Daniel Storey: Jurgen Klopp deserves support - not social media savagery
Jurgen Klopp’s mother passed away and travel restrictions meant he was unable to travel to Germany for the funeral. Picture: Emilio Andreoli/Getty
Even presenting that as a question is a little unfair, because the answer is that only Jurgen Klopp knows. Liverpool’s manager has had an awful few weeks, not because his team are struggling form but because his mother passed away and travel restrictions meant that Klopp was unable to travel back home to Germany for the funeral.
For all those Liverpool supporters fouling social media with their hot takes about why Klopp’s time as manager should be in doubt, take even one step back and appreciate the bigger picture.
How on earth can you go through the grieving process without closure and when every aspect of your professional life is played out in front of millions of viewers waiting for you to trip up?
Whether Klopp needs to take a step back from media duties or even enjoy a short break away from football is up to him. But the least he deserves from true Liverpool supporters is overwhelming support and love without any semblance of negative connotation. That should stand even without Klopp’s achievements over the last three years.
With them, it is without question.
If you take Jose Mourinho’s gripes about individual mistakes on face value, he has a point. Tottenham are manufacturing their own lamentable fall into mid-table with preventable errors and a lack of attacking urgency.
But Mourinho is too long in the tooth to pretend that he is not culpable in this mess and should know better than to lay the blame at the feet of senior players. Perhaps Tottenham are making so many mistakes through an inherent fear that results from their manager’s blame game.
And perhaps those mistakes are highlighted more because Tottenham lack the attacking intent to atone for them. In the last few weeks, Tottenham have lost twice to Big Six peers (Chelsea and Manchester City) through a reliance upon a counter-attacking style that barely even bothers to counter. Instead they sit deep, invite pressure, eventually relent to that pressure and are unable to transform their style quickly or significantly enough to react to it.
Sorry, but that one’s on the manager.
If Ruben Dias has been Manchester City’s biggest mood-changer, Ilkay Gundogan constitutes the individual story of the Premier League season so far.
In his first six league appearances of the season, Gundogan had five touches of the ball in the opposition penalty area and attempted only four shots. Since then he’s attempted 32 shots and is now comfortably City’s top league goalscorer this season. Of all regular Premier League players this season, only Mohamed Salah has a better goals-per-90-minutes record than him.
Pep Guardiola deserves as much credit as Gundogan himself. Moving Gundogan higher up the pitch from a normal No 8 passing shuttler to an advanced midfielder that makes late runs into the box and occasionally finds himself as the furthest player forward has helped transform City’s attacking play. The neat passing-and-moving triangles 30 yards from goal are back and so is the volume of goals scored from inside and around the six-yard box.
The title race is not over yet, despite the bookmakers’ insistence otherwise.
Manchester City must travel to Goodison Park and the Emirates before hosting Manchester United. Draw one of those games and lose the derby and the gap could be down to three points with 11 games remaining.
But City have established a position of dominance with 11 straight victories in the league that came after a lethargic start to the season. Right now they look unbeatable.
Liverpool have clearly been hampered by several key injuries in the same position, but they are not the only club to suffer from absentees this season. Of Leicester City’s 24 league matches, Wesley Fofana has missed eight, Wilfred Ndidi 12 and Ricardo Pereira 19. Further up the pitch, Jamie Vardy and James Maddison have only started 17 league games apiece. That has hampered Leicester, who have only won 58% of their league games.
But with those around them faltering, Leicester are sticking around. James Justin is now the only long-term injury absentee, Brendan Rodgers’ side have won eight of their 11 matches in 2021 and they have the experience of last season to fuel their pursuit of Champions League football.
They’re still considered outsiders for a top-four place, but there’s no team in the country with the team spirit and togetherness to match Leicester’s.
Losing 3-0 at home to Burnley while mustering only three shots on target of your own could constitute grounds for sacking in itself, but Roy Hodgson’s situation is more perilous because of the wider circumstances.
The oldest manager in the country is out of contract in the summer and there are few indications that it will be extended.
Nobody wants to campaign for a manager’s sacking, but why would Palace not consider making a change now?
It would give the new manager a few months to oversee the squad in a relatively pressure-free environment, allow him to make decisions on the future of many out-of-contract players this summer and then given him a full summer to organise a squad capable of producing better than Palace’s current level.
The Eddie Howe rumours make an awful lot of sense.
