Is Jurgen Klopp the new Arsene Wenger? Is the ignominious end coming?

There are a lot of similarities between the rise and now the potential fall of Jurgen Klopp and Arsene Wenger. Has his Liverpool side peaked?

Liverpool’s 1-1 draw with Chelsea was played to the backdrop of the Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia transfer sagas, with their unseemly big-money squabbles providing rather more entertainment than that second half at Stamford Bridge.

The two midfielders are now both bound for Chelsea – with Caicedo a potential British record transfer – despite Liverpool making decisive but ultimately failed moves for both.

Jurgen Klopp even spoke about Caicedo in his Friday press conference, which in retrospect was a spectacular own goal; it was already embarrassing enough that the Reds did not conclude the signing.

It is now obvious that they weren’t even sure if Caicedo was keen on the move, which defies belief given over £100m was put on the table. That they made that weight of bid after bartering with pennies for Romeo Lavia then put them in a dreadful negotiating position when they returned for the Southampton midfielder, who opted for Chelsea too.

Chelsea and Todd Boehly are surely breaking all types of FFP rules with their frivolous spending but for Liverpool, it is a sorry state of affairs.

READ: Even Chelsea chaos under Boehly shames Liverpool’s mismanagement above Klopp

It is the complete opposite of how the club has operated in the past and how nearly all big clubs do business. It has shades of the Frenkie de Jong to Manchester United saga last summer, but it happened in hours, not weeks and at least Erik ten Hag knew his former player.

They played their hand and got burnt, not once but twice, and are now being widely derided on social media and across punditry teams. It feels so alien, more in line with United post-Fergie, and as some have pointed out in the media (most notably Ken Early on the Second Captains Podcast), Arsenal in the final five years of Arsene Wenger’s 22-year tenure at the club.

There are certainly some similarities between the two situations, but it feels impossible that Liverpool fans would ever create a ‘Klopp Out’ campaign like some Gunners fans did for their greatest-ever manager, even if things got as stale and tired as they did at the Emirates in those final years.

Of course the Arsenal ‘Banter Era’ started before 2013, with varying dates and games offered. Some might say it was the sale of Robin van Persie to United in 2012, others claim it was that 8-2 loss at Old Trafford the year before, but the 2-1 defeat to Birmingham City in the 2011 League Cup final is probably a more accurate starting point of the banter/end.

The 2013 summer window marks the beginning of the final five years of Wenger, and a time when the manager began to be fully questioned by the fans who once bowed to him. It coincided with the rapid growth of social media and the creation of Arsenal Fan TV, which really amplified the doubts to a vitriolic level.

For Liverpool and Caicedo, see Arsenal and Luis Suarez under the heading of transfer fiasco. It is brilliantly fitting that Suarez was of course then Brendan Rodgers’ star man and someone they were desperate not to move to a Premier League rival.

At least in Arsenal’s case, they knew the player wanted to move, with the mercurial and brilliant Uruguayan even going on strike to force a transfer, which is sometimes forgotten. Their problem was a misunderstanding of Suarez’s alleged buy-out clause, which said Liverpool had to accept any offer over £40m.

In reality, it was not an ironclad agreement and Arsenal’s iconic £40m + £1 bid was rejected and then mocked on Twitter by Liverpool owner John W. Henry. Looking back now, it’s hard to believe it wasn’t a parody account, such was the brilliance of the tweet.

What do you think they’re smoking over there at Emirates?

— John W. Henry (@John_W_Henry) July 24, 2013

Arsenal eventually went big at the very end of the window (sound familiar?) and stumped up a club-record deal for Mesut Ozil to go alongside free agents Mathieu Flamini and Yaya Sanogo. Not quite a big three, is it?

Even with Ozil being a truly world-class player, the summer dealings all just felt a bit shambolic and a world away from the sleek operations of years gone by, when Wenger would use his contacts to pick up snips from France and further afield. It was also around this time that the ‘could have signed him’ XI began to form, as well as countless duds.

A possible reason for this? The Frenchman had begun to hold more and more power at the club and became central to recruitment after the departure of David Dein in 2007. His partnership (and personal relationship) with Wenger was absolutely critical to Arsenal’s success, and his absence was strongly felt as the years went by.

It has parallels with the loss of Michael Edwards last summer and his No.2 Julian Ward then leaving after just a season as his successor. Klopp is now running the show with Jorg Schmadtke coming in on a temporary basis. The strategy that worked so well has changed and seemingly for the much worse.

Of course top managers usually do have centralised power but it requires a quality team above and around them for things to go to plan. Look at Pep Guardiola and the Barca contingent at Manchester City, and even Sir Alex Ferguson with David Gill in the latter years of his reign.

Is Arthur last season Klopp’s 2013/14 Kim Kallstrom? Two symbols of a decline in recruitment.

The two managers also share similarities in how their success came about, with both overachieving considering the money at their disposal and the might of the Manchester clubs under whose shadow they were operating.

They took their respective clubs out of the darkness and back to the promised land, playing brands of football that became synonymous with them as managers, but did last season show that Klopp’s methods and now-attempted change in style are not working like they once did? It happened to Wenger too, albeit he was allergic to change in contrast.

The 2013/14 season also saw Arsenal lose whatever aura they had left, a title charge being stopped in its tracks with back-to-back hammerings by Chelsea (6-0) and Liverpool (5-1) in the spring, the first being Wenger’s 1000th game in charge, which of course Jose Mourinho loved. The near-annual capitulations against Bayern Munich began around then too. There was a real softness to the Gunners.

FA Cup success did come, ending the club’s nine-year trophy drought, and then defended the next season but by 2017 (when again the FA Cup was won), Arsenal were out of the top four for the first time in Wenger’s reign and the stench of decay was widespread.

Could the same happen to Klopp and Liverpool? The aura seems to have gone from the team and some of its players and that is an extremely difficult intangible to reclaim. The trust that they would win games like Sunday’s has vanished. For now at least. They’ve already dropped out of the Champions League and now face a battle to get back into it.

There’s also the issue of American owners who aren’t fully invested, which was the case for Wenger in his later years with Stan Kroenke too.

Wenger never knew when to leave Arsenal, missing the opportunity to go out on a high multiple times, and instead was ushered out of the back door in 2018, when his reputation was at an all-time low.

It’s unlikely the exact same scenario will happen to Klopp but it does raise the question if he has already peaked at Liverpool and he’ll leave on a low point in a few years? It is why this season is so incredibly important for the Reds and one that will likely help define the second and final act of the German’s brilliant Anfield era.