Replacing Klopp? Replacing Ferguson and Wenger Was Easier Than Man United or Arsenal Made it

United and Arsenal made really stupid decisions

Has it sunk in yet?

Make no mistake – I will make the most of the remainder of the glorious Jürgen Klopp tenure, and seek to enjoy the quest for four trophies (and just the fun of football).

But the more I think about it, the more it feels like Liverpool have to have plans in place. Especially after announcing the summer departures of so many other members of staff.

If I were Mike Gordon and/or Billy Hogan in November when Klopp broke the news to the club, I’d have been on the phone to either or both of Michael Edwards and Julian Ward, who would be the best unattached consultants at the time.

No one knows the players, the structure of the club, the ideas, the personnel, better than those two.

And with Klopp going, either could come back, to return the club to the old transfer model, the movement away from which partially led to their taking their own breaks, as things grew fraught behind the scenes. At the very least, I’d be asking them for opinions.

Whether they would be consulted on a new Director of Football or be in line to return themselves, I’d have been picking their brains. No way do Liverpool and FSG wait three months to begin the process, when they knew back then. Backchannel approaches would be underway, just nothing public.

The interim DoF, Jörg Schmadtke, was more of a transfer specialist with links to Klopp; not a strategist. He was put in place to appease Klopp, and to help rebuild the midfield this summer, which he did.

But Liverpool could not easily appoint a new DoF while Klopp wanted more control of transfers (as was his right after becoming the driving force of the club), nor could they reappoint their ex-DoFs as things stood, given the reason they left in the first place.

And even now, they may not be in the frame; but if they’re out of work and have had their periods away from the pressure, why not?

You’d think plans would be well underway in order to go public on Klopp standing down at the end of the season, and my guess is that announcing it makes any potential leaks or stories about approaching someone else seem logical, rather than treason. Imagine if it got out that Liverpool had spoken to a manager and Klopp had not announced his retirement from English football?

(As it is, idiots blame FSG for everything and give them credit for nothing. These people are idiots and trolls, as are those who text the BBC to say that Klopp has underachieved. It’s interesting to note that people this stupid exist, and then we move on and forget them.)

Whether anything can be announced or not is different to what goes on behind the scenes; just as no one knew Fabinho, Luis Díaz, Cody Gakpo and various others were even being pursued until suddenly they were signed.

So as I said, irons must be in the fire. (But god no, no David Moyes.)

Either way, Liverpool can build from a position of strength after the brilliant work Klopp has done in the past year (after a less-good six/nine months after the exhausting quadruple attempt of 2021/22), and rather than panic at the loss of Klopp, take it as a case of making the most of the situation.

While I can never predict results and rarely try, I hope I am pretty good at predicting longer trends. In 2017 I backed Klopp to a lot of Liverpool fans who said that after two years his record was no better than Brendan Rodgers’.

But I could sense the progression. It wasn’t blind faith, but a sense of observations leading to seeing what the league table may not have reflected.

After voicing my concerns early last season, I backed Klopp 100% again once he rejigged the side in February, and I talked a lot in the summer about how much better the younger players would be this season.

This is a sad weekend, but also, a good time to be a Liverpool fan. Imagine being us, eh?

Easier!

Thinking back, it’s easier to replace major figures than people think … as long as you’re not stupid about it.

Similar to replacing Luis Suarez with Mario Balotelli and concluding that you can’t replace that kind of quality, you could always look back to replacing Fernando Torres with Luis Suarez; Ian Rush with John Aldridge, John Barnes and Peter Beardsley; Kevin Keegan with Kenny Dalglish; and even, in a roundabout way, Philippe Coutinho with Virgil van Dijk and Alisson.

(I had massive arguments over the sale of Coutinho with people who told me the club would now never win anything and it showed a lack of ambition. Yeah, you may remember who you are!)

Liverpool did it several times with managers between 1974 and 1986.

A good manager, with the right mentality, should want to follow Jürgen Klopp, not wait to be the one after the one who follows Klopp, which is a cop-out cliché.

Not least because the squad is now set up for both the here-and-now and the future, not in need of an overhaul; we just had that summer of uncertainty, and came through it.

The squad has grown bigger because fringe players have grown up, but are still not at their full potential. The team is not fully knitted together yet as it’s all still new. But the Reds are top of the table, in a cup final and could reach two more. It’s a team on the rise.

