Four reasons Jurgen Klopp is the new Arsene Wenger

Will Ford
Klopp Wenger Arsenal liverpool

Keep your mails on Klopp or anything else coming to theeditor@football365.com.

 

Klopp is the new Wenger…
Liverpool really have swapped places with Arsenal – not the rubbish Arsenal of recent years but Wenger’s noughties team.

Manager who the fans love but other fans think is a bit of a dick? Check.

Utter outrage at any decisions that go against you resulting in fan meltdown? Check.

The only realistic threat to a dominant Manchester club with way more resources than anyone else? Check.

The feeling that while this is your best team in decades, you still can’t win consecutive titles? Check.

I’m not knocking Liverpool by the way – I’m just saying we’ve been there – enjoy the ride as long as you can.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

 

Klopp fecal matter
I stumbled on to Twitter last night at half time in the Liverpool/Leicester game, and found literally hundreds of comments from fans slating the manager for the team selection, being really unpleasant about young players picked, saying that Klopp was disrespecting the crowd etc etc.

What a sight to behold.

And I just wondered if this is a generational thing, or have football fans always been such twats? Obviously when I were a lad (all of this used to be fields etc), we didn’t have a resource that allowed us all to shit out whatever fecal matter we had in our heads for all the world to see (Christ, the trouble I would have found myself in if could have posted online when I was 18), so maybe it’s more of an internet issue.

But, fork me, this is a golden time to be a Liverpool fan. Even if Leicester had kicked on instead of time wasting and trying to stumble over the line (they would have won had they done that) and twatted us 6-1, it would still be a golden time to be a Liverpool fan. The fact that we kept going, forced penalties and won just shows even more that this is a golden time to be a Liverpool fan, but we won’t be judged favourably come May if all we have to show is the League Cup. It’s all but irrelevant.

But last night showed me what a bunch of conceited, spoilt fans we have at Liverpool. Not the “real” fans, of course, the ones looking on who would struggle to find Liverpool on a map, but like it or not, like all big clubs, this is where you can find the majority of our fans. And if they can’t appreciate what a wonderful period of time this has been to be supporting the club, then I am at a complete loss.

It doesn’t get better than this. Yes, we could win a few more trophies, but even if we don’t, it has been, and continues to be one hell of a ride under Jurgen Klopp. The journey is more important than the destination, and if you can’t appreciate that, then you should really go and find another sport. American Football, perhaps. That’s where all the people that I know who don’t like or understand sport go for their fix.
Mat (Happy Christmas one and all. Except the trolls. Fuck those guys.)


READ MORE: Feed the Scousers? Really? Liverpool sighs as poverty celebrated


 

Poverty mocking
Apologies but this close to Xmas I had a bit of stuff on that prevented for pre-9:30am mailbox, getting in a pre-emptive explanation and defence of LFC in regards to last night’s game.

The lad who is, rightly, unhappy about the Morton challenge and a lack of a red card, well I can only guide you to last night’s social media which was full of Liverpool fans, unprompted by the wailings of others, acknowledging Morton should’ve been sent off. But Liverpool don’t pick the refs or decide that the Carabao doesn’t use VAR.

And as for Earth to Oyvind, well you obviously didn’t witness Leicester’s antics in the last 15 mins, they went through the whole time wasting playbook, which on this occasion the ref Andy Madley had made quite clear he was aware of. So, if we take 3 minutes of injury time as bog standard, in a half that had 5 subs during play, I’d say Minamino scoring in the 5th minute of injury time was far from unreasonable.

Despite that, I had some sympathy for the Leicester players. However their fans with their poverty mocking songs trotted out throughout the game? Considering the times we live in? None whatsoever, hope you enjoyed your late trip home.

Cheers,
Rob.

 

Reds love the hate
Dear Non Liverpool Fans

You do know that we want you to hate our club and manager? We enjoy it, we thrive on it.

We love the fact that you jump on Klopp at any little chance you get. We love his personality. We love his football and social views. We love his fist pumps. We love his hugs. He is not perfect and can make mistakes but we love him even more for that.

But what we love the most about him is that every single one of you wishes he managed your club. Don’t you? Go on, admit it to yourself.

Keep on hating, we ain’t going anywhere

Regards
Jamie, Kilkenny

 

Let those without sin cast the first stone  
Bit late to the party but just wanted to talk about people who live in glass houses not throwing stones.  For example a certain Virgil Van Dyke said this about his yellow card against Napoli when he connected with the ankle of Dries Mertens in what could have been a career-ending tackle.

“However, the Liverpool man has defended his tackle and didn’t see anything wrong with it.

“I don’t think it was a bad challenge at all,” Van Dijk said, as quoted by ESPN. “Unfortunately I touched him, but I would never go in to hurt him or anything like that.

“I had the ball and obviously [with] the wet pitch you slide through and I touched him, but that’s football.”

For those who remember, VVD’s sliding tackle meant his left foot connected with the standing (note – standing) foot of Dries Merten’s right leg and could easily have led to a career-ending injury.  VVD was yellow-carded (as was Kane) following VAR review that many felt should have been red.  I think ‘touched’ is a very loose term for leaving the boot in.

The moral of the story?  Let those without sin cast the first stone.
Phil, Wirral 

 

Cutting Kane slack
Johnny,

That’s a strange entry, not to easiest to read but I get the gist.

Kane’s just been poor, nothing more really. He was always going to have a shortened pre-season after the euro’s, but choose to spend longer in the US. Seemed like a poor decision but maybe he did need some down time and it was sensible?

