Yes, you read that right. Maybe you’ve even been looking out for such a headline.
Now that I have your attention, I can of course explain that it’s a big sack of time that I’m referring to. A huge fucking sack, with time, patience and understanding. And maybe a big sack of money too, although Liverpool FC doesn’t have the same kind of resources that some other clubs clearly do. (Sacks of money were available this summer and attempts to spend it were made.)
Rant
Okay, a bit of rant to start with, before some (hopefully) measured analysis on what I think Jürgen Klopp is trying to do. It doesn’t help when managers get fired from low-ranked Premier League clubs after just four games, because maybe it makes people think a winless four-game run is a disaster.
Yesterday someone said to me that “Shankly said Liverpool Football Club exists to win trophies”. Yes, but he also went seven years without winning a single thing, including some pretty dire seasons (low goals scored, lots of draws, not many wins) as he sought to phase out his great double-title-winning side – which had passed its peak – and fashion an entirely new one. Which is not a dig at Shankly, merely a fact. He had seven years without a trophy.
Of course, no one gets seven fallow years now. But then again, stop quoting people from the 1960s, when the context was entirely different. Back then, finishing 2nd was “nowhere”, whereas now it gets you into Europe’s premier competition, which helps you to build a bigger squad and attract (and retain) better players (but does, in turn, put more strain on the squad, which is why being in it every year is beneficial, but difficult to win with six genuine competitors in England, and even being in it is cramming six into four). The rewards for certain competitions are different now, just as the World Cup was not seen as important at first – England didn’t enter – and nor was the European Cup – English teams didn’t enter; while when Shankly won the FA Cup in 1965 it was considered on a par with the league, which is unthinkable now. Priorities change.
Then I encountered the logic-wormhole (which slithered from Tim Sherwood’s mouth-anus) of Klopp needing to beat Leicester in the cup so that he could still field players like Ben Woodburn for the rest of the season – and so he shouldn’t have fielded a weakened side and jeopardised progress, but, er, fielding a weakened team presumably included Woodburn replacing Coutinho at half-time, and such-like. Obviously Klopp wanted to progress while playing his squad players, just as Leicester did. But you can’t have everything.
As I have said time and again, the last two seasons got crowded in January, with between 9 and 11 games in 30-33 days just after Christmas. The two-legged League Cup semis against competitive Premier League opposition (Stoke and Southampton) was the squelcher, that squished the life out of Liverpool’s seasons at that particular point. It’s when injuries mounted and dips in form occurred. It was when a really reserve side was played in the FA Cup as there was no one else left fresh enough, and the Reds lost, and everyone lost their shit, even though the Reds went on to reach the Europa League final in 2016 and finish in the top four, with the 2nd-best points tally in eight years, in 2017. (Back in January 2005 I raged at the idea that the Reds going out of the FA Cup to Burnley was a disaster. Two cup finals and a Champions League triumph in the next four months backed up my theory. But hey, what do I know! Not that you can expect to be great after a bad run – just that bad runs and results happen.)
Then there’s the slimy logic turd that the fans who travelled to Leicester “deserved to see a strong XI”, which ignores that many of those fans (plus other fans) will also be travelling to Leicester (again) on Saturday, Moscow on Tuesday and Newcastle a few days later. You don’t pay for the right to see only the best players, because the manager has to balance his squad across all kinds of games, because this isn’t 1965 (and even then, Shankly rested his whole team in the league just days before the FA Cup Final. Because he wasn’t fucking stupid).
If the best players play every single game in all competitions, then by February there won’t be a fit team to choose from. And people paying to go then will see hugely weakened sides. People will be turning up at Anfield to see the U15 team in the Premier League. Then, of course, people will piping up about injuries and Klopp’s training methods, and why didn’t he rest players before, when you don’t have to name any specific times it would have been appropriate to rest players because, back then, any time he rested players you’d have been saying “why’s he such a douche for resting players”.
(This is like Alan Smith’s latest zonal marking comment: “it doesn’t always work”. Hmm, but man-marking does? What next? “Taking a penalty – doesn’t always work”. And Smith is apparently one of the brighter ex-footballers, with A-levels and shit. It’s 2017 and yet most of my first book, from 2005, still applies, from raging about the overreaction to defeat in Burnley to my example of five man-marking set-piece goals conceded in one game between Norwich and Middlesbrough. How far we’ve come, and how far we have to go.)
It’s easy to be negative and then claim foresight when it goes wrong, but teams will always have bad runs and bad seasons. No team escapes it. Most teams will have great seasons too, but not every team – certainly within the big six – gets to have a great season as frequently as a bad one, because there’s more scope to fall short, if the title is what everyone is after. If it’s six into four for the top four, it’s six into one for the title.
This season is far from over, and this is, I feel, capable of being the best team the Reds have had in almost a decade. That’s progress.
Differences
A main issue right now amongst Liverpool fans – as just one of many differences – is that there are those fans who want to win the league at all costs, as the Holy Grailers (which I get), and those who want to win even low-value trophies (which I also get) … such as the League Cup that, ironically, Bill Shankly wasn’t even that bothered about in its early days.
But these two aims are almost certainly mutually exclusive, unless you have an über-squad. You can’t have a full tilt at the title whilst having a full tilt at the cups, unless you have a massive squad and a huge dose of luck. You occasionally get doubles and trebles, but these are usually teams with a lot of league-winning experience already.
How can a manager please his fanbase when different sections demand totally different things? I was told, by an angry Red (and Angry Red could be the new club mascot), that Klopp made a big mistake in throwing away the League Cup as Liverpool won’t win the title and won’t win the Champions League. So, what, the club should just give up on those aims? They’re long shots, obviously, but you don’t qualify for the Champions League only to put out a stronger side in the near-meaningless League Cup. Others would have been mad had he fielded his best team in the League Cup and picked up injuries and suspensions.
