More questions than answers remain at Liverpool FC

The World Cup is well and truly on, and there is no better time to be a football fan, but with the world’s biggest football competition heating up, some important football stories have gone back off the radar.

It is not a stretch to say that Liverpool Football Club has been one of the best-performing clubs on and off the pitch. Club record points tallies, the first premier league title in 30 years, and record financial gains have all been achieved in the last 4 years.

The Merseyside giants seem to be battling a tricky season, an unfashionably poor Premier League start and ownership troubles have led to resignations in key positions, so let’s look at Jurgen’s Reds to grasp what is going on at the club and what the future might hold.

Seventh Season Curse?

There are no two ways about it, Jurgen Klopp is a fantastic manager with an exemplary track record, but what that track record also holds is a peculiar end-of-the-cycle turn that seemingly only falls during his seventh season in charge of a football club.

Mainz were relegated in his seventh year in charge, he finished 7th with Borussia Dortmund, and both times he left the club after the season ended.

With Liverpool, things got off to a very bad start as well. Winless for the first three games of the Premier League season, punctuated by a 9-0 win against struggling Bournemouth and followed by one win in four in the league, The Reds were struggling to say the least.

A statement victory against Manchester City and qualifying for the Champions League round of 16 did ease the trouble for the Reds, Jurgen Klopp’s long-term future seems to be in no doubt. For the first time in his tenure, he will have to rebuild a club squad.

The price of Heavy Metal Football

When asked to describe his team’s own football style the ever so charismatic Klopp coined the infamous term ‘Heavy Metal Football’

Why shouldn’t he? In their pomp, Dortmund and Liverpool have played some of the most entertaining football, and served the viewers of the beautiful with some of the most entertaining spectacles.

That tireless running and pressing comes at a cost though. It is easy for anyone to see that Liverpool suffer injuries at a much higher rate than their contemporaries. That can be chalked down to their ageing midfield and the purely physical demands of Klopp’s style, but the mental aspect of being successful is often missed.

This Liverpool team were on course for a Quadruple last season and played every possible game they could play. Ultimately they ended up with the domestic cup double. Finishing third in the league behind the Manchester clubs and with a bitter night in Stad de France against Real Madrid.

It was a physically taxing season for the reds for sure, but a bit of context can help us understand that this group of players has been playing for it all for the past three years and only marginally missing out.

The 2018/19 Premier League season saw them winning a record-breaking 97 points, the highest ever for a runner-up in the history of the league. Only to be bested by Guardiola’s City just a point above at 98. Intersperse that with the Champions League final defeat against Real Madrid in 2018, this Liverpool side has been nearly there for a while now.

Notably, Jurgen Klopp and this side has won every trophy available to them, but the feeling from the outside and internally is that they should have won more. Without new voices and attitudes in the dressing room to refresh the sentiment, this decline in performance seems only natural.

The Way Forward

The tail end of Liverpool’s season before the World Cup showed some promise. An improvement in team performances, albeit with some bizarre results pointed to a better second half of the season.

The World Cup has seen Jude Bellingham rise up to the occasion and if media chatter is to be believed, he might just be on his way to Anfield, and that should excite Liverpool fans.

The world of football is unpredictable, but Jurgen Klopp has the task of rebuilding the spine of this Liverpool side on his hand, and for millions of Liverpool fans like me across the globe, we could do way worse.

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