Over the past five years, Jurgen Klopp has established himself as one of Europe’s top managers.
Playing with his famous gegenpressing, ‘heavy-metal’ football, Klopp’s sides have become known for blitzing teams with endless waves of attack and achieving great success with. The German has won two Bundesliga titles, two DFL-Supercups, one DFB-Pokal, and appeared in both a Champions League and Europa League final.
Klopp will hope to find more success this season by securing a spot in next season’s Champions League through a top-four finish with the Reds.
At the start of the season, if you were to offer any Liverpool fan a top-four finish, they would have bitten your hand off for it.
But one can only feel as if Liverpool have under-achieved this season given that they were only six points off the top of the table sitting in a comfortable second place position on New Year’s Eve.
There are many different possible explanations and factors that played into their January-February collapse, such as the absence of Sadio Mane, injuries, fatigue, or lack of signings. The list could go on and on trying to explain such a dramatic drop in form.
However, one of the factors that played in the Reds’ collapse has been an issue all season: Klopp’s game management.
In Liverpool’s six league losses this season, only six of 16 substitutions were made before the 70th minute, and one of those six was while Liverpool were winning 3 – 1 against Bournemouth, before they collapsed and lost4 – 3.
Not only were 10 of Klopp’s 16 substitutions made after the 70th minute from a losing position, but six of the 16 were made after the 80th minute.
It is clear to see Klopp’s Achilles’ Heel is his timing of substitutions, but the question is why?
The 49-year-old’s game management skills may be lacking, but his man management skills are highly-regarded as one of the best in the business.
He is a player’s manager, the type of manager that players love to play for, love to be with, and continue to love after they part ways.
Bayern Munich star Robert Lewandowski even went as far as to call him a ‘father figure’, when speaking about their time together at Borussia Dortmund.
The German manager builds his teams with an emphasis on teamwork and togetherness and doing so evidently builds many bonds between him and his players.
However, have these emotional bonds with his players been bound a bit too tight?
It seems as if they may have as the Liverpool boss’s reluctance to make changes to his side may stem from him having too much faith in his starting eleven to do the job without him intervening.
It would certainly not be an out-of-character explanation as the German has always had a tendency to let his emotions get the better of him (just ask any fourth official!).
While this flaw in Klopp’s methods may be attributed to his faith in his players on the pitch, it may also be attributed to his lack of faith in the players off the pitch.
Liverpool have suffered many injuries this season and their lack of squad depth has been exposed as a result.
Their bench this season has more often than not consisted of youth players such as Ben Woodburn and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Throughout his career, Klopp has been praised for developing younger players and giving them chances in the first team, and he has continued to do so at Liverpool giving many professional debuts to youth players.
In his time at the Merseyside club, he has tended to lean on his younger players and his squad players more in domestic cup competitions, as is now customary in the modern game.
However, when it comes to league games, it seems as if this ‘faith’ he has in these squad players disappears.
One may point to the fact that it is only his first full season at the club, so the squad he has now might not be his ideal squad of choice but even if he has players in his squad that he does not want or trust, he still has his younger players that he has said he would love to promote and give first team chances.
What better time would it be to give these players a chance then when your team is losing if you do not trust some of your more senior squad players, and the players on the pitch are not performing well?
To be fair to Klopp, he has been subbing these younger players on when he has had to in losing situations as the likes of Marko Grujic, Ben Woodburn and Trent Alexander-Arnold have all been a part of his 16 substitutions this season.
The problem is that these ‘first team chances’ are hardly chances at all as all four times the aforementioned player were subbed on in losing situations, they were subbed on after the 75th minute.
Even when only given these morsels of minutes, these players have shown they can make some sort of an impact as Grujic nearly broke the deadlock in their 0 – 0 draw against Southampton this past weekend after he had a powerful header saved by Fraser Forster.
If these players are going to be given chances, they should be given the proper amount of time to make a proper impact as no one will ever know what these young men are capable of until they are given a good opportunity in a tough situation.
Whether Klopp has too much faith in his starting eleven or too little faith in his squad and younger players, it has become evident this season that even a world-class manager such as Jurgen Klopp has his flaws.
If Liverpool wish to push on from their potential (knock on wood) top-four finish this season, then Klopp must identify and correct his game management flaw.
