpool every week.

Despair for Naby Keïta and teammates as Liverpool lose to Fulham. A relatively callow squad have struggled this season.



Despair for Naby Keïta and teammates as Liverpool lose to Fulham. A relatively callow squad have struggled this season. Photograph: Matt West/BPI/Shutterstock

Signings have been made in moments of need. But the fact remains Liverpool have spent £12m net in the past two seasons. Net spend on transfer fees – not wages and bonuses – in the last four years is £60m. This is excellent business. But it isn’t a recipe for resilience. In the long term you need more space to fail.

Pep Guardiola has regeared his team brilliantly. He also has the resources to do this, because City spend around £100m net on new players every year, with the freedom to buy the ones you want, not just the ones you need because the red light that says panic is flashing.

The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.

And so we have this, a fine-margins project that reached a rare pitch because of the brilliance of the system, the first XI, the shared energy from the stands. But which has in the past 14 league games found its own edges. This can hardly come as shock to Liverpool’s owners, or indeed to Klopp. The refusal to gorge in the good times, to splurge on Timo Werner, is not neglect or poor husbandry. This is hard-nosed financial management. Assets will be sweated. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There will be no waste, no sop to chasing glory. If the team burn themselves out while creating one glorious, low-cost brand-burnishing mini-era, well so be it.

Plus, of course, that first XI is still on site. There was a glimpse of that power with Fabinho returned to midfield against RB Leipzig in midweek. The pieces could quite easily fall into their slots once again, the tempo resurrect itself, the habit of winning replace the habit of losing. But there can be no illusions now over what Klopp achieved with that high-functioning, high-wire group of fellow travellers; or what will be required to build it again.

source: theguardian.com