Man oh man. Here we go. Jurgen Klopp’s first match in charge of Liverpool Football Club is right around the corner. Saturday away to Tottenham.
I genuinely haven’t been this optimistically excited for a Liverpool match since Liverpool-Crystal Palace when I was naive enough to believe they’d put eight goals past Palace at Selhurst Park and wrestle goal difference away from Manchester City.
As Drake and Future might say, what a time to be alive.
For what it’s worth, in my young life of Liverpool fandom, I’ve been conditioned to believe proceedings are never as good as I attempt to twist them to be.
Confession: I thought John Henry would tell Klopp to throw a baseball and if he didn’t hit a target, he’d cancel the German’s appointment, rip up his contract and its facsimile and ring up Eddie Howe or Garry Monk. I wish I could say I’m kidding.
But it’s real, ladies and gentlemen.
The tracksuit, glasses and hat, they’ll be red. (Okay, maybe not the glasses, but that’d be dope if he did that too).
All the exuberant celebrations and spoiled, bratty reactions when things go wrong that, when acted out by Tim Sherwood the man is labeled a lot of different words that I can’t write here, but when Klopp parades down the sideline when Dortmund would score or kick a water bottle when they concede, he’s a genius. All of those actions will be in conjunction with tension points throughout the Liverpool match. Not Dortmund, not anyone else. What makes him so likeable is he acts as any of us would on the sideline, except the football knowledge in his brain should cause him to act high brow and above it all.
But he doesn’t. He also doesn’t assure the press how incredible he is at every turn, as Timmy Tactics would.
The man has hardly figured out which key opens his office yet, but so many curiosities may be answered Saturday at White Hart Lane.
Will this be his first choice XI between now and January, maybe now and next season if ownership doesn’t give him any money mid-season?
If they win, will they win the league?
If they lose, will they get relegated?
One would imagine to see a 4-2-3-1. For this week, with Christian Benteke reported OUT, there’s not much dilemma for who the “1” will be. Obviously Joe Allen in a false nine role.
Shite, sorry, Brendan Rodgers hacked my computer.
But what happens when Benteke and Daniel Sturridge are both fit?
Speaking of injuries, it’s likely that Roberto Firmino won’t be able to make the bench against Spurs, captain Jordan Henderson is still out as is Jon Flanagan.
Meanwhile, Klopp wasn’t the man who promised James Milner that he’d play centrally, both literally and figuratively, for Liverpool. Through those glasses, how does he see the Englishman?
For now, I’ll put on the tracksuit, glasses and hat.
I’ll envision the exuberant celebrations with the bratty bottle kicks when I don’t get my way, and put forth my XI if I were the man headed into his first match running Liverpool Football Club.
Guess what? NO MORE THREE IN THE BACK!
