Judging any club in pre-season is generally foolish, but even more so with Liverpool. It still feels as though Jurgen Klopp is taking a risk.
Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp have become a useful case study into researching fan behaviour during pre-season. His first full summer at Anfield was played out to the backdrop of supporters discussing just when Marko Grujic would win the Ballon d’Or, as excitement reached a crescendo when preparations were rounded off with him scoring the final goal in the club’s most memorable 4-0 win over Barcelona ever.
The Reds lost to Burnley in their second game of the subsequent Premier League campaign.
In the build-up to 2017/18, the intrigue was in how an attack featuring Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane and Mo Salah could mesh together as each scored in some standout victories. Then Liverpool drew their season opener against Watford by conceding as many times as they had in eight untroubled, comfortable friendlies. The Nabil Fekir saga dominated 2018/19, a period when transfer hysteria seemed to truly take hold.
But 2019/20 was surely the greatest misdirection in pre-season history. Liverpool beat Tranmere, Bradford and Lyon but those latter two victories were bookends to a four-game winless streak which culminated in a chastening 3-0 defeat to Napoli.
Klopp even squandered all momentum from the club’s Champions League success by signing only four players: two fringe teenagers and a pair of 30-something goalkeeper deputies. The frustration with performances was compounded by stagnation in the transfer market. And all that was the precursor to Liverpool winning their first title in 30 years at an anti-climactic canter.
“Around 90 per cent of our people are with us with the transfer policy,” Klopp said then. “Ten per cent maybe not, but they are on social media. They are constantly worried. If you sign a player they ask if it is the right player. Nobody should think we did not look. It is not that we are not negotiating like crazy as well in these times, but finding the right solution is more difficult the better the team gets.”
Klopp might have been minded to echo those sentiments at various points this summer. When the signing of Calvin Ramsey was accompanied with the news that Liverpool’s incoming business was done by June 16, the existential crisis of fans having to occupy themselves for two months took hold. Some are indeed “constantly worried”. But supporters would have to be…
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