Winning the cups apparently helps you to win the league in the long term, but I’ve previously proven with detailed research on this site that more than 20 cup games in a season (or less if you’re a smaller club) also takes points from your current season (on average). And do sides such as Man City in 2011 go on to win the league in 2012 because they won a domestic cup, or because they spent gazillions on tons of great players and they just got better as a side?
How many times have Liverpool gone on to win the league in the past 27 years, despite nine major cup triumphs in that period, including four League Cups? And how many people were excited about that 2003 side, which went 11 – ELEVEN! – games without a victory but which won the League Cup that year? Have Arsenal become champions again after their three or four recent cup successes? Has it cut Arsene Wenger any slack? (No.)
Shitty Stick
It’s been a tough start to the season – a real shitty stick – with Arsenal and Man City within the first five games. There are ten games in a season against the rest of the big six, so such fixtures should occur, on average, every four games; and games against two of them should happen, on average, by game eight, not game five. This is a shitty stick to start with.
Indeed, Liverpool will face a third – Man United – within seven games of the start. Even though the Reds often do well in these fixtures, they are still tough games.
Add a top German side in the qualifiers (home and away) and a top Spanish side (with three European trophies in the past four seasons) in the opening Champions League game proper, and then away at the 2016 Premier League champions and 2017 Champions League quarterfinalists (not that I can still work out how, but they’re usually pretty dogged and feisty) in the first domestic cup game, and that’s a super shitty-stick of an opening; made worse by the absence of Philippe Coutinho (and his “understudy”, Adam Lallana), allied to the suspension of Sadio Mané for an offence that, while arguably deserving of red, ONE ONE ELSE EVER SEEMS TO GET BANNED FOR! (including Newcastle’s best player, who is free to play against Liverpool next week), while the Leicester game was a chance to use the squad and give starts to some new players (as it was for Leicester, but with fewer kids involved).
That’s before getting onto the randomness of the non-Mané refereeing decisions, like the Salah penalty shouts or the wrongly allowed equaliser on the opening day, where the officials failed to understand the offside law.
Or before getting onto the opposition hitting every shot into the corner as if they’re Lionel Messi.
Irrespective of whether or not you beat these tougher teams, they will take a lot of out the players, from a purely logical standpoint. Plus, Liverpool are the only English side to play an additional two Champions League games, which means a greater number of games in a shorter space of time (which reduces your freshness and later chances of victory). And while the Champions League group looks favourable, that obviously excludes Sevilla. Liverpool could have used a game against Maribor instead, given the other fixtures early in the season.
And City aside (only when down to ten men), Liverpool aren’t playing badly; although the second half at Leicester the other night was poor, albeit only after the Reds did everything but score in the first half. The reason xG was invented was to show how a match would normally end with non-random finishing (as finishing blows hot and cold), as a better predictor of outcomes (or merit to an outcome) than possession, which some teams willingly cede. Liverpool clearly beat Burnley and Leicester on xG, but right now Liverpool’s finishing is off (it happens), and the opponents are scoring unlikely goals from outside the box (it happens, but not normally this frequently). So, that’s fairly unlucky, even if the Reds have contributed to their own downfall in some ways.
Indeed, two of the goals conceded this week were due to slight “nicks”. Against Burnley, a smallish full-back (Trent Alexander-Arnold) lost an aerial duel – against a big Burnley team – and the ball looped over Joel Matip’s head. Ragnar Klavan came across to cover, but then a Burnley player stuck his toe out and slightly diverted the ball, which wrong-footed Klavan (but had Klavan not come across, the space would have been there if the diversion didn’t happen. Close-range unexpected diversions are tough for defenders and goalkeepers, as they wrong-foot them instantly). Against Leicester, the opening goal was a saveable shot diverted into the corner before Andy Robertson or Danny Ward knew anything about it. Shit happens. Again, which isn’t to say the defending has been mighty fine and it’s all just been bad luck. These incidents weren’t like the opening goal against Sevilla, which was a triple-clusterfuck.
The good news is that the tough run of opponents is largely over, although now it’s three more of four away games on the spin, at a time when confidence is shot. That makes them tougher in some ways, but doesn’t make them top-level opponents. Equally, with Anfield clearly a bit edgy right now, it might help playing away – but if you’re low on confidence at a hostile ground and go behind, it gets very hard indeed.
Then come Man United at home, with Jose Mourinho’s men appearing to have played no one vaguely decent as yet, with Burton at home in the cup after a string of easier league matches and an unremarkable Swiss team at home in Europe. (Was it David Moyes who had that bitch of a fixture list to start with? One recent United manager did. It almost certainly wasn’t Alex Ferguson! Anyway, West Ham, Swansea, Leicester at home, Stoke, Basel, Everton, Burton and Huddersfield, is hardly testing across all competitions, as well as they’ve apparently been playing. It’s eight winnable games, albeit most have been won well, and still needed to be won, albeit with a draw at Stoke).
So, we can all debate how well Liverpool have played this season, but for me, not up for debate is the difficulty of the games. To suggest this is just dressing up a normal fixture list as tough because we’re on a poor run is bullshit.
Stretching the Blanket: Liverpool FC & the Pains of Forming a Complete Team, aka The Concept of Full-Blanket Players
Okay, now onto the meatier analysis.
My belief is that the best teams have a clutch of “full-blanket” players.
This comes from a saying, which I first heard via Rafa Benitez but which may predate that (and which I’ve quoted a few times before), that a coach has a blanket that’s often not big enough to cover the metaphorical toes and shoulders of a team. Pull it up and it exposes your feet. Push it down and your top half gets cold. You’ve doubtless heard it before. Thus, I thought about how teams acquire and develop what I call “full-blanket players”.
Back in 2004, Benitez had to make a successful team from a squad containing very few full-blanket players. Steven Gerrard was a full-blanket player, clearly. But Sami Hyypia, as great as he was, was not. For Gérard Houllier’s final two years Liverpool had struggled with the pairing of Hyypia and Stephane Henchoz, because neither had pace. So they could only defend deep, which meant more long balls to the strikers.