You just have to replace Klopp with someone who can handle the pressure and take his work forward; and while it’s too long ago to say another Bob Paisley could follow the Reds’ “latest” Bill Shankly, and times have changed, it showed that continuing the work was key. ‘Fit’ was more important than anything else, and Paisley fit with the ideas in a time before PR was an issue.

Liverpool just need someone with the personality to do so, in the media and new media age.

It won’t be easy, but it shouldn’t be too hard, either. Liverpool are back on their perch right now, and whether they stay there, it’s a great time to be asking someone if they want the job ahead of the summer.

When replacing their long-term legends, United and Arsenal made it too hard.

Quite why Alex Ferguson thought David Moyes was suitable remains a mystery; maybe he saw too much of himself in a fellow dour Scot, but he himself was a far better manager when appointed in the 1980s (winning major trophies against the odds with Aberdeen) than Moyes was in 2013. Ferguson had far more clout by 2013, and grew fearsome in the role at United once over the difficult early stages. Moyes had zero clout.

As I said at the time, Moyes was a middling manager doing a good job on a middling budget, and he reminded me of Roy Hodgson following the beloved (albeit not by all Reds) Rafa Benítez at Liverpool. Safe pairs of middling hands are almost as unsafe as it gets. They take you to mid-table in the blink of an eye.

Moyes was never a good fit for United. His record since has been similar: up and down, but a good corner-shop manager, not a supermarket manager. Good, but unremarkable. Not elite; not even close.

There was also a big problem with Unai Emery replacing Wenger at Arsenal, where Emery, while better than Moyes, was not a Big Club manager, but an overachiever with smaller clubs, and low on charisma. His English was garbled and he cut a slightly awkward figure, as did Moyes, who often had a thousand-yard stare of confusion and fear.

It’s not all about style … but if you lack style, you can seem incompetent, even if you’re not. You project uncertainty.

In hindsight, neither Moyes nor Emery were young, exciting managers, who played thrilling football or who had any ability to cope with the pressure, or communicate passion. They were dour, drab and their football followed suit.

None had any continuity or connection to the club they were joining, with Moyes even going so far as to dismiss the backroom staff Ferguson left him, and duly took Man United down to where his Everton were, just as Hodgson took Liverpool to mid-table.

Emery is the best of these failing Big Club managers, having at least won a meaningful (if 2nd-level) European competition multiple times, and taken teams far in the Champions League. But he was never a manager to take a Big Club to the next level. His level was generally “finish 5th and reach a Europa League final”. That’s impressive but it has to scale, and personality is part of the equation.

He was a dreadful fit for Arsenal, who were stuck in the past with some methods by the time the once-pioneering Wenger overstayed his usefulness by about 5-10 years, and a lot of overpaid prima donnas were on the payroll. It’s not comparable to a rebuilt Liverpool team playing modern football. Emery was unlucky, but also uninspiring.

And I said before Moyes moved to United that he was too uninspiring, but he looked absolutely overawed. The Man United players didn’t respect Moyes. They found him and his training sessions boring. His football was functional. He became a figure of fun.

Ditto the Arsenal players with Emery. He was too details-focused, too intense, and they felt above that. He couldn’t bring perennial Champions League players along for the ride, in the way that he can now bring Villa players, used to mid-table and not so long from the 2nd tier, along for the ride.

West Ham fans remain unconvinced by Moyes, despite winning the new mid-level European competition, which seems his speed. He’s doing a good job, but he won’t go to a bigger club.

I’m sure Villa fans and West Ham fans want a manager who “gets” them but it’s not the same as at Liverpool. A Liverpool manager has to “get” the club, its fans, its uniqueness, its history.

I’m not saying Liverpool is more special to its fans than other clubs are to their fans, but the Liverpool manager is always more than just a manager.

And the club is bigger than almost anyone realises, as managers and players almost always say once they’ve joined, and it hits them. It’s a global phenomenon.

Xabi Alonso gets that.

Buy-In

It’s no good having great ideas if the players and fans don’t buy into them. Buy-in is everything.

Players are swayed by personality as much as ideas; and for a Big Club you need both.

Graham Potter is another example. A good corner-shop manager, utterly out of his depth at Chelsea, where the players mocked him.

We have to start understanding this, even though I’ve written about this phenomenon for over 15 years. You have to have a different skillset and a different temperament to go from mid-table to top-of-the-table.

