It was a brutal Sunday for Premier League managers. First the axe fell on Brendan Rodgers, then on Graham Potter. Each had lost on Saturday, but by one and two goals respectively. Liverpool were beaten by three. Jurgen Klopp was asked about the departures of men he likes and respects. “I think the elephant in the room is probably from your point of view why I am still sitting here in this crazy world,” he said. “The last man standing.”
Liverpool have lost their last three games. Their second half against Manchester City was, in the German’s words, “awful”. Their season has been a series of ignominies: the Champions League eviscerations by Napoli and Real Madrid, the harrowing showings at Brentford and Brighton and Wolves, the losses to relegation-threatened Leeds and Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth.
Klopp is nevertheless still standing. He is the third longest-serving manager in the Football League, behind only Harrogate’s Simon Weaver and Accrington’s John Coleman, and for much of a seven-year reign, longevity has been a sign of success. Now he is propped up by his past, as he willingly admits. He is the Champions League winner, the first manager to win the English title for Liverpool in 30 years, the coach who came within two games of a quadruple last year. He has credit in the bank in a way Potter, in particular, did not. He wishes he did not need to rely on it.
To put it another way, why is he still here? “I cannot really explain that, to be honest. I am aware of the fact I am sitting here because of the past, not because of what we did this season,” Klopp said. “If it was my first season it would be slightly different, so that’s it. I know I am here for what happened in the last few years. I don’t like the fact and pretty much I have to rely on that. Is it right or not? We will see that in the future but I am fully in.
His past success has given him a symbolic importance but Klopp said: “I am not here as a talisman or whatever or for murals on houses’ walls. I am here to deliver, I know that 100 percent.”
One of the instructive elements was that he did not reject the premise of the questions; he invited those about his own position with an answer about his sacked counterparts. Nor, despite his sympathy for them, did he say Leicester and Chelsea were wrong to part company with Rodgers and Potter respectively.
“I think both clubs are not in the spots they expect to be,” Klopp added. “Some clubs are underachieving this year and we do. Especially when you are in a relegation battle we all know how much it means from a financial point of view but you could say the same about being in the Champions League and not in the Champions League.” And, as it stands, Liverpool will not be. Theirs is a sudden fall from grace from a side who were finalists in it last season. “There are expectations out there, rightly so, and if you don’t reach them you have to accept the decisions,” Klopp said.
None of which means owners Fenway Sports Group are likely to sack Klopp; seven months earlier, when Thomas Tuchel was fired and his fellow German was asked if he feared a similar fate, he replied: “There are different kind of owners. Our owners are rather calm and expect from me to sort the situation and not expect that someone else will sort it.”
That still seems the position. Sorting it, however, has proved a more arduous process than expected. Liverpool’s latest attempt to kickstart their season comes in Chelsea’s first game without Potter; the caretaker Bruno Saltor will be the eighth Chelsea manager he has faced. There should be a ninth next season, too, assuming Klopp continues.
“I am fully in, there is no doubt about it but we have to sort it,” he pledged. “We cannot continue playing like we do from time to time. Not always, Thank God, but from time to time. That is now allowed. I am really disappointed about us that we do these kind of things but it happened now we have to find a way out.”
But in a season of 13 managerial changes and 12 sackings in the Premier League, the way out for some of his peers has been via the exit. Not for Klopp. His deeds in better years still rightly count for much, but as he surveyed the field of the underachievers, he smilingly deemed himself the last man standing.
