Chapter From Neil Atkinson's Barnstorming 'Transformer'

Exclusive excerpt (free read)

If George Sephton is the voice of Anfield, then Neil Atkinson is the charismatic voice of Liverpool.

His excellent new book on Jürgen Klopp, and the overall impact the German had on the club and the city, is out this Thursday. This is a sample chapter (with a German title!), exclusive to TTT.

(Note: my own less-good but more voluminous abridged anthology of my four Klopp-era books can be bought as a special edition hardback, or far less special ebook here.)

Brief Note from Neil

Thanks to Paul for sending this over to you all on his substack. The book is called Transformer and is about the nine years we shared with Jürgen and shared with each other. Some of it is a rational analysis, some of it is a contextualising of our emotional rollercoaster and some is just a love letter to what we had and what we learned – living in the moment being everything.

This is more of the rational analysis style. How Klopp did the cups and how the cups are now. It seems appropriate to the week. 

Thanks again to Paul. The book is available wherever you get your books. I hope people like it in a way which sort of surprises me.

Man kann nicht auf allen Hochzeiten gleichzeitig tanzen

When Liverpool were still in three competitions, as the winter of 2022 began to turn to spring, Jürgen Klopp made reference to a German phrase in one of his press conferences: ‘Man kann nicht auf allen Hochzeiten gleichzeitig tanzen.’ ‘You can’t dance at all the weddings at the same time.’ In my head this became ‘dance on too many dance- floors’, which is the same thing but neater.

There is a reason no one has ever done the quadruple. Essentially, it boils down to one of these two: a) you need to be perfect and lucky; b) it is impossible. Because no side can be that perfect and that lucky.

In recent years, in different ways, both Liverpool and Manchester City have come close – Liverpool closest in 2022 when a change in two results, or perhaps only 50 minutes of football, would have awarded them a staggering achievement. In 1999 Manchester United did the treble but lost in the quarter-final of the League Cup to the eventual winners Tottenham Hotspur.

There is a very clear hierarchy in terms of how competitions are viewed in English football. The Premier League and the Champions League are the big two. In general, the game is making its peace with other forms of European football as being good, not least because of the sheer unbridled fun West Ham United and Aston Villa have had recently. Then there is the FA Cup, the primary purpose of which is to make everyone mad that the world has changed since their 11th birthday. Lastly, there is the Carabao Cup, which has become this fabulous tyke of a cup, a Wednesday night out which you enter into knowing it may just be a quick one or an evening which may get out of hand – and before you know it it’s shooters at 1.15 a.m. despite (or perhaps because of) work in the morning.

The way sides prioritise the cup competitions is a source of constant ire and debate. Some feel the bigger sides take the early rounds too lightly. Others feel they take them too seriously – it’s the league and the Champions League that should be the priority. But this stretches down the division and even into the EFL now. The nature of football is that few league games can be written off: in January everyone has something to play for. Even if that is nothing to play for.

My view for Liverpool is very much that the league and the Champions League should be the priority. I am in camp two. But, increasingly, I am in neither camp, out of sheer pragmatism: there is no longer any need for camps because of the reality of the way football now is. The sheer pragmatism thing is that sides that play European football build squads capable of playing European football and Premier League football at the same time. Therefore, those sides have somewhere between 16 and 25 brilliant and/or multi-functional players. And they are increasingly experienced. A key reason Manchester City make the late stages of domestic cups is that they have brilliant players used to doing it. It has become part of the rhythm. What that means in prac- tice is that the bigger clubs progress, unless they meet a top ten Premier League club, probably away.

The old-school idea that a Premier League side doesn’t like it up ’em has simply disappeared (for the most part). In 2023–24 Newcastle went to Sunderland and physically dominated them. Newcastle are an extreme example, but the Premier League is a remarkably intense league: game after game, on top of all the technical ability. Throughout his time at Liverpool Klopp’s principles around the domestic cups demonstrated such thinking. He had no interest in seeing a side embarrassed in the early stages of a cup; he wouldn’t send a Liverpool side out that he didn’t think could compete – but he also used those games as opportunities to rest, rotate and, crucially, get some game time into his squad players. He wasn’t desperate to win but was comfortable picking a team he thought would. We could see that from his selections against Everton in January 2019, when he was comfortable to trust Adam Lallana to bring it home, and the differ- ence in his selections from Arsenal away and Norwich City at home in 2024 when he started ten who looked first XI(ish) against Arsenal in the third round but was prepared to have a look at 18-year-old James McConnell in the fourth round.

