Chelsea were willing victims but Liverpool would have beaten anybody on a night boosted by the Jurgen Klopp bombshell that on this evidence could lead to four more trophies at the end of his long goodbye.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!1) Jurgen Klopp’s first ever Premier League win was against Chelsea. A Philippe Coutinho brace secured a 3-1 win at Stamford Bridge on 31 October 2015, in a result which the BBC said ‘provided the most compelling evidence so far that Klopp was getting his message across’ as Liverpool ‘kept pressing in the style their manager demands and in the end simply outran and outfought the opposition’. And it was thus ever since.
Klopp said on his arrival at Liverpool that he wanted to “turn doubters into believers” and we suspect after that first victory apparently got him ‘a long way towards achieving that aim’ that the subsequent eight years have got him the rest of the way there.
Rival fans will say he’s only won one Premier League title and one Champions League, and four major trophies in total, but he’s done so in an era of Manchester City and Real Madrid domination of both. And assessing Klopp’s impact on Liverpool based on titles is like evaluating a night out according to the number of drinking holes visited, or a relationship by the value of the family car.
Vibes, feels, emotion, excitement, whatever you want to call it, Klopp brought that back to Liverpool, along with days, nights and moments to remember for a generation of fans who will have felt they had been short-changed in supporting one of the biggest clubs in England by the time he arrived at the club.
Not that he needs to in order to cement his place in Liverpool folklore, but Klopp could of course double his trophy haul in his long goodbye. And good luck to any team trying to pip them to any of those trophies if they continue to play as well as they did at Anfield on Wednesday. It was their most complete performance of the season and their rivals won’t have accounted for the Jurgen-Klopp-p*ssing-off factor, which is clearly a significant one.
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2) Chelsea were willing victims, but Liverpool would have beaten anyone. Virgil van Dijk said ahead of the game that Klopp’s bombshell had given them a boost as they look to send their manager on his way in style, and that was plain for all to see on a night where from first whistle to last they dominated their opponents in the manner we’ve come to expect from Klopp’s peak Liverpool teams.
“I mention counter-press maybe 50 times a week,” Klopp said to Rio Ferdinand ahead of the game, and that will be his abiding impact not just on Liverpool but on the Premier League in general.
Chelsea couldn’t get anything going as a result, and although more complete teams would have coped better with the pressure from Liverpool, this was about as good as it gets in terms of winning the ball back quickly and efficiently in areas to hurt the opposition.
It felt as though they were slowly building to this point, where the counter-press, the attacking patterns and the defensive cohesion would all come together, and that point has arrived early as a result of the jolt Klopp’s announcement has given them.
It will now be a case of maintaining it; avoiding a hangover when the adrenaline of the shock wears off.
3) One of the most remarkable things about Klopp’s reign has been the distinct lack of transfer flops, in large part due to the club’s stellar recruitment, but also because of the manager’s ability to improve and get the best out of players. Liverpool can only hope that Klopp’s departure doesn’t stunt Darwin Nunez on what currently looks to be his inexorable path to becoming the most entertaining Premier League player of all time.
It’s not a record he’ll cherish, but nor is it one to be particularly embarrassed by, and hitting the woodwork the most of anyone in a Premier League game is the most fitting of all records for Nunez. Incredibly, the four times he struck the frame of the goal is more than anyone else has managed in the whole season so far, taking his tally across the campaign to 13.
By the 17th minute he’d already had five shots, one more than Chelsea managed in the entire game, with his total of 11 shots eight more than the next highest on the night.
The Uruguayan has detached his brain from his body and is all the more entertaining for it – playing on instinct, without thinking and leaning into the chaos he creates.
He might consider re-attaching it for his next penalty as he placed the ball onto the upright as hard as a normal footballer would lace one, but he ended the night with another assist, which makes it 11 to go with his 11 goals this season, and an inch or two one way or another and it would have been twice that many.
4) “Goodness me,” Ally McCoist said as he watched Alexis Mac Allister snapping into challenges in central midfield, giving compatriot Enzo Fernandez and former Brighton teammate Moises Caicedo no time on the ball whatsoever before running rings around them when in possession.
He’s been very good all season, but was widely considered to be a No.6 stopgap until recently, with Klopp moving him deeper in order to accomodate his best midfielders, of which it’s fair to say bona fide defensive option Wataru Endo – good though he’s also been – isn’t one.
