and therein lies the real problem, Klopp's inflexibility, stubbornness, tactical naivety and lack of vision.
Sadly I'm not, I love Jürgen to bits for his passion and he seems like a really great guy, but I am starting to question his managerial and tactical decisions more and more and I'm not the only one. I think his style of football was a breath of fresh air for Dortmund and initially for us and swept them to success but its now been completely found out and countered by even shitty little teams, unfortunately Jürgen simply doesn't seem to have a plan B and for a "top" coach that is extremely worrying. I am also utterly baffled by his transfers, the decision to get the Ox into an already crowded midfield and not get a new CB is at best weird, then on top of that we finally get a good LB, Robertson, and then don't play him.
Tactical naivety? Questioning his tactical decisions? How do you explain Klopp's record against the tactically best managers in the world? Dumb luck? Or were the other managers tactically naive in the way they played against him?
Some of his records:
Jupp Heynckes 13 5 4 4
Thomas Tuchel 12 8 3 1
Pep Guardiola 11 5 1 5
Arsène Wenger 9 4 2 3
José Mourinho 7 3 3 1
Manuel Pellegrini 5 3 1 1
Mauricio Pochettino 5 2 3 0
And Pep's record is mainly from his time at Dortmund, since Pep's arrival in the PL, he has only beat Klopp once and that was the 5-0 against 10 men. Were all these managers naive when they played Klopp teams? Or was Klopp (and his team) smarter and beat them? In 72 games against some of the best managers and teams in the world, he has only lost 15 times.
The "being found out" line is absolute bollocks. We've actually improved against the bus parkers. Last season we consistently failed to create big chances in that kind of games, this season we actually create quite a few big chances, it's the finishing that has let us down. Solanke's chance goes an inch lower and we beat Burnley 2-1, any of the 3-4 other big chances we had against Newcastle go in and we win that game with ease. Creating chances against the bus parkers is the hardest part, we're creating plenty now, just need to be more clinical. That has nothing to do with being found out.
Just because you fail to see our different tactical set-ups (a "plan B") doesn't mean they're not there. Do you think we set up the same against Bayern in preseason? Against Burnley? Against Arsenal? Against Hoffenheim? There were tons of tactical tweaks in all of these games.
Talking about "plan B" - What is Guardiola's "plan B" then? Did Barcelona have a "plan B" if "plan A" failed?
For the 100th time, Robertson and AOX have only been here for little over a month, in that time there have been two international breaks and we've had a ton of games to play leaving very little time for the lads to actually get on the training pitch. Robertson has already played 3 (4?) full games for us in which he did well and he will continue to be eased in and get playing time. Also, how is our midfield already 'crowded'? We have one #6, Henderson. We have Coutinho, Wijnaldum, Can and Lallana as #8's. Can doesn't fit our system as an #8, Lallana has spent half his time here on the treatment table, that leaves us with Coutinho and Wijnaldum we can regularly rely on. Is that enough? Is that 'crowded'? We've got lots of games to play, we needed extra cover in midfield. Lallana is also nearly 30, how much longer do you think he'll be able to play a high pressing game in a Klopp team? Klopp has to look to the future, bringing someone in now, to get them ready, who can take over in a year or so is good planning.
Klopp isn't thinking about just the next game, he has already mapped out the season, and knows his long term plans for next season. It's his nature to think long term, and work towards the goals he has set.
Swab already said it, stop thinking in terms of the here and now and start thinking long term.