A season can be defined by single results, runs of form and often signals of intent. When John Henry and his band of merry men decided that enough was enough during a real low point, they made the decision that Brendan Rodgers was no longer the man to bring the good times back to Anfield once more.
Sacking a manager who brought your club closest to its holy grail than it ever had before is an action that could easily, well, it could easily go tits up. Basically.
Rodgers taught us to believe. He taught us that we could defy the rules of this league and push beyond the ceiling. Yet, like any successful season on the ale, the hangover lasts longer than the celebrations ever would and we spent a year and a half downing metaphorical pints of water and burying our head under the quilt of 2014-15. Heads were sore and we couldn’t get up from the blow.
If none of the above made any sense to you, then in normal-person terms, last season was an absolute shitter. But this season didn’t improve under Rodgers, and the drought of joy that we saw last year seemed more like the whole journey, not just a dodgy A-road. And with this realisation, the club needed new life. Get Liverpool on the operating table. We were on life support and we need an injection of creativity and a new driver. The same journey, but a new route.
Fast forward a few weeks and we have a new gaffer. His name is Mr Klopp and he’s just box office. If Jose Mourinho sums up Chelsea perfectly (a sinner, a snide and the poorest of poor losers), then Klopp is Liverpool all over. Emotional, over-the-top and a bit of a laugh. He tells journalists they’re crazy and they laugh. He talks and he charms. But he’s more than happy to discard fools, never mind suffer them. Because Jurgen Klopp is box office.
Things have changed already under Klopp. The crowd are enjoying the match-day experience again. We had a slow start, but it’s been enjoyable. The team are enthused because they’ve been given a fresh lease of life. Words have come out of the dressing room (from the likes of Alberto Moreno) that they weren’t completely happy with their former manager, and once that becomes the reality of life at a football club, you need to restore the equilibrium. And fast. And that never means sacking the players. That means sacking the manager.
The Chelsea result was one that I never expected, but I will say I was quietly confident we could get something. A draw was my main expectation (naturally) but I feel as though in previous games we had begun to understand what is being asked of us. We were beginning to turn the screw and starting to give Klopp what he desired as minimum. Hard work. His mantra is simple. If we work harder, faster and cleverer than the opposition, we win the match. While seeming obvious, this theory is used surprisingly rarely in practice.
Now, we’re at a point where as fans we can choose one of two ways to approach the season ahead. Firstly, we could continue to view our team as one in transition. Board that train and act small-time. We could admit that our best player may not play again for months. We can accept that top four is really tough and conform to the idea that we’re probably going to finish fifth or sixth, and we can allow ourselves to listen to opposition fans who are calling us past it. That’s option one. I don’t like option one.
We also have a second option. From the dark side of option one, we have the light of the second choice. We could decide that, actually, our team is alright. It’s actually more than alright. It’s good. Our team. Our squad. All of it. It’s good. We have got to this point in the season without all of our best players, and without others playing that well. We’ve got this far in the season, really, without the right manager in charge. Now we have the right one. One who’s going to teach us that, instead of drinking from the bottom of the barrel, we need to think champagne to drink champagne. We need to play big to be huge. We can take the result, against the champions no less, and allow it to inflate us. They have the best manager in the world, with one of the best squads in Europe, with the most money in the world, and we deemed them irrelevant. Our squad did that.
Let’s take this attitude into our game next week. Into each game. In truth, if we don’t beat Palace next weekend then yesterday’s result means little to nothing. But in Klopp we have a lad who doesn’t hold the same emotional boundaries that a Premier League game against Crystal Palace held for Rodgers.
If we can beat Palace next week, when we beat Palace next week, we will have exercised two demons. The demon of Stamford Bridge and the demon of Crystal Palace. And if we exercise our vocal chords next Sunday at Anfield, it could be the start of one hell of a ride.