Michael Owen was a full-blanket player of sorts, as he had devastating pace, so he could pin teams back. But his lack of height and bulk meant that Emile Heskey had to bodyguard him. So Liverpool had a deep defence and two strikers, and a midfield that could not easily knit the two together. Of course, by 2004 both strikers were gone anyway.
As a more current example, right now Everton appear to have no blanket; or rather, little more than a tea towel or flannel. As Gary Neville pointed out during the commentary against Manchester United, they have no pace at the back and no pace up front (at least with the players selected that day). So they can’t pin teams back with the threat of speed in behind, while their own defence has to sit deep to “cover their toes”.
Think about it. Liverpool haven’t had clear full-blanket team since 1990, with the possible exception of 2008/09, when the Reds top-scored in the Premier League, albeit with “just” 67 Premier League goals, compared to the 100+ some other teams have posted since. That was a very nicely balanced team indeed, but probably not exceptional going forward, although when Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres were in tandem (which was sadly rare that season – just 14 times if I recall) there was a perfect full-blanket forward-line of pace, work-rate, skill, strength and height.
Had the pair been fit to play more than just one third of the season together, the title may have arrived. It was, in hindsight, a full-blanket team on those rare occasions everyone was fit. But the back-up strikers and the best wingers lacked pace (probably a reason why Nabil El Zhar played a few games, although he’s had several years in La Liga since then).
Houllier’s 2000/01 side was great at counter-attacking and nicking goals when defending in numbers; trips to places like Barcelona were torturous in terms of how many men were behind the ball (seriously, it would take 75 minutes to get into their box), but ultimately effective for a limited period. They scored 127 goals, without always been easy on the eye. They could not defend a high line, so it could never be a full-blanket side.
Since 2009, it’s been just a defensive blanket (Rafa’s final season; Roy Hodgson’s eight-man back line in the first striker-less, midfielder-less system; Kenny Dalglish’s full-season with Steve Clarke’s influence clear (two banks of four), where Luis Suarez wasted chances – but where goals were unlikely from the “wingers” of Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson; and then Brendan Rodgers’ all-out attacking blanket, from which point there has been no recovery in defensive terms, but which may in part be to the melting and then retirement of Carragher; plus, the purchasing of attacking rather than defensive or full-blanket full-backs.
But this summer Liverpool went for full-blanket players. Mo Salah has the electrifying pace to get in behind defences, but also has great stamina, so he can help stretch the blanket and also help pull it back again to cover the toes. He’s not a headless-chicken runner, but a clever wideman who runs into central areas to lose his marker. The same is true of Sadio Mané, who arrived last summer. His pace stretches the blanket with that searing pace. Both in the team together – especially with the best supply line – could be lethal. We know that.
Naby Keita is a full-blanket midfielder. Aerial challenges aside, he does everything a midfielder can do, with the stamina and pace to not only score, assist, tackle and intercept in theory but in practice too. Some wise judges feel he can become the best all-round midfielder in world football. It’s an amazing coup to get him. But we have to wait. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is okay. Better to get an elite player late than never.
And Virgil van Dijk is a full-blanket defender. He has the supreme pace to defend a high line, the skill to play on the ball, and the height to defend a packed area when forced deep. There aren’t many like him. That deal got screwed up, and that sucks. (Just like when I wanted something for Christmas as a child but the store had sold out. So instead of Stretch Armstrong I got My Little Pony. Not that I’m bitter.)
But while there must be some full-blanket central defenders out there, they are like gold-dust (with those who fit the mould, such as Vincent Kompany, tending to already be at elite clubs), and I can see why Liverpool didn’t go for a compromise, which could have ended up with another Dejan Lovren, who looked great in a defensive-blanket system at Southampton but all-at-sea in a more expansive shape. Van Dijk would help stretch the blanket.
Joel Matip is similar in some ways to van Dijk, but he’s not as quick and not as strong. He’s also not as good in the air, despite the extra inch in height.
Full-blanket players are both talented and athletic, and are therefore expensive, because of their rarity. (Height is another factor that adds £££s, although you can still be a full-blanket player without height. But a team will struggle if it doesn’t have other players to mark on set-pieces and deal with crosses, long-diagonals and hoofs into the mixer.) So these full-blanket players tend to cluster at the richest clubs. But you don’t need eleven full-blanket players to succeed – even the best teams have those who can only do very specific jobs. That said, the more of these elite all-rounders you have the more you can attack and defend equally well.
The more each individual can do, the greater the size of the metaphorical blanket. Indeed, the reason Jürgen Klopp has desperately wanted to get Loris Karius into the team is that he can come out quicker to sweep, so is – in theory, at least – a full-blanket keeper like Pepe Reina was, in terms of allowing a bit more space behind the defence, as the back four can push a bit higher to force the blanket forward without exposing the toes (because the keeper covers those). Alas, he hasn’t done the goalkeeping part well enough, much like Claudio Bravo at Man City last season.
I don’t think even peak-years Sami Hyypia would help too much now, because the game has got so much faster even in just the past decade (the number of sprints has increased dramatically, along with the number of quick strikers), and while slow defenders can still read the game to succeed, pace is increasingly vital.
An issue is that while Dejan Lovren is quicker than Hyypia, he isn’t quick enough. Hyypia was far cooler on the ball, obviously, and just a better player, full-stop, but Hyypia would be exposed more in a team that doesn’t sit deep and have a specialist midfield screener. Sit deep and have that screener and that leaves less scope for attacking. So you rely on four-man counter-attacks at most. Equally, have defensive full-backs and you concede fewer goals but score fewer goals. To want it all is to want perfection, and that’s rare in football. (See my previous piece for more on this.) So it’s about trying to stretch the blanket.
Of course, you can have less-spectacular full-blanket players. In his way, Emile Heskey was, as he could bully teams into submission and stretch panicked back-lines, but the problem was he didn’t seem to believe that he could do so, so it was rarely seen. He seemed like such a gentle giant, who could have done with a bit more fire in belly.
