Jurgen Klopp needs to accelerate Liverpool 'reinvention' after troubled start to season

Just as well that Jurgen Klopp did not pause for too long to wonder if there was a pattern to the misfortunes of managers in the opening round of the Champions League.

On Wednesday morning, a German coach who has reached two of the last three finals of the competition was sacked after a shock away defeat. About the same time, a compatriot was fired after a 4-1 loss in his opening group game.

The farewells of Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel and RB Leipzig’s Domenico Tedesco were the actions of clubs used to changing managers often and suddenly.

Klopp, approaching the seventh anniversary of his appointment at Liverpool, is reassured that his achievements – including three Champions League finals in the last five years and, like Tuchel, a win in one of them – can withstand a bruising 4-1 loss at Napoli. “We have different kinds of owners,” Klopp reckoned after Tuesday night’s hammering in southern Italy. “Ours are more calm.”

Nevertheless, the executives of Fenway Sports Group, who have had Klopp as their chief ally for more than half of their 12 years as proprietors of Liverpool will be curious about his plan to recover from the poorest start to a season on his watch.

“We need to reinvent ourselves,” suggested Klopp after Napoli, who had a penalty saved and might have racked up half a dozen goals, blitzed a Liverpool hard to recognise from the version that in May was pursuing an improbable Quadruple.

They failed to add a European Cup and a Premier League to their two domestic cups only on the last day of each of those competitions.

How Klopp defines the “reinvention” remains to be seen - “I said we need to reinvent ourselves because the basic things aren’t there,” he elaborated – but a broad upheaval of the formulas that elevated