Klopp’s Liverpool: is time catching up with this magnificent red machine?

When it was all getting a little too much for Jürgen Klopp at Mainz, when the defeats began to accumulate and the negative thoughts began to spiral, he would clear the schedule, jump in the car and take his squad on an adventure holiday. Long walks in the Hunsrück. Mountain biking in the Black Forest. Two or three days spent knocking back beers, sleeping in tiny huts, having the sort of honest conversations you couldn’t really have in an office. This was Klopp’s terrain, the land where he grew up, and in times of crisis it also became his sanctuary.

For Klopp’s players, the occasional jolting change of scenery became not simply invigorating but desperately necessary. The training drills would frequently change, but the rasping cigarette-hardened voice delivering them never did. The limbs and the lungs would be worked to exhaustion from July until May. With every passing year you could feel yourself getting stronger, fitter, harder, tighter. The football was thrilling and relentless. The camaraderie was bracing and intense. Everything worked and worked and worked, right up until the moment it stopped working.

“That’s your ball! That’s your ball! You go fucking out to him!” James Milner screamed at Virgil van Dijk at Old Trafford on Monday night. As Manchester United celebrated Jadon Sancho’s first-half goal, Liverpool were beginning their inquest into a defence that had quite literally stopped working. Trent Alexander-Arnold simply stopped chasing Anthony Elanga. Joe Gomez was nutmegged. Milner dived in on Sancho with all the elan of a firefighter turning up at a christening.

Finally came Van Dijk who, given the chance to close down the six yards separating him and Sancho, simply stood stock still, arms behind his back