As Liverpool’s squad improved under his tenure this meant in prac- tice that Liverpool were likelier to progress. The 2021–22 squad was probably the greatest Liverpool FC have ever had: by the February Liverpool’s sixth- and seventh-choice forward options were Takumi Minamino and Divock Origi, the former very good, the latter a strong candidate for greatest living Liverpudlian. Liverpool’s reality shifted, and they began to be in a position where they were going to get invited to a load of weddings.

A pattern became clear:

• 2015–16: lose the Carabao Cup final to Man City; lose in an FA Cup fourth-round replay to West Ham United away.

• 2016–17: lose in the Carabao Cup semi-final (over two legs) to Southampton.

• 2017–18: lose in the Carabao Cup third round to Leicester City away.

• 2018–19: lose in the Carabao Cup third round to Chelsea at Anfield; lose to Wolves in the FA Cup third round away.

• 2019–20: lose in the FA Cup fifth round away at Chelsea.

• 2020–21: can’t remember. Who knows? Not even written down anywhere.

• 2021–22: Win both domestic cups. Nearly get embarrassed against Leicester in the Carabao quarter-final; play Norwich a lot.

• 2022–23: lose in the Carabao Cup fourth round to Man City away; lose to Brighton in the FA Cup fourth round away.

• 2023–24: win the Carabao Cup; lose to Manchester United away in the FA Cup.

There are four oddities in terms of Klopp’s behaviour and the outcome. The first two are the fourth-round FA Cup games at Anfield in 2017 and 2018 (the former against Wolves, the latter against West Bromwich Albion). Wolves were a side about to finish 15th in the Championship (they won the Championship the following season, after a takeover) and Liverpool went really weak and walked into one trying to save it from the bench. In 2018 Liverpool went so strong against West Brom you wouldn’t believe it. Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino and Mo Salah all started, as did Virgil van Dijk. It was the first game at Anfield with VAR, and it was an absolute mess. I watched it in a nightclub in Dublin without sound and on a projector where the score was outside the projected image. We didn’t know what the score was for long stretches, and Liverpool didn’t seem to either. It was a mess. The other two already discussed oddities are Liverpool’s games against Aston Villa and Shrewsbury Town in 2019–20 when they were weakened to the point of a youth team. Villa whacked them; Shrewsbury remains one of the all-time great nights of our lives.

Because in 2021–22 and, to a lesser extent, 2023–24, Liverpool were involved in all the cup competitions, the suspicion was that something had changed. Liverpool were trying to dance at too many weddings. They risked the big two for the lot and lost them both. This could be reasonable – after all, we don’t get to see the road not travelled. They did have to play three more Carabao Cup games and one more FA Cup game than Manchester City in 2021–22, and in 2023–24 Arsenal definitely benefited from losing away at West Ham in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup and to Liverpool in the third round of the FA Cup.

It is worth emphasising that Mikel Arteta treated those two games exactly as Klopp would have done, picking nine of his ten outfield starters against Liverpool and rotating good squad players in against West Ham.

This kills the debate – if you are Liverpool, Manchester City or Arsenal, or indeed any of the sides in the top eight. Unless you send a youth team out to be whacked, as Liverpool did against Aston Villa in 2019, unless you overlook squad players who aren’t getting starts in league games and go one rung down (which for squad harmony you shouldn’t and can’t), you are almost certainly going to progress until you hit a good side away. Your camp in the debate no longer matters.

You can also think more than one thing at once. The Carabao Cup wins against Chelsea in 2022 and 2024 are among my favourite ever days supporting Liverpool. They were incredible – 2022 because we never got to be in a ground in 2020 for the league, and 2024 . . . well, read on.

But I would give them both up for a 10 per cent greater chance of having won a 20th title under Klopp. Being in those moments in that stadium, watching Virgil van Dijk dance to The Real Thing with a trophy in 2022 or hugging Sky Sports’s Harriet Prior as she sobbed uncontrollably in 2024 (Virg and H – the big two) are such special memories. However, one more title would have meant days of dancing to The Real Thing and weeks of sobbing.

So, no: you can’t dance at all the weddings at the same time.

Not all weddings are created equal.

But, done right, all weddings are good and special and all weddings should be danced at. And, most of all: there are people/Evertonians who would give limbs to be invited to half as many weddings.