For all your talent, you have project calm, assurance, authority, and take an holistic approach. That translates to the players and to the crowd. And you need to play the right brand of football.

Just as, in all sport, you need data and you need human skills. One without the other is only half the picture.

You need the mix of data and ‘passion’, cerebral intelligence and emotional intelligence.

Why Klopp was so successful in what was initially a very data-driven club was his ability to rouse a jaded fanbase, and turn players with ‘good data’ into a cohesive team that ran on positive energy, and made them felt wanted; whereas the ‘data buys’, including Roberto Firmino, were often frozen out by Brendan Rodgers, who had muddled thinking.

Iago Aspas (now 36) was a great data find, as his career has gone on to prove, with 136 La Liga goals for a smaller club in the past nine seasons, and goals for Spain.

But at Liverpool he was the wrong player at the wrong time for the wrong manager. He was too lacking in upper body strength. He said he struggled with the Premier League, and doubted himself at a time when the Reds had Suarez and Daniel Sturridge.

And the manager didn’t want him.

It didn’t make him a bad player, just a bad fit at the time. Three years later he might have thrived under Klopp. Or he may have had similar issues.

And with managers you can’t give them a year with the reserves, or loan them out, or bring them on as subs, or play them in a different position, or only in different competitions. You have one managerial choice.

It works or it doesn’t.

And a big data size to assess a manager is not essential; just that there be enough of an indication. Indeed, too many years as a manager could bring staleness, or mean too set in their ways. So I don’t think it has to be someone with years of elite experience.

Liverpool bought players on smaller sample sizes of data than 60-70 top-level league games.

Mo Salah had no discernible Chelsea data, after looking good in Switzerland, where the analytics department didn’t fully trust data, as with Austria and other smaller leagues. Then, 65 league games for two Italian clubs.

Andy Robertson, one single season in the Premier League, in a team that got relegated.

And most tellingly, spending what now equates to £100m on Alisson – after one single season in goal for Roma!

Just 44 league games in Brazil in his entire career before moving to Italy, and then initially spending his first year on the bench in Rome. So there were just 37 league games of data in the two years before he joined Liverpool, and no reliable data from Brazil ten years ago.

He was on Liverpool’s target list before he’d played the last of his 37 league games for the Italians.

Sometimes, you know quality when you see it.

You know a genuine talent, with the right mentality and ‘fit’. No matter what Alisson’s data said, you can tell that he has authority, calmness, quality. You know he’s not some flaky fly-by-night, without data.

He also looks the part, and that helps. (This is the era of optics, and people are swayed by appearances, vibes, impressions, as well as more substantive factors.)

Goalkeeper is the most important position (to my eyes), and Liverpool spent the most since Andy Carroll when adjusted for inflation on Alisson; slightly more than on Virgil van Dijk when adjusted, as they arrived in different seasons.

Again, like a manager, you only have one goalkeeper, and then a backup or two of varying quality. But only one proper keeper.

So goalkeeper is the most like a manager in terms of uniqueness, constant presence, and aura.

You don’t rotate six keepers. You don’t play them left-back. So if Liverpool can go for Alisson, I feel they could go for Alonso after managing nearly 70 games in Germany, but also with the strong grounding of learning the ropes with Sociedad B, just as Alisson did his apprenticeship in his homeland.

With managers, as with players, you can’t just go on data. It’s about mentality, character, fit, ambition, stability, harmony. Klopp brought more of a focus on the latter.

With Klopp, it was about emotions and connections as much as about talent and intelligence. To remove the vibes and fan buy-in from Klopp is to ignore half of what he brought.

Football is never just about clever ideas, nor just about passion. As with all daft culture wars, you get the extremists who ignore the benefits (and sometimes even the existence) of the other side of the argument: data geeks vs Real Football Men. Neither is fully right.

Just as player recruitment is never just about data or just about the eye test. Liverpool have elite scouts of all kinds.

The biggest data gamble Liverpool made on a player was Naby Keïta (almost as expensive as van Dijk and Alisson after inflation), who was a superb talent, as identified by Dr Ian Graham’s model. Yet, along with some bad luck, largely it failed.

Keïta he was introverted, didn’t work hard at his English, then proved injury-prone. At times he looked overawed, and the human nature of the mind and the body and the personality meant he couldn’t always replicate his sensational German data (and at his best for Liverpool he was excellent, just too infrequently).

Liverpool had far less data on Alisson, as there was less data from his time at Roma to look at.

