You always sensed this collapse was going to happen, it was more a case of when not if. Like at Dortmund it happened in the 5th season. I'd hoped it would happen a bit earlier, and it's a shame it didn't happen a season earlier for obvious reasons, but I'll take it.
I watched Dortmund a fair bit when Klopp was there. I always quite liked Dortmund and I like Germany really. They were a working class team who overcame Munich and got to a European final. He had an excellent team. Maybe not quite as good as this Liverpool team, but an excellent team. Klopp deserves enormous credit for that. But you could always see, the intensity he demanded would always lead to a collapse at the back end, which it did.
In that final season, they were bottom 3 at Christmas, and really only with a winter break did he stabilise them to finish half way up. And they have a proper winter break not like here. He took the 2nd best team to mid table, and it may have been worse without a winter break. He's taking the best team to mid table here now, but the halves are reversed. Without a proper winter break, I'm not even convinced he would stabilise at that level.
Had he been playing in England with that Dortmund team, they'd have been relegated, 1 as they would have been cut adrift, and 2 because they had no winter break. Yes Liverpool were probably slightly better, but it's some collapse. It's taken Dortmund years to recover from that as well.
The team he left, was just ravaged by injuries and lack of intesity. Goetze, Reus, Kagawa, Sahin, the Greek lad at CB etc etc. All great players but all ruined. Its taken years of Peps management to rescue Gundogan from the same fate. It's exactly what you are seeing here. He demands a physical style, that guys close to 30 can't give, and they break down when not given rest. Henderson has been asked to play too many games, and after Fabinho, Matip, Jota, Keita, Chamberlain, Gomez etc he is just the next to break down.
It's always hard when players getting towards 30 start getting injuries. It kind of does them in and few recover well from it. Look at us with Coleman, he's a fine player, but is nowhere near the level he was before that leg break. Harry Kane is similar, injuries take their toll. Thats doubly so in his system, that relies so much on power, speed, pressing etc. The likes of Henderson, Wijnaldum, Thiago, Salah, Mane, Firmino who are all at or about 30 need to be wrapped up in cotton wool, but he's got them all playing twice a week slugging their guts out, then calls it bad luck when they go down.
I said at the time, that Burnley result would be the trigger point for this crisis. Thats all it needed, the dynamite and petrol where there, but it just needed a match. Their fans and their ethos as a club makes it worse too, as they assume it will all go back to normal. They are at a major rebuild job now. They are closer to 18th than 1st. Thats the mountain to climb now. And 1st are going to be adding 3 or 4 world class players like Haaland etc in the summer, while they are scratching around for lads likes Davies or Kabak. A 30 year old CB, coming back from a major knee injury is not going to be enough to close this gap. Forget Gomez making a difference, he is poor, and Matip will never play regularly again. Other than that, they are all fit anyway.
Klopp is done. He left Dortmund when he knew he was done. He was smart, he didn't besmirch his reputation by probably getting another relegation on his record. He is smart like that, and knows the right moment to leave. I can't imagine he wants a big rebuild job, and I don't really think he's the right sort of manager to do that. You can see he's very emotional, but also that he's not really a problem solver. He said very early on he had no plan B only that "plan b was to do plan A better". Well plan A has been sussed out, doesn't work, and with an ageing squad will not work in the future.
As a final point, he would be done in normal circumstances. They are going to have no money, even if they scrape 4th. They had no money this January when they had no CBs left. FSG only sanctioned 2 loans, 1 from a lad who's side wanted to upgrade to Mustafi, another for a fella he was a mid table championship player. That was with CL money and before the next awful set of accounts come out. They've got no money. If they miss out on the CL, they will likely have to make masses of money up, to cover the extravagent wage bill Klopp has built up.
Klopp isn't staying for that, and it's going to be hard to find a manager who will. It is in it's own way like following Ferguson, you're on a hiding to nothing, with sky high expectations and no money.
Best case scenario they get a good young German coach, who's used to building teams while selling key assetts and they embark on another 5 years journey to hopefully getting back to challenging for the title. I'm not sure if they get on board with that though. Worst case, they go and get Steven Gerrard and he Sounesses it. Except Souness collaped from position 1. He will be inherited probably position 5-7.
All of this has been predicted. I suspect we might be back to seeing 30k at Anfield again quite soon.
