Since last Sunday’s error-strewn 4-1 defeat by Tottenham Hotspur there has been an increasing scrutiny on Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp; his style of play, team selection and transfers.
That defeat, after just nine games of the Premier League season, left Klopp’s Liverpool 12 points behind leaders Manchester City and the wait for a top-flight title — last won in 1990 — likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
However, Liverpool great Graeme Souness, who won three European Cups and five league titles in his six full seasons at the club, believes that there is too much emphasis on the manager in the modern game and not enough on the players.
He writes in his autobiography — “Football: My Life, My Passion” — that back in his playing days when results were not going so well the papers would be full of “Souness didn’t do his job,” or “Kenny Dalglish missed a sitter” or ‘Alan Hansen was sloppy at the back.”
Like Souness, Dalglish and Hansen were Scottish internationals. The trio was key to Liverpool’s unparallelled domestic and European success in the late 1970s and 1980s.
“Now the emphasis is all on the manager,” Souness tells CNN Sport. “Tactics, preparation, substitutions, even pillows in the hotel and travel arrangements.
“I’m a great believer that you cannot have a successful football club unless you have good senior pros,” Souness says. “That was my experience at Liverpool.
“Players have to get back to taking a bit of responsibility.”
Exploded with expletives
In Souness’ time at the club, players were expected to work out on-field problems on their own.
It was a lesson he quickly learned in the first week he signed for Liverpool in January 1978 from Middlesbrough for a record transfer fee.
Ahead of his debut, he’d trained all week, but was slightly mystified why nobody had spoken to him about tactics for the upcoming match.
So he approached the mild-mannered Joe Fagan, then a coach who would go onto manage the club and win Liverpool’s fourth European Cup in eight years, to enquire how they wanted him to play.
Fagan famously exploded with expletives, shouting at Souness questioning why the club had paid so much money for him if he had to ask how to play football.
“What was he saying to me there? Don’t take that as a moment, take that as part of the bigger picture,” Souness says. “He was saying to me be responsible, work it out for yourself son and if you don’t work it out you won’t be here very long.
“That’s what good players do. You don’t have to wait until halftime for the manager to tell you ‘tuck in a bit more, you stay wide.’ Good players see where the game is going moment by moment.”
Watershed
But Souness warned that while he believes the players need to stand up and be counted, in the modern game they have so much control that a manager has to be extremely careful taking them on.
“The weekend [after Spurs] was the first time I’d seen [Klopp] that low. Klopp even in defeat is always perky but I think last weekend was maybe a watershed moment for him,” Souness says.
“And what happens in management is you’re not critical, you’re not critical and you end up going am I being too nice on them?
“Then you decide to go hard on them and that’s when it can go pear-shaped for you because you can end up falling out with [the players]. That’s when that old chestnut is mentioned — he’s fallen out with the dressing room.”
After playing for Liverpool, Souness joined Sampdoria in Italy, before moving into management. He started out as player-manager at Rangers, before taking charge at Liverpool.
The Merseyside club won the FA Cup under Souness, but a league title remained elusive. The Scot then managed a number of clubs, both in England and abroad, before becoming a TV pundit.
“That’s what I worked out a good decade ago [after leaving Newcastle United in 2006]. I don’t have the personality to be a manager in the modern game.
“There’s got to be a boss and there’s not a boss today. You’re a boss in name only, the tail wags the dog.”
Worst defensive start
There’s also the issue of Liverpool’s style of play that both Klopp and his predecessor Brendan Rodgers employ. Scintillating attacking football at times but the biggest criticism for both managers’ teams has been their vulnerability at the back.
“[The current back four] are not very good,” Souness says in a characteristically blunt manner.
“You can have all the game plans, everything you want to do but if someone is making mistakes and you’re two nil down after 10 minutes because of two fundamental mistakes you don’t have a game plan. That goes out the window.”
In the last five seasons since Rodgers took over at Liverpool in 2012 they have conceded an average of 47 goals per season.
This year Liverpool have conceded 16 goals in nine games, their worst defensive start to a season since 1964.
After the recent goalless draw with Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United, who parked the proverbial “bus” at Anfield, Klopp said that while the Portuguese manager could organize his team so defensively, he couldn’t. Implying that it wasn’t the much-fabled “Liverpool Way.”
However, Souness says the way Liverpool won during their most successful spell in the 70s and 80s, was based on a solid defence and a midfield that was hard to break through. Success was built from the back.
The 1978-79 Liverpool team that Souness played in is the best example of this, keeping a remarkable 28 clean sheets out of a possible 42 league games and conceding only 16 goals during the campaign, four at Anfield.
“I don’t think the [Liverpool Way] was any special way of playing football,” Souness explains.”You have to be able to adapt, no game is the same.
“What we could do — you have to remember the state of the pitches going back to the 80s — we could go somewhere on a Saturday where it was a ploughed field because of the bad weather and we’d have to fight to win the three points.
“Then midweek we might be going to Bayern Munich on a very nice surface,” he says.
“We could wear two hats. We could go to war at the weekend, with referees allowing a bit more than they do today, and then go and be involved in a football match on a Wednesday and out football them.”
‘So much to play for’
For the current Liverpool team, Souness believes success this season would be a consecutive top-four finish.
“That again gets them into the Champions League, again they would be attractive to big players coming there,” he explains.
“If you’re saying to me win the FA Cup or qualify for the Champions League, I’m taking Champions League because you’re getting finances and also big players want to play in the Champions League.”
He also believes this is still very achievable despite the team’s stuttering start to the season.
“It’s very important [that they beat Huddersfield]. Otherwise the criticism will really start,” says Souness referring to Liverpool’s next league against a side managed by David Wagner, who worked under Klopp at Borussia Dortmund.
“But it’s not even the end of October, there’s so much to play for. I would not be writing them off just yet.”