Authority

Sport is about inspiration, but also removing the fear of failure; but managers also need to stand up for the club and its players.

With managers, it’s about being smart and also about being emotionally intelligent and having people follow.

And being the right person for the specific job.

I keep saying it, but you can have great ideas, but if you can’t get them across or make anyone believe in them, they’re worthless.

The Arsenal players just weren’t interested in Emery’s ideas, and yet he had an excellent CV, albeit only at smaller clubs than Arsenal, and in countries where he spoke the language fluently. Except in France, where he managed to do the unthinkable and one season not win the league with PSG, and left early.

But at Villa, with them having won nothing in decades and with Steven Gerrard unpopular, Emery was the perfect fit. They’d just finished 14th.

Gerrard would be a great vibes manager for Liverpool, but he falls short in the track record, and on the ideas front. His assistant, Michael Beale, was the widely acknowledged tactical brains behind some proper success at Rangers, but Gerrard fronted it up with his personality and aura; no one would have given Beale the time of day as a manager back then.

However, Gerrard’s stock has fallen since the two parted ways, and he won’t be considered at Anfield.

Still, a charismatic figurehead can always change to a more modern assistant with fresh ideas, as Klopp did with Pep Lijnders in 2018 (who helped the team to evolve a more Dutch style), and as Ferguson did with several changes over his decades at United.

But a figurehead who lacks charisma or authority cannot rely on a charismatic assistant.

And charisma is not about a superficial, shallow affect, like a sociopath. It’s the ability to engage, inspire, cajole and unite. With authenticity and ease. To be like Klopp, not David Brent.

It doesn’t have to be Klopp-sized charisma either. While his football is no longer cutting edge, back in 2004 Rafa Benítez had charisma, never looking fazed, perhaps one misunderstood press conference aside. Mourinho had it, before he lost his cutting edge, got older and out of touch with players, and then turned everything toxic.

Brendan Rodgers had better soundbites, but Benítez between 2004 and 2009 was elite, and exuded calm, but had the respect of the Liverpool players (including Alonso until a bust-up) because of what he had achieved in Spain, which was at the time a better league.

So, Benítez sitting cross-legged during a Champions League semi-final shootout against Chelsea was a projection of utter control. It’s charisma, personality, but in a quieter way.

However, when Benítez went to Real Madrid, they hated him, even though he played in their youth system and was an assistant manager there. He was not at the peak of his powers, and reputationally a bit damaged by then.

The players loathed being asked to do repetitive back-four work, and the attackers hated being asked to track back. They saw him as too unsuccessful as a manager; yet when he went to Newcastle they adored him. The fit was much better, the expectations more in tune. The Geordies were glad to have him, like the Villa fans were glad to have Emery.

The Real Madrid players would not listen to Benítez (not helped by following the cult of personality that was Mourinho), just as the Arsenal players would not with Emery, and United players with Moyes. It’s about fit.

You can blame the players, but they expect the best; and you can weed out the bad influences and dickheads, but the players still need to feel engaged and inspired. (Thankfully Liverpool refused to buy dickheads once Klopp arrived.)

And “winners” can be a misnomer, if it’s from a different era, with different conditions.

Right now, Mourinho, like Antonio Conte, is a manager who doesn’t inspire players. Spurs appointed both as “winners” but they won nothing.

More recently, Roma fans loved Mourinho, and a few players did too, but they finished 6th, 6th and were 9th; winning only the newly-invented European Trophy for the Medicore (what next? A European trophy for teams who finish 17th?), despite lavish spending.

How Mourinho has fallen from the days when he mocked anyone who didn’t win everything. Imagine his scorn if Wenger or Benítez had won the third-best European trophy, albeit it didn’t even exist back then. Now, Mourinho is a specialist in failure, and leaving clubs in a state of chaos.

The Roma fans love a warrior, so they loved Mourinho; but the club were heading backwards. Conte, another “proven winner” was only a proven winner in a previous era, before the game evolved beyond his skillset. Five years in football is a long time.

The Current Requirements

Twenty years ago, you didn’t need the most possession. Both Mourinho and Benítez could outfox big-name opponents with less of the ball, and keeping things tight at the back and in midfield was the order of the day.

Then Barcelona took possession football to another level. No one could compete.

But then, by 10-15 years ago, the German-led revolution of Kloppian counter-pressing meant you didn’t need the most possession again, whilst Mourinho just about hung in there with his deep block anti-football and winning games with 15% possession and one counter attack.

