If you look at Klopps reign at Dortmund you'll notice most of his star players just break down or lose form. I think it's the constant intensity his tactics require from his players. This intensity is both mental and physical.
This is exactly what's happening here imo.
I don't agree.
It's lazy thinking. About as lazy as you can get.
Something happened at Dortmund, therefore it will inevitably happen here?
It's pretty medieval. It's the sort of stuff I'd expect to hear from people who believe in witches. Or Jesus. Or Father Christmas. Whatever. And this "OMG it's happening AGAIN" thing is going round and round the internet, and it's Liverpool fans who are making that happen. (Probably not what HUYTON RED or me might call 'proper' Liverpool fans, but they think they are)
We've not played with that degree of intensity since the swashbuckling 2017/18 season. We didn't just marginally step off the gas. We virtually took our style of play and completely reversed it.
We don't press anywhere near as much as we used to. Not to my eye anyway. I think I saw some stat that we were still just about the most intense pressing side in the league. I find that very very hard to believe. It just doesn't tally with the games I've seen. Even if it is true, which I don't believe, it must still be well well below the intensity of our press of 3 or 4 years ago.
Our build-up play is classic continental and has been for 3 years since Lijnders came in and reversed the philosophy of 'Brains'. Slow slow and then quicken up when you get into the final third. That's got to be way less stress on the players' bodies. Our league title season was absolutely riddled with games that we won with barely as much as energy as we needed to put in to get the result. Game management. Henderson and Gini are brilliant at it.
I've got a layman's understanding of the physical fitness and medical side of the game - i.e. almost no understanding - but it doesn't strike me that we're picking up lots of injuries that would be caused by overplaying. The assault on Virgil. Matip clearly has tall fella type chronic back problems, which is just down to his height and build; nobody could accuse Matip of playing too much. As far as I know cruciate ligament injuries aren't due to overplaying. I saw Jota's happen and I was surprised nobody really seemed to pay attention to it because I saw his leg go sideways and I went "oh no!" and I immediately feared it was another cruciate. It was subtle but defo visible.
Also, Klopp has been bringing in various specialists from Germany in the last couple of seasons, and judging by titles such as 'Chief of the Chill-Out Room' and 'Director of Doing F**k All for a Couple of Days', Klopp is pretty focused on recovery and only too aware of the load on his players.
So I don't worry about 'Dortmund II - Klopp flogs his players to death (again)'
If anything these German recovery supremos seem to be doing too good a job. it's almost like they've talked about rest and recovery so often that the players have been sort of hypnotised into feeling knackered. Based on this season our next fancy appointment should be something like 'General Get Yer Arses in Gear Lads!'. Someone to put a rocket up em.
The only thing I would be concerned about is the increase in games since Dortmund. Germany only has one domestic cup. OK, Klopp tends to rotate in our domestic cups, so maybe that isn't too much of an issue, but I'd lay a fiver that our lads are playing half a dozen games a season more than the Dortmund lads were and we know the calendar is only ever going to get more crammed as FIFA and UEFA try to cram in as many games as the calendar will just about allow.