Football365’s early loser: Loris Karius

He didn’t even want a hug.

Jurgen Klopp said many words on Wednesday night about Loris Karius and his decision to drop him like a high, lofted ball into the area – suggesting that the decision was made equally for his ‘boys’ as a collective and the ‘boy’ who had unwittingly found himself in the middle of a pundits v footballer verbal grapple – but those were the most revealing; he didn’t even want a hug from the most huggable man in football.

And yet Karius must have been expecting the decision. As a goalkeeper it’s a decision you must expect, accept and then attempt to reverse. And yet crucially, the reversal is something entirely out of the dropped goalkeeper’s control. Karius must now wait until Simon Mignolet makes a similar series of mistakes, with only cup competitions to keep his hands warm.

What flavour of fool plays in the one position where the potential for disaster far exceeds any potential for glory? Only Championship managers occupy a similar precarious ground, where two or three poor games can lead to a short, fractious conversation with somebody who inevitably claims this is far more difficult for him than you. Strikers are allowed to ‘play themselves into form’; goalkeepers rarely get the same luxury.

Once opposition players talk openly of ‘targeting’ your goalkeeper, there are only two ways to reverse the negativity – one is through a series of error-free performances and the other is to take that goalkeeper out of the firing line. Karius had failed at the former so Klopp really had little choice but to opt for the latter. The manager needed to manage. Ultimately, he made the right decision for both player and team as Karius had become the weakest link in a team that is too good right now to carry a keeper bought for the future.

The shame is that there has been an ugly fog around Karius over the last two weeks, with certain pundits pulling their handbags towards their chests when a footballer dared to say anything other than the benign in response to public and sustained criticism. It will inevitably look like the furore forced Klopp’s hand, when the decision was the right one purely from a footballing point of view.

Karius may well be the better goalkeeper in 2018, but in December 2016, that honour goes to Mignolet. And it’s in December 2016 when Liverpool need to win football matches.

Sarah Winterburn