PAUL JOYCE
Klopp must fix defence that cost side shot at title
Paul Joyce, Northern Football Correspondent
March 1 2017, 12:01am, The Times
Between August 2009 and May 2012, a period in which Jürgen Klopp built Borussia Dortmund up and up until they retained successive Bundesliga titles, Mats Hummels missed just seven league games at the heart of his manager’s defence.
Over that same period Neven Subotic was absent for 12 games; the point being that, when it came to selecting his line-up each week, Klopp did not need to worry about his centre-back partnership. It largely picked itself.
Shortly before the end of Monday’s demoralising defeat by Leicester City, the sort of numbing reverse that sparks a debate on just where the club are heading, Liverpool had been exposed as a shambles. A switch to a back three saw their defence consisting of two midfielders in Lucas Leiva and Emre Can, while another midfielder, James Milner, filled in at wing back (in a season in which he has regularly been played out of position at left back).
Since coming to Liverpool, Klopp has given the impression that there is little he yearns for from that successful tenure at the Westfalenstadion.
Yet, surely, if there is one thing that he misses, it is the sense of comfort and reassurance that the firm foundations of the Subotic-Hummels partnership brought him as he saw off Bayern Munich’s challenge in 2010-11 and then again in 2011-12.
Klopp has had more centre-back pairings (20) than he has had months at Anfield (17) and, when the constant state of flux is analysed, it points to an underlying problem while also flagging up an area ripe for improvement if Liverpool show the ambition that they are often accused of lacking.
From Martin Skrtel and Mamadou Sakho in his first match, against Tottenham Hotspur in October 2015, through to the initial duo of Lucas and Joël Matip at the King Power, the recurring changes in permutations speak volumes for the work Klopp must still oversee before real progress can be made.
The number is slightly exaggerated by his attitude towards the cup competitions in England and explains why he twice deemed it necessary for Tiago Ilori to play alongside José Enrique.
However, that should not be allowed to deflect from the reality that an issue remains — and one that Klopp may yet feel he needs to resolve by re-entering the transfer market and recruiting reinforcements.
He has bodies — Matip, Lucas, Dejan Lovren, Ragnar Klavan and Joe Gomez — but remains without a partnership that he can truly rely on, one that forms the solid platform that enables a team to push on.
Liverpool’s most successful double-act under Klopp has been the pairing of Lovren and Matip, who have been on the losing side just once in the 12 matches that they have been deployed together.
The eye-catching figure there is surely not that solitary defeat, but the number of games that they have started together — just 12 of Liverpool’s 35 games since Matip joined in the summer, notwithstanding the fact that they would not have been expected to feature in all of them.
Matip has looked a commanding presence in flashes since his arrival from Schalke 04, but he was nowhere to be seen when Jamie Vardy was isolating Lucas in Leicester’s 3-1 victory. He should have been the one guiding his team-mate, senior in years but junior in terms of defensive expertise, through the tumult but there was seldom any evidence of that.
If that served as an irritation for Klopp, then so must Lovren’s inability to repeat game after game after game and make himself indispensable. The most consecutive matches the Croatian has played under Klopp is seven, and he visited Hans Müller-Wohlfahrt, the Munich doctor, last week with the knee problem that flared up last month.
Lovren has made the most appearances of any centre back under Klopp (58) and can frequently look like the player around whom title challenges can be based. Yet that failure to be there week in, week out will gnaw away at his manager.
Jamie Carragher once tried to play on with a broken leg and, while few are like him, the challenge is to find another player as dependable, and talented, as Carragher, who missed just nine league games from 2004-05 to 2009-10.
It would be a fair assumption, given that Klopp recruited Matip and inherited Lovren, that the latter is the one who must prove himself and massage away any misgivings. If he does not, then Sakho has shown him how the fall from grace manifests itself.
Klopp’s most-used partnership remains that of Lovren and Sakho, who have played together 14 times — the most recent of which was in April 2016 — losing just three, but are unlikely to be in tandem again.
In many respects, Sakho, now on loan at Crystal Palace, came to epitomise the flaw. Often he stood out in big games only for his own unreliability to surface when his manager still needed him. The failed drugs test — which was later overturned by Uefa — can be seen as the point at which his Liverpool career started to unravel, but that he took slimming pills alludes to fitness issues.
Liverpool’s defensive concerns can be widened to the triangle between goalkeeper and the centre backs given the setbacks endured by Simon Mignolet and Loris Karius, but Klopp has yet to offer any indication that he will seek to recruit a new goalkeeper this summer.
The Anfield club’s attitude to the transfer market, pursuing potential rather than proven talent, increases the possibility of mistakes, but this is an area where a solution needs to be found. Sakho will be sold if a buyer is forthcoming, while a decision will be made on Lucas’s future, which could leave Klopp down to four: Matip, Lovren, Klavan and Gomez.
Fewer permutations perhaps, but Klopp must decide whether a title-challenging partnership can be forged from within. Increasingly, the evidence says not.