Salah shines as Klopp earns tactical triumph amid his touchline theatrics

Towards the end of this thrilling, slightly wild afternoon at Anfield, Jürgen Klopp could be seen with his arms outspread, a tableau of pathos, disbelief, astonishment, bewildered to find himself handed a red card by Anthony Taylor and sent from his touchline.

As Klopp whirled away, almost sprinting from pitchside, air‑guitaring wildly, still barking and yelping and pointing, it was hard to disagree with his look of stunned surprise. This made no sense at all. How exactly had Klopp managed to last 85 minutes out there?

It was just that kind of game, an afternoon that began slowly, before unspooling in a whirl of conjoined attacking thrust and counter-thrust, ignited by Manchester City’s disallowed goal on 55 minutes.

Liverpool’s manager had spent much of the second half cartwheeling down his touchline, beseeching the fourth official or looming over the assistant referee in his billowing quilted coat like an enraged human wigwam. There was an unpleasant edge at times in the spectacle, and a sense of spite in some of the songs and chants. Objects seemed to be thrown at City’s bench from the stand on that side. Football can feel like catharsis, a chance to expel all those pent‑up toxins. There seemed to be quite a lot to go round here.

By the end there was a kind of giddiness around those clanky corrugated stands, a sense of a 1-0 Liverpool win played out through a mist of rage. But for all the theatre this was also a cold victory, and a triumph of planning for Klopp, who achieved that rare thing, a genuine tactical triumph in a high‑stakes game.

The talk around this team in the last few weeks had been of entropy and rust. The players have looked tired. The system has looked tired. Klopp-ism, a way of playing where the