How long should it be before it’s reasonable to lose faith with a manager? How soon should improvement be seen? It’s not a question that has any easy answer – and it’s one to which the answer seems to be very dependent on context.
Take Liverpool. On Saturday, Jürgen Klopp returns to White Hart Lane, the ground at which, last October, he managed his first Premier League game. The sense then was that Liverpool had pulled off a major coup to land one of the most exciting managers in Europe. Dozens of supporters – of both clubs – clamoured round the car park to get their pictures of Klopp getting off the team bus. In the Liverpool end there were banners reading “Liverpool Über Alles”, “Jürgen, Wir Glauben,” and “Jürgen’s Reds – Scouse nicht Englisch” and another featuring Klopp’s face on a “We Believe” flag. Twenty-three photographers surrounded the Liverpool bench as Klopp took his position before the kick-off.
Ten months on, Klopp is as popular as ever. In the summer he signed an extended contract until 2022. If there have been dissenting voices, they have been quiet and few. Which is, perhaps, a little odd: even Klopp, in the interview published in Stern magazine last week, seemed a little taken aback.
Under Klopp, Liverpool have taken 1.59 points per game. Under Brendan Rodgers, Liverpool averaged 1.88 points per game. Such blunt statistics do not tell anything like the full story. There is an argument that Klopp is still putting right problems left by his predecessor. It can happen that in changing a team they go backwards before they go forwards. Klopp, in that Stern interview, suggested that as his way is coaching rather than buying expensive players – which he described as “sick”– there are no quick fixes. But it is at the very least intriguing that Klopp should be afforded such patience.
In some ways, it speaks very well of Liverpool. The fashion is for fans to demand sacrifice as soon as there’s the slightest sign of trouble, something Sir Alex Ferguson memorably blamed on reality TV and the public feeling they could have a phone vote to evict someone every time they got bored. Yet history shows the greatest managers take time.
In Brian Clough’s first season at Derby County and at Nottingham Forest, he finished in the bottom half of the second flight. Within five years he had won the league with Derby; it took three with Forest. Ferguson was in his seventh year at Manchester United when he won the league for the first time; Herbert Chapman was in his sixth at Arsenal. Don Revie just avoided relegation in his first season at Leeds; it took him three years even to be promoted, the same length of time it took Bill Shankly at Liverpool (even if his side did finish third in the Second Division, missing promotion by a place, two years running).
It’s a different game now and the influence of money means both the parameters within which a club is expected to operate are far more defined and that the prospect of slipping below expected level is terrifying for directors and owners. Often it becomes apparent very quickly that a manager and club simply do not fit and when that is the case, a swift end tends to be best for everybody.
Sunderland have made a habit of surviving with an annual slaughter of a sacrificial manager. But imagining Clough, Shankly, Revie and Ferguson having the starts they had in a modern context cannot but provoke the question of how many great managerial careers are being extinguished before they have begun.
Klopp, at the moment, still has a tide of expectation behind him, in part because of his charisma, in part because of his achievements at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund and in part because there have been flashes of excellence. When Liverpool were good last season, they were very good – in the two wins over Manchester City last season, or in the Europa League successes against Villarreal and Dortmund. More than that, the football was thrilling. If Liverpool could find a level of consistency playing in that way it would be the best of all worlds.
But consistency is the problem. Liverpool were brilliant for 20 minutes (against admittedly acquiescent opponents) after half-time against Arsenal on the opening weekend and that was enough for a 4-3 win. The other 70 minutes were rather less impressive, something that seems far more significant after Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to Burnley.
Liverpool, we know, can attack if the opposition push up and leave space behind them. They can impose themselves physically on teams not keen on the battle. But can they defend? Can they break down sides who play a narrow back four and sit deep? And can they really turn Jordan Henderson into Sergio Busquets?
Klopp is going to have to find answers (and Emre Can may be a simple solution to that last issue). It may be the Burnley result was a blip, a useful warning against any sense the job is nearly done, but if it wasn’t, if Liverpool do oscillate between brilliant and ordinary as they did last season, it will be fascinating to see how much longer patience with the manager will endure.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/aug/25/the-question-will-Jürgen-klopp-be-given-time-liverpool
I see this is the same Jonathan Wilson who wrote Cloughs autobiography and uses Cloughs records with Derby & Forest to beat Klopp with.
