New man in town: Jurgen Klopp.
Andy Gray: Time will tell whether Klopp is a good appointment but I expect him to bring a more direct style of playing football. From what I saw of the way Dortmund played under him they didn’t mess about overplaying at the back which sometimes Liverpool did under Brendan Rodgers.
Klopp likes to get his frontmen involved in the game as soon as possible and so wants his players to move the ball around quickly and get it to the forwards as he did when he had Robert Lewandowski in his side.
His view appears to be that if you have a quality striker then why waste time getting the ball to him. If I was Christian Benteke or Daniel Sturridge I would be thinking ‘wow, great, bring it on. I am going to enjoy this.’
You can already see from the way he is talking that his team will play with a passion about them and a willingness to give absolutely everything and he won’t be happy if any player comes off the pitch with anything left in the tank.
Less than 100 per cent effort won’t be good enough for Klopp and I like that. It’s the way football should always be played.
He was successful with that approach in the Bundesliga but whether he has the players who can buy into it at Liverpool remains to be seen because it is a very different style to what they have been used to under Rodgers who was a pass, pass, pass man without creating many chances.
I don’t know how easy it is going to be for him to make the transition from the Bundesliga to the Premier League but the tactics he used in the German top flight will fit very nicely into a Premier League team so he should be a good fit.
And then I'll get my tin hat as I disappear on holiday for a week. Big fan of Klopp but not expecting immediate transformation. Tough games
— Oliver Kay (@OliverKayTimes) October 16, 2015
He is a quality coach with a good mastery of the English language which is hugely important and Liverpool fans will be thinking this is the start of a new successful era for the club, but he is going to need time to put things right.
Klopp hasn’t got the easiest of debuts at Tottenham who have been on good form recently and I like what they are doing now. They are playing with energy and appear to have more stamina than most teams.
Apart from losing to Manchester United on the opening day of the season they have not lost a league game so they are doing something right. However, Liverpool like going to White Hart Lane and they will be fired up for their new manager. 1-1.
Richard Keys: I am not certain anything will change under Klopp unless the model changes when it comes to transfers. I hope he is strong enough to tell the so-called transfer committee what he wants and they give it to him.
While they continue to buy on performance-related stats, rather than listening to what the manager wants, I am not sure how successful he can be.
I am also a little concerned that Klopp wants his players to run and then run further. Liverpool teams haven’t played like that for an awful long time. Today’s top players don’t win games by distance covered and I am not sure Liverpool’s players are ready for that style of football.
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