In being receptive to new ideas and using specialist knowledge, Klopp has created a culture of continual improvementA 54-year-old performed a dad dance in the Royal Box at Wembley and whipped half of the stadium into a frenzy by hoisting the League Cup aloft not once but three times. Jürgen Klopp’s appetite for the competition, and for winning, should not be questioned again.As is the case after any big club claim the first trophy of the season, the question turned quickly from Liverpool’s Carabao Cup success to its potential impact on other prizes that glitter on the horizon. Klopp’s players have been unequivocal with their answers. On social media Mohamed Salah posted: “One down …” Trent Alexander-Arnold, who stated recently...
Liverpool’s rookie goalkeeper was the calmest man in Wembley when he converted the decisive penalty in the shootoutWhen Trent Alexander-Arnold and Harvey Elliott converted their penalties in Liverpool’s flawless shootout they turned and pointed at a 23-year-old goalkeeper making the 17th start of his senior club career, and who just happened to be the calmest person inside Wembley. They shared the intuition that Jürgen Klopp had when deciding it would be Caoimhín Kelleher, not Alisson, standing in Liverpool’s goal for the Carabao Cup final.“If it works out, then it’s all about Caoimhín. If it doesn’t work out, then it’s all about me.” The Liverpool manager was correct, although he could never have predicted it would work out with Kelleher scoring...
Chelsea stand in the way in a mouthwatering Carabao Cup final that could energise the rest of the season for the victorAnd you shall know us by the trail of sponsors. The League Cup has always been a bird-on-a-wire kind of thing. Every year this fond old springtime ritual is menaced and marginalised and threatened with ever more imminent extinction, but still people keep turning up in February and March asking where the party is.The title branding tells a story of that picaresque progress. In the space of 40 years, English football’s second-string domestic cup has gone from the quiet gravitas of being named after the entire Football League, through Coca-Cola, beer, electrical goods and the generic liquid “milk” into...
Weariness for Leeds and Spurs, sticky times for Lampard and the season’s first major silverwareAlthough it may be coincidence, someone far more observant than this column recently noticed that Southampton appear to have devised a clever, completely legal mid-game tactic that involves one of their players going down “injured” and in apparent need of medical attention between the 60th and 70th minute, at which point their teammates adjourn to the sideline to receive energy gels and tactical instruction from Ralph Hasenhüttl and his backroom team. Should it occur on Friday evening, we can but hope it won’t be the most interesting talking point to arise from their match against Norwich, but it has piqued our curiosity and is the first...
Jürgen Klopp’s ‘greatest squad’ are closing in on Manchester City with Liverpool now just six points behind them in the tableAs if from nowhere a title race has appeared. Manchester City’s 12-point lead is down to six which means that if Liverpool win their game in hand and if Liverpool win at the Etihad Stadium in April, they will be level on points. City are still in the better position, particularly given they have not lost a league game at home to Liverpool under Pep Guardiola but what had started to look like a procession, quite unexpectedly, has regained a sense of intrigue.It is an indication of how dominant City had come to appear that this feels surprising. Liverpool, after...