But there won’t have been a soul watching this game in isolation, or other games in the last couple of months, that will think Liverpool are in need of a summer addition in that position. They may well choose to, but Mac Allister is playing the role as well as anyone in the Premier League right now, so it’s no longer a requirement for Klopp’s replacement, whomever that may be.
5) “I thought ‘Oh no that will create a lot of headlines’,” Klopp said of his Moises Caicedo comments, after reporters ran with his claim that Liverpool had been “lucky” to miss out on the former Brighton midfielder, as well as Romeo Lavia. Caicedo rejected a £111m offer from the Reds in the summer as he already had an agreement with Chelsea, while Lavia also opted to join the Blues over Klopp’s side.
“If one of the £100m [targets] had worked, there’s no chance to do another. That’s what I meant when I said we are so lucky. Everything in the ‘if not’ scenario worked out,” Klopp clarified, claiming “we found our top solution” in Endo.
It was a story borne from a misunderstanding, but one that only had legs by virtue of Caicedo failing to replicate his Brighton form at Stamford Bridge. He’s made 3.33 tackles and interceptions per 90 minutes this season compared to 4.47 last term, ball recoveries are down from 7.11 to 5.56 and progressive passes from 6.28 to 5.00. Ally McCoist went a tad overboard by naming Caicedo as his Premier League flop of the season, but as the midfielder himself has admitted, the increased pressure and scrutiny has got to him.
He completed one tackle on Wednesday to Mac Allister’s six, which tells you just about everything about how well the two transfers have panned out.
6) Ben Chilwell’s first start since September lasted just 45+4 minutes, and although the commentary team did him a great service by highlighting his injury problems to hint at further issues, it may well have been that Pochettino had simply remembered just what a liability his captain can be when playing as a full-back in a back four.
Seemingly of a similar mind to Thomas Tuchel, Pochettino had used Chilwell as a left winger or left wing-back at the start of the season, concerned as his predecessor was by the England international’s focus on attack rather than defence.
His solitary contribution in attack was to dive in the box, and he was dispossesed for Liverpool’s opener before being caught out of position for the second, albeit having been manhandled to the ground by Diogo Jota.
Pochettino may have to change formation if he wants Chilwell in his team in these big games.
7) Chelsea have spent £200m on centre-backs in the last 18 months and look as though they’ll have to spend near enough the same amount again to have options good enough to be playing at the level they want to reach. Axel Disasi was decent enough again at right-back, but Thiago Silva is too old for this nonsense and will leave at the end of the season if he’s got any sense at all, while Benoit Badiashile played at a far more leisurely pace than his opponents, as is his wont.
He trod on Jota to concede a penalty and as the camera focused on his face in the aftermath it looked as though he was if anything pleased at the opportunity it provided for a breather. And in the moment to illustrate his malaise and lethargy, Badiashile played Nunez onside before being caught out at the back post by Luis Diaz for Liverpool’s fourth of the evening.
8) Liverpool won 48 points in 30 Premier League games in Klopp’s debut season. After this defeat Chelsea currently have 31 from 22. 1.6 PPG for Klopp, 1.4 PPG for Pochettino.
Either as a result of this game or others further down the line, there will at some point be rumours, or at least thoughts, of Pochettino’s job being at risk. The case study of Klopp and Liverpool provides evidence for why it shouldn’t be.
A manager brought in to entirely change the style and ethos of a football club will hit bumps in the road and, though Chelsea fans will be sick of hearing it by now, take time to assert control and get their point across. Klopp didn’t have a £1bn collection of players to choose from but did have a £25m striker in Roberto Firmino, with £33m Christian Benteke on the bench along with Daniel Sturridge, who had banged in goals under the previous manager, supported by Philippe Coutinho – who would fetch the club £140m a couple of years later – Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Emre Can. It was by no means the mess some have claimed it was in the last week.
He oversaw a dodgy defence despite having Martin Skrtel, Mamadou Sakho and Kolo Toure, who had been Brendan Rodgers’ centre-backs in their title-challenging campaign in 2013/14, along with Dejan Lovren, signed for a significant fee that summer. These guys weren’t rookies, nor were they bad players, they just weren’t Klopp’s players.
Pochettino should be given the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff over two to three seasons as Klopp did. Chelsea have bought a lot of players in the last 18 months, but there will be a few of them he will quite reasonably not like the look of, and forming a squad in his image – as Klopp did at Liverpool – should be his prerogative.
