MANCHESTER, England — Jurgen Klopp threw down a challenge to his Liverpool players 24 hours before their Premier League clash with Manchester City, but after a 4-1 defeat at the Etihad on Saturday, it was clear that some of them didn’t even notice. Others might have done, but their bodies were incapable of accepting it.
So, they now have two huge games in the week ahead — at Chelsea on Tuesday and at home to Arsenal on Sunday — to give a delayed response to Klopp’s challenge, which could not only save their Liverpool careers, but also make it easier for the club to rebuild around them, rather than without them.
Ahead of the City game, the Liverpool manager had used his pre-match press conference to admit publicly that the summer will signal a rebuild of his squad at Anfield: “After seven years, it is clear that we have to do it,” Klopp said.
While he was delivering some cold reality, rooted in an honest acceptance that his great Premier League and Champions League-winning team is approaching the end of the road, Klopp may have also delivered his message in the hope that it would spark a defiant reaction from those players with question marks over their future at the club. But in the end, Klopp only received confirmation of what he already knew.
– Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga & more (U.S.)
– Read on ESPN+: Why Bayern Munich fired their coach
There were no surprises, and no performances that would have given the former Borussia Dortmund coach second thoughts.
“We were too passive, too open, too deep, too far away from anything,” Klopp said after Saturday’s loss. “These kind of things cannot happen. But they happened and after that… wow! We just had to follow as they [Man City] did whatever they wanted. We were lucky they weren’t in a greedy mood.
“Apart from that, there is nothing good to say about this game. This is a game we have to use unfortunately and make clear which things cannot happen. We cannot not have challenges in key areas or be that open.”
Against City, Liverpool’s lack of competitiveness and energy in midfield allowed Pep Guardiola’s team to control the game, but Klopp will not have been surprised by what he saw. His Liverpool team has lost nine Premier League games this season and five out of ten in 2023, so this was not a one-off.
The 7-0 rout of Manchester United seems to have been the outlier rather than the real Liverpool, so Klopp has plenty of work to do. And it starts against Chelsea on Tuesday. Lose at Stamford Bridge and Liverpool will be in a battle to play in the Europa League rather than chasing a Champions League spot. That may already be the case.
Klopp must somehow find a way to squeeze one more big effort and achievement out of this team before he breaks it up. But their defeat at City suggested that too many of his great servants have already run out of road.