Equally, some playmakers are so good on the ball that they more than compensate for a lack of athleticism and/or defensive ability or interest; these are A-list Playmakers, rather than full-blanket players. They find the passes to the forwards who stretch the blanket, rather than running ahead of the forwards (like Gerrard might have) to stretch it themselves. Philippe Coutinho is one such player, as are Kevin de Bruyne and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. But these are all complemented by the running and power/strength of others, and a team of these players would never get in behind defences or provide any kind of defensive protection. They would deliver beautiful crosses that they could not attack because they cannot head a ball.
Right now, Liverpool have just a few full-blanket players: Emre Can, Sadio Mané and Mo Salah. And while Roberto Firmino is not really quick enough to stretch the blanket, his movement allows the super-quick widemen to get into dangerous central areas.
And I think Jordan Henderson is borderline (a good all-rounder but probably not quick enough, although his job would be to hold the midfield together rather than stretch the blanket – not everyone in the midfield can be box-to-box). Gini Wijnaldum has the pace and intelligence to make penetrating runs too, and the stamina to get back, but isn’t lightning-fast. Both Andrew Robertson and Alberto Moreno can push defences back with their overlapping, but neither is a defensive titan. (Though Moreno has incredible stamina and often – if not always – gets back to press, even if his tackling can be rash. And Robertson’s defending can be worked on; he’s only 23 and still developing.)
I also think that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has the pace and stamina to be one too, but his first game wasn’t very good, and so he’s not allowed to play for Liverpool again, obviously. Daniel Sturridge used to be one, but the pace for the runs in behind has gone. Divock Origi could be one, but he needs to develop whilst out on loan, and learn to use his pace better; right now he seems best cutting in from wide and shooting from distance, rather than showing the striker’s movements against the last defenders, and in the box, that Solanke already displays aged 19.
However, Liverpool have a lot of potential full-blanket players. By the age of 20, Trent Alexander-Arnold should be bulked up, perhaps a bit taller (he hasn’t necessarily finished growing), and definitely more defensively sound with experience. He appears a total full-blanket player in the U23s, where he absolutely dominates the flank, so the next step is just getting older and stronger.
I think Dominic Solanke is also a couple of years away, if that. He has all the physical gifts at 19, and fantastic movement. But he too needs a bit of experience, and to get those early goals, much like Harry Kane at the same age. Solanke isn’t electric with his pace but he can cover the ground and still get in behind defences. He looks capable of being a great all-rounder. And while you may not have patience for this, the alternative is too expensive.
Plus, that doesn’t mean these players aren’t good enough to do a job now. But they can’t be perfect players as kids. And they also won’t improve if they never play, but playing them has its risks too. Such is reality.
And remember, a full-blanket full-back now costs £50m. Manchester United spent £94m (maximum fee) and £90m (maximum fee) on two full-blanket players within twelve months, while City spent £100m on two full-blanket full-backs. And their squads were already far deeper and far costlier than Liverpool’s, with far more Champions League experience since 2010.
Without doubt, Joe Gomez has the potential to be a full-blanket centre-back, but it’s hard to trust centre-backs under the age of 25, and he’s just turned 20. Why? Because the role requires experience and physical gifts. How many centre-backs have come through at the top six clubs in the past 20 years? I’m guessing none since John Terry in 1998, while Jamie Carragher only made it as a centre-back aged 25, after several years as a defensive full-back, after an abortive spell at the heart of the defence in his early days. Maybe Jonny Evans at Manchester United although they ultimately saw him as surplus to requirements. And none of these were as quick and strong as Gomez.
Plenty of young centre-backs have left the top six clubs and gone on to become full internationals by their mid-20s, including Mikel San Jose and Gabriel Paletta of Liverpool (both were bought as promising youngsters but never made the grade until much later), while probably half a dozen current Premier League centre-halves have been let go by Manchester United, as well as Gerard Piqué, who has been exceptional over the years. But there isn’t the time to play them through their mistakes these days. Phil Thompson in the early 1970s must be the last quality centre-back brought through at Liverpool playing as a centre-back, with one or two others, like Dominic Matteo, ending up there for a while. (Scrap that – having looked it up, even Thompson started in the team as a midfielder.)
Even Mats Hummels, who is an exception – excelling in the position in his early 20s (under Klopp) – was sold by Bayern Munich, presumably because they didn’t see him as ready. He was 20 when he went on loan to Dortmund and 21 when he joined them permanently, before Munich bought him back when he was 27. I think Gomez is ahead of the curve, and his pace will help him adapt quicker than a slower centre-half would, but he’s not out of that phase where five or six really good pieces of play are followed by a stray pass or lapse in concentration. That’s what young defenders are like.
Ben Woodburn, by contrast to the emerging full-blanket talents, looks like an elite creative force who works hard too, but who doesn’t have blanket-stretching pace. (Of course, it’s no use having super-quick players who are useless either.) Woodburn is like Kenny Dalglish in how quickly he sees things without being able to run like a sprinter, although it’s fair to say that Woodburn is quicker than the King. (And he certainly is now, with Dalglish 66.) As I’ve said many times, Dalglish only properly broke through at Celtic aged 20, and Paul Scholes (whose shooting I likened Woodburn’s to in the summer) was also 20 when he got the nod at United. To be that good at 17 is remarkable, but this is his transition season.
I also think Marko Grujic has great all-round skills, although tackling isn’t one of them (again, Scholes springs to mind), and that may work against him in a Premier League midfield. But he’s still one to watch.
Liverpool also have by far and away the best young goalkeeper I’ve ever seen at the club, in Kamil Grabara, who is already regularly training with the first team aged 18. He has it all, bar experience. Every time I watch him he looks like the elite world keepers in everything he does, except it’s obviously not against elite players but U23 teams (who do still contain some good players). Still, he can only do what he does against the opposition he faces. But what big clubs have given debuts to such young keepers and thrown them in? The Premier League is uncompromising for young keepers, and even someone as talented as David de Gea needed a few years to overcome ridicule. Klopp and his coaches are monitoring all these players, bringing them through bit by bit, but where setbacks will naturally occur.