But now?

Now all the top teams have +60% possession and some kind of hard pressing system, up front and/or in midfield. They dominate.

It’s not passive, reactive football that thrives in 2024, as played by underdogs, but domination, with and without the ball.

Do we not need to see from Man United’s failures now under three successive lower-possession managers that it’s not the current way forward? (Albeit, things can change.)

The last four English champions, including Liverpool, have averaged at least 62% possession, and you could go back further with Man City, who had 67% in one season.

No one who has contested the title and finished close runners-up has averaged below 60%. (Liverpool 62.7% in 2021/22, albeit Arsenal averaged a shade below 60% last season, but didn’t take it to the wire and collapsed in the final dozen games.)

The successful teams control the ball, average 60% or more possession, and also have hard pressing systems.

Xabi Alonso’s football fits that bill, just as Alonso the character ticks all the boxes.

(Article continues below the link to yesterday’s piece on Alonso and the boxes he ticks.)

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Again, football may swing back towards lower-possession teams, but Man United have consistently been below 55% for possession and yet never challenge for titles, despite a squad that rivals Man City’s for spending and now a manager who won things with Ajax (but what does that mean?).

You don’t have to have the highest possession stats, but you do have to be about 60% almost without exclusion, unless it’s all just some random coincidence.

(Girona in Spain are 55% but no longer in control of the title race, and in Italy, Napoli last season were miles ahead of all other teams on possession, at 62%, and it made them one of the best Italian teams in a generation; and this season, with slightly less possession after the manager quit, they’ve fallen apart. Inter are steady season on season at 55%-56% possession, but Juventus have strangely little possession. That said, Italy seems the most open and least possession-heavy league, perhaps as there are so many teams of a similar standard, between 4th and 10th.)

Right now, for a club like Liverpool, you have to be able to control games, rest with the ball, pass from the back. Gone are the days of even 2018, when Liverpool last relied on purely heavy metal football.

Whether your keeper drops onto his goalline like at Brighton, or joins the centre-backs to pass, like Alisson, you currently need to average 60% possession. Attack speeds may vary, but you have to be able to win the ball back and keep the ball; beat the press, progress and carve teams apart.

As I noted yesterday, Leverkusen were a 53% possession side when Alonso went there, and 52% across a difficult first season for him (arriving in October 2022), where he roused them from 2nd-bottom upon his arrival to 6th, and excellently managed both the Europa League and the Bundesliga in the second half of the season.

Now, they’re 61.5%, and breaking all German records for wins. They seem to press high and hard, too.

I would also say that, while only a season and a half in terms of time, to improve a club over two consecutive seasons with the disruption of the summer break (when you can lose the progress made, as players come and go, and you have to rebuild from scratch in terms of fitness and rhythm), is another sign of proper improvement, not a bounce, or hot streak.

I was hugely sceptical when Roberto De Zerbi said he could improve Brighton’s possession. But he did. They played superb football last season, and I loved watching them, except when they dismantled an older, tired Liverpool side. He proved me wrong.

But if even Brighton can get to 60% or more with possession (after being sub-55%), without it just being sterile, then you need to look at managers who do that; not managers with sub-50%, like Thomas Frank, and hope they’d scale up. That’s a fool’s game.

You need to know for sure that it scales up.

(Frank, as I keep saying, reminds me of Moyes, Hodgson, and Sam Allardyce, as effective corner-shop owners who possibly couldn’t run a supermarket to save their lives; with Frank we don’t know for sure, as unlike those, he’s not had the chance, but you don’t go straight for the corner-shop owner just because his club uses data well. I read a piece where he was praised for having the 8th-best pressing/PPDA in the Premier League, but with just 48% possession, it’s all fairly unremarkable stuff in terms of anything other than a smaller club doing well. I don’t see that as scaling up, and I don’t see him as someone the fanbase would take seriously enough, for long enough, if immediate results didn’t impress, and I don’t see the players respecting him enough. He’d be a bad fit.)

I also want to reiterate how good Alonso’s record is.

The three years with Sociedad B were not remarkable, but that’s three proper years of learning the ropes. That’s three times as long as Pep Guardiola spent before taking the Barca job a year into his career. Again, Guardiola had ideas, and personality, and big-club experience, and fit; he didn’t have a track record.

I see Alonso as someone who has transformed Leverkusen, and that’s the key.

