It’s Saturday afternoon and I find myself on a train to Newcastle ahead of the game with Rafa’s Magpies at 4:30pm Sunday afternoon. I’d brought my laptop with the intention of doing a ???with and without Adam Lallana’ comparison article, but my lack of forward thinking meant that I had no internet for the next 3 hours and therefore no way of doing any actual research for the article, so I changed to a subject that is entirely opinion-based, so that research could be at a bare minimum. I had to find something to do to stop myself from going absolutely mental by the time I got to the north-east. This topic was actually suggested by a Twitter user after I sent a tweet out asking Redmen’s followers what topics they’d like discussing in written content. Your username escapes my memory and due to my internet predicament I can’t find out, but if you’re reading this, thanks very much!
So, Jurgen Klopp. He is well and truly the Liverpool manager right now despite what a very small minority of fans are campaigning for. He’s been here for just under two years and has completely transformed a lot of the team since arriving, particularly in the attacking areas of the pitch. He’s brought in creative attacking players like Sadio Mané and Mo Salah, who are very fast and lethal wingers. He’s developed Roberto Firmino into a quality false 9, and Philippe Coutinho is on the cusp of becoming a truly world-class player. Adam Lallana has developed from a bit-part player to an integral part of Klopp’s system and plans for the team. It’s safe to say that Klopp’s tenure at Liverpool has had a positive effect on most of our players, and to his credit, he’s sold the ones that weren’t working. There’s a few players though that, even in fairly recent Liverpool history, would’ve thrived under our current German boss. I was born in 1998, and already I’ve seen my fair share of good, great and poor Liverpool teams. I’m going to pick 5 from my ???1998 onwards era’ so that I can talk about them properly rather than just pretending I know about them, and I’m not going to pick all players that were just boss players anyway (Luis Suarez, for example. He does not make this list), I’m talking about players who either did well but could’ve been even better, or players who were a bit shit but might’ve been alright given the right management from Klopp.
Dirk Kuyt
By no stretch of the imagination did Dirk Kuyt have a poor Liverpool career. He was magnificent. He was never the most talented player on the pitch technically but he did have an outstanding ability to read the game and poach goals. However, the main reason he would’ve done well under Klopp is, like Adam Lallana, his insane work-rate. The man never stopped running.
Kuyt was always a very good squad player, which would’ve suited Jurgen. Much like Lallana and now several other players in our squad, the versatility of him was also a big plus. While often playing right-midfield, Kuyt could always do a job on the left on even as a striker when we were looking for a partner for Torres or needed to rotate for cup games. We now have similar players in that sense, such as James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, but neither of those players (from what we’ve seen) have a poaching ability on the level that Kuyt did.
Michael Owen
Yes, yes, I know Michael Owen is a bit of a snake. Not only did he force his way out of the club in 2004 when Benitez arrived, but he also moved onto Manchester United later on in his career.
But Michael Owen was a really good footballer, and to his credit, he didn’t have a bad career overall. He won many honours at many different clubs and it was all hunky dory, but imagine if we had a fella like him breaking through now. Just 18 years old, with such raw talent. We have a couple of players of course who are starting to make their mark in Klopp’s first team, Ben Woodburn being the most obvious example. Maybe we have a similar talent in Harry Wilson, who is currently in great form for the under-23s. Unfortunately though we can’t really claim they’re having the same impact as Michael Owen did at their age. If we had Michael Owen bursting onto the scene now, Klopp’s management would make him one hell of a player for Liverpool. So he had his injury problems but like I said, he had a good career and if we’re thinking selfishly, we would’ve liked his prime years to have been played at Anfield.
Suso
The young Spanish winger/midfielder that never really managed to truly impress in a Reds shirt. He had bags of potential at was at the club for a fair number of years before being moved on.