So this is all bubbling under. Add it to the fact that we’ve yet to see Coutinho for more than a few minutes (and how his transfer request on the eve of the opening game cannot have helped), and we’ve yet to see the best Reds’ team (which includes both Coutinho and Mané), and the busier schedule against higher-than-average quality opposition – plus the bad or inconsistent refereeing – and it’s been a difficult start. But Liverpool are yet to lose a game when fielding most of their best players, unless one of them had been sent off. The better the XI Liverpool can field this season, the greater the chance of overcoming any defensive lapses. And while you can’t always have your best players fit, they will be the ones who make the greatest difference, while squad players aren’t going to be at an elite level.
Top players still respect Klopp. They want to play for him. His Dortmund team could defend, too, but it was not an overnight success there. It took two years of work before it started to hit the groove. I feel that Liverpool FC is moving in the right direction on all levels, but this is a blip – with only one game this season providing any serious concerns, and that was when down to ten men.
None of which means Liverpool will start thrashing everybody and win the league by 15 points; it just means that a bit of patience goes a long way. It always has and it always will. There remains a lot to be excited about.
Here’s the thing about football, a truth that you must accept or you will boil in the juices of your own angst: you won’t like all of the manager’s decisions. It’s a delusion to expect that you will. It’s a delusion to expect that it’ll even be close.
Given that results can rely on the decisions of the officials* and the randomness of finishing at both ends (and the decisions the players make for themselves that no boss can influence, especially if they are of the acute brain-fart variety), even an elite manager probably only gets 60% of all his decisions right, if that. Football is not chess, where every move has a set of rules as to what will occur.
And to me, when the team does enough to clearly deserve to win (as measured by xG as just one example) but doesn’t – like Liverpool this weekend against Burnley – then finding fault is mostly nitpicking. When you have 35 shots, the keeper makes some great saves (and the spills fall to safety), the referee denies a clear late penalty and you hit the woodwork, you have to accept that, though there are still imperfections in the performance, it was good enough to win, and maybe better than on occasions when you do actually win (but maybe spawn a lucky deflected goal and it shows that “you’re a great side as you won without playing well”, etc.)
To please everyone, a manager has to do everything right – perfect every formation, improve every player, have Plans A-Z, and maybe even a Plan AA, AB, AC, etc. He must always give youth a chance, as “what’s to lose?”, but he must never play a young player before he is ready, and never lose a game when fielding a young player. He must focus on the defence, but fans of a team that can defend really well without creating much will say that he must focus on the attack – and to do both sides of the game really well is fairly rare. His teams must score from all corners, even though only 2-3% are actually ever scored from, and his team must never concede from set-pieces – especially, for some bizarre reason, if marking zonally – even though set-pieces account for c.30% of all goals.
Here are some examples from “down the road”. Man United fans are loving Jose Mourinho. But many hate Marouane “sharp elbows, soft head” Fellaini. And yet the manager adores him to the point where he may name any future children or grandchildren after him, and force them to grow their hair into big bouffant balls.
Would United fans therefore want rid of Mourinho, who may bring them success overall, for something that is just one small aspect of his managerial make-up? Should Mourinho give a fuck what they think if the team he picks is getting results? If you want Mourinho, then you have to accept a Fellaini (or players like him).
To me, it’s like going to a concert to see someone whose music you like and then being angry with them for playing the songs they want to play, which may not be your personal favourites; even though their aim is to produce a top-class performance. It’s not all about you. Or getting pissed off because you didn’t laugh at every joke a comedian told. It’s not all about you. Except, those performers don’t have to compete with an opposition trying to stop them (just a few hecklers), nor do they face a referee who may derail the show halfway through by sending off the lead guitarist. These performances can all be rehearsed to perfection, without the constant interference of others. (Try listening to a string quartet in a symphony hall as, also on the same stage, Metallica thrash away through gigantic amplifiers.)
Remember, you, the fan, the observe, are not the one in control of all this, and you shouldn’t have the slightest illusion that you are. The greater the illusion that you are in some way in control – via the tweets that get sent, the phone-in time given, the modern mantra that we are unique and that all of our voices matter – the greater the sense of disconnect and rage when the manager, or the board, aren’t actually listening. This is not the X-Factor. You don’t get to vote players in or out of the team. If you have a top-class manager you enter into a pact to take him, warts and all; just as, if you enter into a marriage, you accept that your spouse will not go around doing everything to your liking 100% of the time.
United fans obviously venerate Alex Ferguson, arguably the second-most successful manager in English football history (he said mischievously, what with Bob Paisley doing it all in just nine years, etc.). Ferguson loved picking players like Darron Gibson, Jonny Evans, John O’Shea, Phil Neville, Wes Brown and Darren Fletcher – you know, the kind who you’ll never, ever ever win anything with. Ever!**
He sometimes played Wayne Rooney out wide in a midfield five. He often dropped Carlos Tevez, even when the Argentine was in form. He sold David Beckham after throwing a boot in his face. He sold Jaap Stam based on stats that he later admitted he didn’t really understand how to interpret. He went 100 games without naming the same side twice in a row (“such indecision!”; “He doesn’t know his best team!”). He got through about five or six horrendous goalkeepers in between a couple of great ones. He never started Javier Hernández, who often scored as a sub, until he started him, and then he never scored as a starter.
He bought Djemba Djemba, Kleberson, Taibi, Obertan, Bosnich, Dublin, Carroll (Roy), Anderson, Bellion, Bebe, Howard, and maybe even Bebe Neuwirth and Howard from Take That; but he let Pogba, Rossi and Pique leave for peanuts. He bought the limited Leeds’ striker Alan Smith and played him in midfield. He called people idiots for not rating the struggling Juan Seba Veron. Before Liverpool stepped in, he apparently chose not to buy Xabi Alonso as he felt him too slow, and didn’t feel Fernando Torres was quite suited to the Premier League. Think of all the other great players he didn’t sign – whilst he was busy signing a cadre of flops (which, of course, was mixed with a cadre of superb signings) – and you can think of all the things Ferguson got wrong simply by not going out and getting those players instead. Think of all the games drawn and lost despite often having the biggest squad in England.