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9) Armando Broja is surely on his way. He’s second choice to Nicolas Jackson when the Senegal striker’s around, will be third choice by the time Victor Osimhen or someone else arrives in the summer, can’t get a start when he’s the only choice and doesn’t even come off the bench when his side are chasing goals to get back in a game like this.
Pochettino says Broja’s “potential is massive” and compared him to Harry Kane, who had inauspicious loans at Leyton Orient and Norwich before coming good at Tottenham. But any hope from Pochettino that a reported loan at Fulham for the rest of the season can light a fire under Broja that can blaze on his return to Stamford Bridge likely isn’t shared by the Chelsea owners, who almost certainly see the striker as delicious pure profit.
10) Christopher Nkunku was brought on instead of Broja and showed why Chelsea might just be alright hanging their goalscoring hat on him for the rest of the season.
Carney Chukwuemeka – who also impressed briefly from the bench – drove forward and found Nkunku in the box, and the Frenchman swivelled with Liverpool defenders all around him before firing his left-foot shot in off the post.
Crucially for Pochettino it looked like a repeatable finish from a player who has done it many times before and hopefully can do it many times again.
11) Nkunku could also easily have won a penalty. Van Dijk did seem to just kick him from behind, and did also seem to bring Conor Gallagher down in the first half.
It will be chalked up as another imperious display by the Liverpool captain, as that adjective follows Van Dijk around no matter what he actually does.
He did spray a few delightful crossfield balls around while looking pretty unperturbed by Chelsea forwards in the main, but had either of the fouls been given as penalties by the on-field referee they would have stood, at which point we would probably have swapped ‘imperious’ for ‘clumsy’.
12) Nkunku’s finish was in stark contrast to Mykhaylo Mudryk’s. Malo Gusto – who will surely be back in the starting line-up after a second-half performance that again showed him up to be one of few Chelsea players who has his head screwed on and knows their game inside out – showed a clean pair of heels to Joe Gomez on the right and delivered the ball on a plate for Mudryk, who spooned it over the bar.
Other than Mudryk completed 12 passes, one dribble and lost possession on seven occasions, two more than anyone else despite only playing the second half. Not making progress? If anything he’s getting worse.
13) Jota’s getting better. Another goal to make it five in eight since his return from injury, to go with four assists, and though he got fortunate with a bounce of the ball as he squeezed his way through Badiashile and Silva, the first touch before was excellent to kill the pass pinged into him by Conor Bradley, and he showed great strength to hold off Badiashile before beating Petrovic.
And it’s his strength both in and out of possession that sometimes goes unnoticed or unmentioned – probably due to his excellent finishing taking centre stage, which is no bad thing. But he consistently holds off defenders who look as though they should be able to muscle their way into challenges, and does the outmuscling himself to win balls back that he has no right to.
Like his fellow forwards, Jota may secretly be hoping Salah is out for a little while yet.
14) By the hour mark, after an assist, a goal and general brilliance besides, even Bradley’s miscontrols were being applauded by the Anfield crowd. He got his second assist seconds later, to cap a night that genuinely, incredibly gives Klopp a right-back selection decision to make now that Trent Alexander-Arnold is back fit and firing.
The pass for Jota, the shot across Petrovic into the far corner and the pinpoint cross for Domiik Szoboszlai’s header: all excellent. And Klopp will now be thinking about square pegs in round holes, because whether it’s playing Bradley at left-back or Trent in midfield, his best team currently has both of them in it.
Bradley’s confidence in his own ability had reached laughable levels by the end of the game, as he targeted the gap between defenders’ legs and dared opposition forwards to run at him with the ball.
Conor Bradley scores for Liverpool.
15) “It’s not that I want to leave, it’s that I have to,” Klopp said, with this game leaving us in little doubt about the veracity of his reasoning for departing the club. Because why on earth would you leave this team if you didn’t have to?
He’s done it again. Klopp 2.0 is real; these guys could be even better than the original heavy metal band. This was his “organised chaos” at its most ordered and anarchic, with Mac Allister and Nunez at the two poles of his somehow disparate but cohesive style of football.
It does look exhausting though, and that’s the point. If Klopp’s not all in he’s worried the players won’t be either.
16) They sure will be for the rest of the season though, and will win it all if they continue to play as they did against a Chelsea side who could spend another cool billion on the last day of the transfer window and still lose to Klopp’s side in the Carabao Cup final.