He moved to Milan where he’s doing alright, but whenever he played for Liverpool I remember his always looking quite bright and sharp. I’ve never been quite sure why no manager we had put more effort into developing him and turning him into a consistent first team player, particularly Brendan Rodgers. Of course, we never see everything that happens behind closed doors and I never used to pay close attention to the younger squads when Rodgers was in charge and Suso was at the club. Maybe his attitude wasn’t brilliant- there was an incident on Twitter with Jose Enrique where he ended up being fined by the FA for an obscene gesture in a video.Maybe the youth staff and Rodgers didn’t think he had what it took, but to me he always looked a similar player to Coutinho and I think Klopp has the management skills that perhaps may have brought that sort of quality out of him at Liverpool. He was briefly linked with Spurs during the window and I continuously wonder whether one day he’ll return to the Premier League and make us regret letting him go.
Steven Gerrard
Alright so, let’s be clear, Steven Gerrard would’ve thrived under any manager, in any Liverpool team in the club’s history. He would’ve thrived in any team he wanted to in his prime, he was that good.
It is upsetting to think that Gerrard left Liverpool just 5 months before Klopp was brought in at Anfield in October 2015. Obviously Gerrard’s departure was announced around New Year of 2015 and we all knew he was heading for LA Galaxy at the end of the 2014/15 season. There was a time in Gerrard’s career where I honestly think he was the best midfielder in the world. A time frame of perhaps a couple of seasons, maybe across the 3 seasons where we made the 2 Champions League finals vs AC Milan (which includes the ’06 cup final vs West Ham). Even after those, when Fernando Torres joined the club, he was still world-class. The season we went for the title in 2009, he was in unplayable form at Old Trafford when we beat United 4-1, he and Torres gave the United back 4 (Nemanja Vidic in particular) a nightmare afternoon. He truly was the complete midfielder and he was one thing that Liverpool are lacking on the pitch right now: an outstanding leader. Jordan Henderson is a fine Liverpool captain. He’s just fine. He isn’t awful, and I do think that people expect him to be too much like Gerrard (i.e. A man who scores a load of free-kicks and 15 goals a season). Henderson does a decent enough job, but Gerrard’s leadership and overall game was just a level above. Even in his final seasons, where he moved to the anchor role that Henderson current occupies, his presence in midfield was just so dominant, he pretty much bossed every game he played. You could take Gerrard from any point in his career, whether it be his prime years from 2005-2009 or his later years under Rodgers in the deeper role, and he would truly thrive under Klopp’s regime at Liverpool. They share the same desire to succeed, they share the same work ethic, they are both driven to be the best. I would go so far to say that Gerrard could’ve been even better under Klopp at Liverpool (if that’s even possible).
Florent Sinama-Pongolle
Sinama-Pongolle was so highly rated up on his arrival in England that he was being dubbed the new Thierry Henry, which can’t have helped a young 16 year old moving a new country settle down. His best moment in a Liverpool shirt is most likely the equaliser vs Olympiakos in the 2004 Champions League group stage, setting the stage for Gerrard to bang in the third later on and send Andy Gray absolutely nuts. Other than that, he didn’t really do much.
Liverpool sold the forward in 2006 and since then he has played for 9 clubs, including Chicago Fire in the MLS. He’s now playing for Scottish side Dundee and Thierry Henry probably has a hard time remembering who he is. Sinama-Pongolle is another example of a player who had bags of potential, and bags of skill that in theory, could’ve done exceptionally well at Liverpool. There is a whole pool of players I could’ve picked from for this article, but I remember Sinama-Pongolle’s arrival and first season quite clearly because of the hype surrounding him at the time and also that big goal against Olympiakos. I don’t have too much evidence to suggest why, I just feel like he was a player Klopp could’ve got something more out of. Klopp, I feel, can be quite a calming influence on players who are being put under a lot of pressure because of the hype attached to them. Rafa Benitez can come across as quite cold, the polar opposite to Klopp, and maybe if there hadn’t been so much pressure on Pongolle, if he’d had a bit more of an arm around the should kind of management during his time at Liverpool, he’d have turned into the player a lot were expecting him to be.
By Ben Kelly