He did all this, and lots more unexplainable things, all while winning countless league titles and a couple of European Cups. The fool! He’ll never win anything doing that, apart from the things he won.
He did all these thing years after the initial four seasons when people said he didn’t even know what he was doing, as United finished in the bottom half of the table three times. But I’m not even talking about his shitty years.
All of the aforementioned aberrations are from his imperial phase, which was admittedly a rather long time – but was still overflowing with supposed left-field decisions and oddball selections. He did all this whilst talking some absolute tripe, defending out of form players and justifying decisions that didn’t work out. Because that’s the nature of the sodding job.
These “mistakes” are like the holes in certain cheeses. It’s all part of the product – part of the human limitations where no-one can ever being perfect, or even get close. To get so much right, you still have to get a load wrong. I bet you can find hundreds of examples of Ferguson supposedly ‘losing the plot’, and yet right up until the end he seemed to be in pretty good control of his plots overall.
Remember (and here I’m merging many examples, from many clubs and managers, as I digress), a manager mustn’t pick struggling players like, er, Carragher, Lampard, Henry, Bale, Pires, Bergkamp, Modric, Ronaldo, De Gea, Kompany, et al, all of whom were written off for a period of at least six months at clubs where they went on to become some of the best-ever players; some were derided for a year, maybe two.
All of the occasions when these “flops” were selected – sometimes season after season – it contributed to their educations; it was all experience gained, even if fans thought it was foolishness or stubbornness on the manager’s part. It all led somewhere eventually, even if fans couldn’t foresee it.
Sometimes these proto-flops improved when winning and sometimes they learned through defeat. A young Jamie Carragher got exposed at centre-back and took a few years to look the proper part at full-back. In life, it’s actually quite hard not to learn anything when you’re doing, and when situations are fluid and never the exact same way twice. But some days you will be less able to show your own talents, for various reasons. You improve over time, with practice, but it’s not a straightforward upward trajectory. But managers aren’t being “stubborn” when they select players they believe in.
Indeed, “He’s too stubborn” must be one of my favourite clichés. Last season, Pep Guardiola needed to learn to mix it up and stop being so obsessed with all that fancy passing – he had to “go long!” – and Jose Mourinho’s had to change his approach, otherwise it meant too many draws (although I was guilty of saying this). To me, both remain unbelievably stubborn, and that’s probably why they’ve been so successful. They don’t try to be anyone else. Football is too much of a slow-moving beast – in terms of a team’s strengths and weaknesses, its DNA – for a manager to keep changing with the latest fads, and/or trying to be like something or someone they are not.
They have to stay relevant, of course, but stubbornness is simply the single-mindedness of winners when things are going well. This is because all human attributes are merely flaws in a different light. Intelligent? You think too much, live inside your head. Passionate? You have a temper, take things too far. Sensitive? You’re so damn touchy. Brave? You’re reckless. Decisive? You’re impetuous, rash. Ruminative? You’re a ditherer. Honest? You’re gullible, naive. And so on…
This is a culture of ever-increasing perfectionism. But real life is imperfect: it has no flattering filters, no special effects. And it’s a more entitled, “I deserve” culture; a culture that says we can have what we want, when we want it (what do we want? and when do we want it? what do we want? and when do we want it? etc). If you think the manager should be paying attention to your wants, your desires, then that’s very self-centred. It’s almost narcissistic. (Will Storr’s outstanding book “Selfie” is a must-read on all this; and thanks to someone on TTT for introducing me to it.)
And whenever a team is struggling, the manager becomes a “fraud”, despite remarkable past achievements. It’s been said about Mourinho, Guardiola, Conte, Klopp and everyone else. Why do people confuse human imperfections with fraudulence? Why is the lack of a magic wand to cure all ills and remove all setbacks some kind of falseness?
A manager has a thousand things to juggle, and can’t rely on half-baked theories spouted on the internet or a phone-in show, which are then completely forgotten when it turns out to be wrong (one basic example: Luis Suarez will never be a goalscorer. Hands up if you said that? Hands up if you go around pointing it out all the time, or hands up if you like to pretend you never said it).
In a squad of 25+, there will be some very good players left out. You might not rate them all, but you probably rate some of them. You may want to see them in the team, and be pissed off about it, when those you don’t like get games. But you won’t see training, you won’t have fitness updates, you won’t see the chemistry between the players. When you get angry that the manager isn’t picking someone, you don’t know that the player had a slight hamstring twinge, or perhaps handed in a transfer request 36 minutes earlier. You cannot gauge potential as clearly as a manager.
Now, if he’s a shit (aka mediocre or underperforming) manager who only ever gets things wrong, and doesn’t fit in at all, that’s different. You’d struggle to find anything positive Roy Hodgson did or said during a hellish six months at Liverpool: his style of football was crap, his buys were crap, and his soundbites made crap look like sirloin steak.
However, Jürgen Klopp arrived with fresh, modern ideas about football, and Liverpool have improved, overall, since his arrival: his one full-season being better, on average, than those of his predecessors since 2009; while in his part-season he took the Reds to a domestic and a European final. Even this season, the Reds have already played a top German team twice, a top Spanish team, and two top Premier League teams, and only lost in the game where they spent 60 minutes with ten men.
Is Klopp (and those he works with) buying the right kinds of players? I’d so yes, overall the signings are upgrades on what he inherited, with Sadio Mané and Mo Salah electrifying in the way they attack (and Naby Keita and Virgil van Dijk clear upgrades to the XI, although obviously the VvD signing fell through due to no fault of the boss). Is he improving players? Yes, many have got better under him. Does he talk sense? Yes, without doubt. Does he care about the job he’s doing and really want to be at Liverpool? Yes. Is he planning long-term? Yes. Is there a clear vision? Yes.
