If the question of what has happened to the Liverpool of autumn is now inevitable given how testing winter is becoming for Jurgen Klopp and his players, the answer is wholly predictable.
Without overstating things, that swashbuckling team does not currently exist, not just in style but, more pertinently, in terms of personnel. It is now seven weeks since Klopp was able to field his first choice attack and should Senegal’s involvement in the African Nations Cup be maintained up to the final on February 5, the triumvirate of Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane will not be seen until the second week of that month.
That the loss of key players is undermining Klopp is not in question. Along with losing Mane to international duty, the Liverpool manager has also had to cope without Coutinho for almost two months, while defensive linchpin Joel Matip has only featured once during that period and more recently the loss of Jordan Henderson to a heel injury has confirmed just how influential he has become in midfield. As a result, Liverpool have gone from free-wheeling to stuttering, the momentum which their supporters had hoped would propel them to the Premier League title having long since been lost.
What we do not yet know is whether this is merely a blip in form, the kind which can effect even the best teams over the course of a long, hard season, or if what we have seen from Liverpool during December and early January indicates, as their critics claim, that they do not have the squad depth to see the job through. Four victories in their last nine games, including last night’s reversal to Southampton, underlines their struggle even if that run does include euphoric but hard earned wins against Everton and Manchester City. In the nine fixtures previously, Liverpool won seven and drew two.
In the context of recent results, recent form and available personnel, their setback at Southampton had been coming and even if it need not prove fatal to their chances of winning the EFL Cup with a second leg at Anfield still to come, the drop off in performance levels that allowed them to slip to a 1-0 defeat concerned Klopp sufficiently for him to demand an immediate improvement. Not that he had any choice – on Sunday Liverpool travel to Old Trafford; lose to Manchester United, who are on a nine match winning spree, and the shift in momentum from one end of the East Lancs Road to the other will be undeniable.
Klopp, a firm subscriber to the Kenny Dalglish school of management which decrees that players should only be criticised in public as an absolute last resort, admitted nevertheless that Liverpool had been sub-standard at St Mary’s.”I’ve tried (to explain the performance) in three or four interviews but I cannot,” he said. “I’m actually not used to a reaction like this from my boys but they have to accept that tonight was not good. We did not have a lot of chances, if we had some (at all).”
In the highly unlikely event that it really was inexplicable to Klopp last night – the much more likely scenario is that he knew exactly what had gone wrong and why but did not wish to say so publicly – that will no longer be the case this morning. The process of identifying the fault lines of a below par display will have begun straight after the final whistle with Klopp, his coaches and analysts reviewing a game in which Liverpool performed in a manner that brought back memories of the former Borussia Dortmund manager’s first few difficult months in charge at Anfield.
Twelve months ago, Klopp’s attempts to make an immediate positive impact were undermined by a dysfunctional attack and a defence that was prone to individual error. The latter problem has never been totally eradicated, although when Matip has been available, such issues have been much less prevalent, but Liverpool’s attack had been turned into the most prolific and the most devastating in the country before its make-up was disrupted. Add in a midfield that has lost its own momentum and much of its energy without Henderson and Klopp suddenly has problems to solve in all areas of the pitch ahead of what has the potential to be one of the defining games of Liverpool’s season.
Should Coutinho, who came through his run out last night, Matip and Henderson be fit to start against United, Klopp’s life will undoubtedly be made a lot easier and Liverpool’s chances of winning against their fiercest rivals will be boosted significantly. But without Mane, the one player at their disposal who possesses the kind of searing speed which opens up opposition defences and creates space for others, it is unlikely that the Liverpool of autumn will make a comeback at Old Trafford. The test for Klopp in the coming days is to restore his injured players to full fitness, to restore belief and to find a way of thriving without Mane.
None of those challenges is straightforward but having made Liverpool the second best performing team in the country in the first half of the season and arguably the easiest on the eye, he won’t see any of them as being insurmountable.
Having turned “doubters into believers” on the back of a negative net spend, Klopp’s mission to transform Liverpool from also rans to potential champions might have hit a testing stage. Should they come through it with the summit still within reach and with Mane still to return, he will believe that anything is possible.
