Jurgen Klopp's leaving of Liverpool a loss for both club and Premier league

'What you are to do without me I cannot imagine'

Jurgen Norbert Klopp is too modest a man to echo the words of George Bernard Shaw but Liverpool fans will be asking themselves that question after the surprise announcement that the club's most successful manager in a generation will step down at the end of the season and take a break from football.

Counting the World Club Cup, Klopp is joint fourth on the all-time major trophies list with Kenny Dalglish (5), one behind Bill Shankly, both men whose departures also rocked Anfield. He may only have secured a single league crown but it was one the club were desperate for.

Dalglish was, and still is, revered for his success on the pitch and in the dugout, but in terms of charisma and relationship with the supporters, the German more resembles the man who moulded Liverpool into a force in the 1960s/early 1970s.

Like Shankly, the intensity of effort in turning a struggling ship around appears to have taken its toll and Klopp (56) cited tiredness as a major factor in his decision.

Both the club and Premier League will miss him as a highly capable manager, who posed the only genuine challenge to Pep Guardiola’s far-better funded Manchester City hegemony until Arsenal last year, and perhaps even more as a character.

The hearty chuckles and beaming smiles, the air-punching passion, the bear-hugs for players, both his and the opposition. Outspoken (some might argue particularly for his team’s benefit) and often argumentative. Though rarely with Pep, their rivalry apparently built on mutual respect, in contrast to the bitterness seen between the likes of José Mourinho and Arsène Wenger.

In a world warped by money, Klopp comes across as both principled - he was one of the first managers to