Is it all flawless? No.
Clearly, but also semi-cryptically, teams will always need what they lack. But what is lacking can shift back and forth, depending on the latest short-term period of results (for instance, Liverpool concede very few chances overall. And they recently had a run of seven clean sheets in nine games). It’s the old ever-shifting blanket: the hardest thing in football is to have it cover your toes as well as your torso.
And you cannot have eleven players who are all perfect: as tall as Virgil van Dijk, as quick as Thierry Henry, as skilful as Lionel Messi, as brave as Carlos Puyol, as strong as Vincent Kompany, as cool as Xavi, as indefatigable as Steven Gerrard, as determined as Luis Suarez, and as randy as John Terry. Were even one such amalgam-player to exist then he’d cost in excess of £300m, but then there’d still be ten other players needed. The more well-rounded a player the more expensive he is. The tall, talented athletes – the sprinters who are gigantic and who also have lovely ball skills – cost a fortune.
Every team will have its weaknesses, and at times they will be exploited. No team can mitigate against all its weaknesses all of the time. A manager can spend time on the training ground addressing those perceived weaknesses, but then may also lose something in another area, because you cannot train for 14 hours a day. You can erroneously assume that you no longer have to train at what you’re good at, but what you’re good at – doing it to an elite level – comes about because of constant training, constant refining and sharpening. As soon as you say “okay, we’ve mastered passing and moving, let’s focus on defending” then you are no longer masters of passing and moving. You will lose your edge.
And there’s still so much that a manager can’t control. We, as fans, have no control at all beyond the noise we make (at the game and online), but he might only have 20% at times.
Go back a week. A fraction of a second later, and the Manchester City goalkeeper is sent off for taking out Sadio Mané after the Liverpool striker controlled the high ball and looked to stroke it into the empty net before the keeper head-butted him. The narrative becomes that Ederson was charging out of his goal like a lunatic.
Yes, Pep Guardiola wanted his keeper to be sweeping up like a defender and yes, Jürgen Klopp wanted his striker to be running in behind the City defence – those were tactical decisions that stemmed from the managers – but neither manager controlled that specific situation, with all its micro, split-second realities. A fraction of a second’s difference in the timing and suddenly Guardiola is the one with the problem, not the big advantage.
Sometimes, further improving a strength can also mitigate against a weakness (which is what Man City appear to have done this summer, as their defence looks no better on paper, but they’re doing more with the ball; as Liverpool have generally been when they’ve had eleven men). A weakness can be addressed in the transfer market but virtually every player that can be bought has some flaws, and often the process of adding a new player can be fraught (while sometimes it isn’t). The richer clubs obviously can spread the bet further. Squads that cost more will be more likely, on average, to have more in reserve.
As an aside here, look at how many expensive centre-backs Man City have bought since the arrival of Vincent Kompany, and how none had been a clear success as of this summer. Look at the shaky start to life for Michael Keane at Everton – the kind of player Liverpool might have turned to after failing to land van Dijk. A year ago Arsenal spent £35m on a centre-back who has flopped, and so it seems “easy” to find a central defender who is good at a couple of things – heading, defending the edge of the area – but there aren’t many “complete” ones out there who can’t be got at by one thing or another, be it pace or height or strength or skill. After goalkeeper it’s the most “nervy” position as it’s nearest your own goal. So they can struggle for confidence, with mistakes often proving costly. You can also become nervous defending set-pieces – because of the risk of conceding – even if you’re doing everything right at set-pieces, in terms of approach, positioning, etc. It just takes a nervy clearance, under the weight of “we’re shit at set-pieces” and suddenly they can’t defend set-pieces. Just as a striker low on confidence may snatch at a chance, a defence that’s nervous about defending set-pieces can’t have that edginess suddenly wiped out by a manager saying “don’t be edgy!”.
Also, defending is partly about understanding and partnerships, and that can take time, too, so parachuting in a merely good defender may not solve anything, especially in the short-term. But you can also defend more as a team, and then, as a result, commit fewer men forward – and then you might find it goes stale due to a lack of goals or excitement. You can stop conceding goals by putting ten men behind the ball and look to nick a goal on the break, but you must also expect things to get frustrating too.
Of course, this is all theoretical. But had Roberto Firmino’s penalty been an inch or two to the left, and Dominic Solanke’s shot been an inch or two lower, Jürgen Klopp would be under no pressure whatsoever. Had the referees in the games against Watford, Man City and Burnley made judgement calls in Liverpool’s favour, instead of against them (particularly the calls late in games where the result is more likely to be cemented by it, and particularly the technical error on the offside against Watford), then Klopp would be hailed for the results. These are all fine margins; and even the City game was about fine margins until, at 10 vs 11 away from home, it became a rather large margin.
So, you don’t like some of the manager’s decisions, and you’re outraged by it? Well, I’m kinda bored of it. We can all debate what we don’t agree with, but too often it goes far beyond that, into the realm of belittling world-class managers and thinking we have a right to have just the smooth, and not the rough that all human endeavour comes with.
* For example, note how David Luiz overhead-kicked Laurent Koscielny in the head yesterday in a tightly-poised big game, but it was just a yellow card. As it always is. Or see how Matt Richie got away with a very high boot for Newcastle, or indeed, Sadio Mané got kicked in the head himself before he was sent off at City. Mané seems the only player sent off in English football for a high boot when genuinely going for the ball. And while I hear you all – as well as my psychotherapist – shout “let it go!”, it shows how much games can hinge on mistakes by the officials, or in this case, an interpretation that many other referees wouldn’t have agreed with; or at the worst, severe inconsistency, if you agree that Mané deserved to see red. And while Luiz was eventually sent off anyway for a later horrible challenge, Mané received a ban (or removal from play) for a whopping 3.6 games, while other players committing the same high-foot offence got a yellow card or nothing. That’s before mentioning that Watford’s late equaliser on the opening day was a technical error by the officials, or Mo Salah being hacked down in the box twice against Burnley. Yes, these are “excuses”, but they’re also big calls in marginal situations. And so far this season, at least, the big calls have gone against Liverpool.