He’s always a slow starter and I think he needs momentum and game time to be effective and that seems to be coming back, that certainly coincides with his better displays. You could see he was getting better towards the end of Nuno’s tenure and for all his detractors he has actually scored 7 goals for us this season in 17 starts (I think). The whole squad were poor during Nuno’s time, Kane probably the biggest underperformer though which is a fair.

He’s scored 230 goals for us and a further 64 for England and his loan clubs so I’m happy to cut him a bit of slack for a slow start to be honest. This notion of him going missing against the bigger sides is crazy, he’s scored 67 against Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Leicester, Arsenal, Everton and West Ham.
Steve (THFC)

 

Enjoy it, Jurgen
We’re pretty good you know and our squad is a fair bit deeper than the popular opinion in the press states. Jurgen really does complain too much though and the fixture list is what it is. Just deal with it really.

The domestic cups may well be our best chance of silverware this season and I’m hoping we play something akin to a full strength team in the semi finals of the Carabao Cup. Our fixture list is extremely congested but that’s the point of having a squad rather than just a first XI. The easiest way to have less fixtures is to go out of every competition early –  so it’s slightly counter intuitive to bitch and whine about having less games to play.

Player welfare isn’t taken seriously enough to be fair but these games have to be played sometime. Now if someone was to suggest binning crappy international breaks to make room for more club games – I’m all for that. From their mouth to God’s ears. But short of extending the season further, what’s the alternative?

Anyway, this is a very good chance to win Jurgen’s first domestic trophy and it should definitely be taken advantage of, The league looks increasingly like it’s City’s to lose and 2 of the 3 horses in the race are clipping most of the hurdles as they go over them. If they go over them at all.

Europe is a crapshoot. We have amazing history in the competition and Anfield nights will count for a lot. The pressure is on Pep to win it at last with City, so hes virtually guaranteed to have one of his annual brain spasms and do something inexplicable. Tuchel has proved he can win it with Chelsea though and I don’t like the look of Bayern at all. So the Carabao is an increasingly tasty morsel to be consumed.

But not necessarily with that team. Vardy tore us apart and might easily have had a hat trick or more. Only when we brought on more experience did we get back in the game. Great game though, we don’t half provide a lot of entertainment these days. And beating Brendan will never, ever get old.

So stop complaining Jurgen! He’s done/ is doing a fantastic job and 100’s of clubs across Europe would love to have our problems. Indisputably the best manager we’ve had in 30 years and , in my opinion, the best since Shankly ( sorry Bob ), he has God-like status in the city and it’s well-deserved.

So just enjoy it a bit more fella.
James, Liverpool 

 

League Cup or Johnstone’s Paint?
Sorry Matt B, but it wouldn’t just turn it into an under 24 competition, it would just turn it into the Johnstone’s paint trophy. Liverpool’s heavily rotated side last night featured 9 full internationals, due to the like of Kelleher, Bradley and Williams all being called up, and then Morton & Koumetio both having youth caps so would likely be called up too (though I admit Gomez & Ox aren’t likely being called up in the next 6 months). Flip it round to Leicester, and their last two remaining Centre Backs would have been unavailable, as well as the DM of Ndidi who was filling in, leaving Nampalys as the sole senior CB. Due to the amount of call ups you’d have huge chasms in quality between the players in the team, I imagine Man City would be going well beyond their u23 squad to pull together a squad of 18, all to have Jamie Vardy running at them because he’s retired from internationals.
The more football scheduled in international windows (like AFCON), the more likely teams are to move to block international calls and the closer we move to losing it all together.
KC 

 

League Cup and European football
I commented on Johnny Nic’s article on the Caribou Cup and after seeing others offering their opinion here this morning, I felt compelled to send my half-baked idea into the mailbox too! So, here it is …

The League Cup should only be contested by teams not playing in Europe in a given season. As it stands, you’d have the clubs in the Premier League who finished between 8-20, and then the usual inclusion of teams from the other/lower leagues. The cup may be seen as losing some of its ‘prestige’ – certainly in the eyes of the sponsors and TV companies no doubt – but it would be guaranteed to be more competitive and unpredictable than it currently is.

Using this season’s quarter finals for example, only Arsenal, Brentford and Sunderland would have been eligible using this rule. The remaining teams could have been made up of 5 from Burnley, Brighton, Southampton, Preston, Leeds, Stoke, QPR who were beaten in the round of 16 (not an exact science, granted).

And the real kicker here would be that the winner of the cup becomes automatically ineligible for next season’s iteration due to them now qualifying for the Europa Conference League (lucky them!). That means there’s a guaranteed new winner of the cup each year, avoiding a team like Man City winning it 4 times in a row.

What’s not to like here: more unpredictable, different teams winning the cup each year, route to Europe for less likely teams, better chance for some fans to get to Wembley, etc.
Paddy

 

The simplest solution for the carabao cup… if you qualify for European competitions you don’t play the League Cup (with the exception of defending it if you choose).

This way the big teams who are too snobby to want to win it, and have heavy fixture congestion don’t play it. The mid / smaller clubs who don’t win anything (Burnley, Villa, Brighton, Everton etc) get a decent shot at a proper trophy and therefore play their best teams, free from the fear of getting to the semis to be steamrolled at the last 4 by a Man City who suddenly care.

And finally the top end of the championship also start to sniff out upsets and have a decent shot at a Wembley visit.

Job done. Thanks for listening
Tom (Coventry)