As noted, De Zerbi improved Brighton’s possession from 55% to over 60% when the general range is 40%-65%, so it’s more than just 5%. Every 1% is a big shift, when the margins are so tight.

Alonso improved Leverkusen’s possession from mediocre to elite, whilst his team have scored over four times as many goals as they’ve conceded. To go from 52% to virtually 62% possession whilst winning almost every game is stunning.

Even if Leverkusen now slump, to win 24 and draw three of your first 27 games in a season is up there with what Liverpool did in 2019/20, before the pandemic struck; especially as it’s Leverkusen, coming from nowhere. It’s genuinely more remarkable than someone winning a title with a big club in a weaker league.

They sold their best player, Moussa Diaby, (Florian Wirtz aside), to Aston Villa, and all summer spent about £20m more than they recouped. Little was spent the summer before. So even though I don’t know the ins and outs of the club over the years, this is no bankrolled project.

Now, it may be that the Reds are looking at different managers, including more obscure bosses. And that’s fine. I don’t know what’s out there, beyond the most commonly mentioned names, as I focus mostly on Liverpool.

But look at my checklist from yesterday’s article, and apply them to most managers, and you’d do well to get six out of nine, unlike Alonso’s nine out of nine.

Then add another to the nine I listed: 10) will the manager help sell the club to prospective players?

Jürgen Klopp did that. Players wanted to play for him. Liverpool remains a massive club, but a massive club with an unknown manager is less of a draw.

You don’t go for big-name ex-players … unless they are elite managers. Then it’s a win-win.

I feel like players and fans would listen to Alonso. He’s young enough to be idolised by kids as young as 20; even someone who is 17 would have known Alonso bossing it at Bayern.

He has stature, aura. (And fuck me, is he cool.)

As I said on the site yesterday, I don’t know if players would listen to Henrik ten Haagledootle, or some other doubtless talented flavour of the month (who will have some good ideas) who lacks the charisma and connection, and who crumbles under the pressure.

Summer Time

I actually think it would have been harder replacing Klopp last summer as the club was in a funk, albeit there was a late rally last season. But there was no Champions League money or cachet, no permanent DoF, and it needed someone who understood the young emerging talent, and what the midfield was lacking.

The continuity of Klopp and Lijnders allowed them to rebuild around what they knew inside-out. Lijnders has upset people along the way, but his exceptional coaching was a big part of the Reds’ success; equally, he hasn’t been offered the job, when I was certain that he was being groomed for it, in part, I assume, because of issues with past DoFs and transfer arguments.

Had Lijnders not proved so divisive behind the scenes in the past 2-3 years, this brilliant coach could have been the manager; albeit it’s harder to promote from within these days.

Now, it will be an external appointment, with news of him leaving in the summer. If he was going to be offered the job, it would have been announced now, as a seamless transition.

But how the season unfolds also affects what happens next.

Obviously if the club wins the major honours (and especially the league) this season that immediately makes it harder, not easier, to step in.

As that gets hard to improve on, and retaining titles unless you’re the richest club is very difficult indeed. I don’t think Liverpool will do the quadruple (and don’t like the talk of it that’s suddenly arisen), but if they did, how do you top that?

The better this season pans out, the more emotionally draining it will be, too. And it will end on high emotion either way.

Equally, a sudden collapse and a bad end to the season could undermine confidence and belief, and lead to a bit of an inferiority complex.

Ideally you want to be building strongly, but with the next step awaiting.

However – whatever happens, I’m backing Alonso for the job, whilst staying open to other suggestions, bearing in mind I don’t know all the managers at all the clubs. (I like De Zerbi and think his ideas scale, albeit there are a few doubts.)

But winning in Portugal or the Netherlands is not in and of itself much evidence of anything, as is winning at PSG, or Celtic, or Bayern. Average managers as well as elite managers have done those things. (Being an unknown adds to the pressure, and massively cuts the benefit of doubt.)

Taking never-champions Leverkusen to new heights? Without big spending? Whilst excelling in Europe and the league? Now that is unique.

That the manager is calm, cool, collected and a beloved Red is even more enticing.

Until then, we have four or five months left with the best manager of my adult lifetime.

And like Klopp, I feel old and even lower on energy. Change is part of life, and we must embrace it. Everyone has to think ahead, plan our next moves.

But we also need to live in the moment, and Klopp taught us that, too.