PUBLISHED: 16:37 BST, 2 September 2017 | UPDATED: 21:20 BST, 2 September 2017
Lewis Hamilton became Formula One's greatest qualifier of all time after taking his 69th pole position at the Italian Grand Prix.
The Brit's tally takes him past past Michael Schumacher in the all-time standings ahead of his 201st grand prix at the Monza circuit on Sunday.
Despite the emergence of Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel in 2017, Hamilton has still proven to be the king of qualifying this term having landed his eighth pole position of the campaign, six more than his German rival as well as Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas.
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Lewis Hamilton set a new Formula One record for the most pole positions with 69
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Hamilton's 69th career pole means that six men have now held the record outright since 1950
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Hamilton claimed 26 pole positions in 110 races for McLaren and has 43 in 90 for Mercedes
The Englishman, 32, held his nerve in the shootout for pole as the rain, which wreaked havoc with Saturday's schedule, returned with vengeance in the closing moments.
Hamilton was the last to cross the line, and his lap was an incredible 1.1 seconds faster than Red Bull's Max Verstappen with his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo third.
It marks Hamilton's fourth consecutive pole at Monza and moves him above Schumacher's tally which he matched in Belgium last weekend
Hamilton however, will be joined on the front row by the Canadian teenager Lance Stroll with both Verstappen and Ricciardo to serve grid drops following engine penalties. And to cap a remarkable day for Hamilton his title rival Sebastian Vettel will start only sixth.
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Michael Schumacher's pole at the 2006 San Marino Grand Prix took him clear on 66
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Hamilton will now hope to capitalise on his 69th career pole to claim victory at a rain-hit Monza
SCHUMACHER POLES
British GP - 1
Italian GP - 3
US GP - 4
Japanese GP - 8
Spanish GP - 7
San Marino GP - 5
Canadian GP - 6
French GP - 4
Malaysian GP - 5
German GP - 2
Australia GP - 3
Hungarian GP - 7
Monaco GP - 3
Bahrain GP - 2
Belgium GP - 1
European GP - 3
Luxembourg GP - 1
Brazil GP - 1
Austria GP - 2
TOTAL: 68
HAMILTON POLES
British GP - 5
Azerbaijan GP - 1
Italian GP - 6
Chinese GP - 6
Abu Dhabi GP - 3
Mexico GP - 1
US GP - 2
Japanese GP - 2
Spanish GP - 3
Canadian GP - 6
Malaysian GP - 4
German GP - 2
Australia GP - 6
Hungarian GP - 5
Monaco GP - 1
Bahrain GP - 2
Belgium GP - 4
European GP - 1
Austria GP - 2
Singapore GP - 3
Brazil GP - 2
South Korea GP - 1
Russia GP - 1
TOTAL: 69
The British driver has mastered the final qualifying practice at least once on every track on the current calendar, with only poles at Magny Cours in France, Istanbul Park and Buddh International Circuit in India eluding him throughout his career.
And he is unlikely to forget his record pole in a hurry following a frenetic qualifying session which lasted more than three-and-a-half hours.
The delay was caused by Romain Grosjean after he crashed in the wet and criticised the conditions as 'dangerous'.
Despite persistent rain, the one-hour session had started on schedule, but it was suspended after only five minutes when Grosjean lost control of his car at speeds approaching 190mph.
The Frenchman narrowly avoided contact with the barriers on both sides of the main straight, but with his Haas car in a precarious position qualifying was immediately suspended.
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Hamilton has moved one ahead of Michael Schumacher's tally which he matched in Belgium
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The 32-year-old was 1.148 seconds quicker than Red Bull's Max Verstappen in second place
HAMILTON'S FINISHES AFTER BEING ON POLE
1st - 37
2nd - 7
3rd - 8
4th - 1
5th - 3
6th - 1
12th - 1
DNF - 10
'I told you it was f****** dangerous,' an exasperated Grosjean yelled over the radio. Veteran English race director Charlie Whiting called for the session to be red-flagged at 14:05 local time.
A number of track inspections were subsequently carried out, but with standing water still on the main straight, qualifying was no closer to getting under way as the clock hit 16:00.
Fans, who sought cover from the inclement conditions by wearing ponchos and huddling under umbrellas, jeered the on-going delays, and the lack of action - indeed only seven drivers posted a competitive lap in practice earlier on Saturday - will have left the sport's new American owners Liberty Media red-faced.
It was down to Ricciardo to provide the entertainment as he took control of a television camera and headed straight for the Mercedes garage. His shoddy camera work was beamed around the world.
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The Brit gives the thumbs up after another pole position at the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2014
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Hamilton poses after taking pole position at the German Grand Prix in Hockenheim in 2008
Meanwhile, Hamilton spent the delay engaging with his supporters on social media before sitting down with Valtteri Bottas and playing computer games from the comfort of the Mercedes team's hospitality suite.
When the session eventually got under way at 16:40, Hamilton, who so often revels in the wet, looked on course to get the job done. But his record pole came under threat in the closing moments as he sat in third place behind both Red Bulls.
Hamilton however, delivered a quite brilliant lap of one minute and 35.554 seconds to roar to pole. Stroll, 18, will line up in second for Williams and Frenchman Esteban Ocon is bumped up to third with Verstappen and Ricciardo to serve grid drops.
Vettel, whom Hamilton trails by seven points in the title race, was nowhere to be seen on Ferrari's home turf. He qualified only eighth, but will move up two spots following the Red Bull penalties.
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Hamilton salutes the crowd after taking pole of the Canadian GP in Montreal in June 2010
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Hamilton celebrates winning pole next to Sebastian Vettel and third placed Valtteri Bottas
