The day the Liverpool squad hate more than any other is finally upon us.
The first day of pre-season is the stuff of legend under Jurgen Klopp and one the players themselves must surely dread as they are put through their paces and then some by famed taskmaster Andreas Kornmayer.
So taxing is Kornmayer's drill-sergeant-like approach that it once ended with Andy Robertson receiving a new, unwanted nickname from Klopp himself just days after his arrival from Hull in 2017.
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"I remember on my first day we had to do the lactate test – basically running to your maximum,” Robertson told the Peter Crouch podcast two years ago.
“I remember running alongside Danny Ings and I was just physically sick everywhere. Day one. Luckily the gaffer wasn’t there, so I thought I’d got away with it. They returned, he introduced himself and he called me ‘Mr. Sick Boy’ or something like that.”
But while the fearsome lactate tests will likely be on show at the AXA Centre on Monday - before they are inevitably won by the reigning champion James Milner, of course - there is a method behind the exhausting hard-running drills throughout day one of the summer schedule.
Given Liverpool were made to play a mind-boggling 63 games last term, Klopp knows his charges must be fitter than most and while the players are whipped into shape on the pitches, there is more cerebral work going on in Klopp's inner sanctum.
“I love these sessions," the Reds boss said of the pre-season training days in 2016. "The most important thing is that you can react earlier and find your organisation earlier than other teams. The longer we have the ball, the less we have to think about how we will defend, but we will have to defend so in this moment we need to be perfectly organised.
“The higher we want to defend, the more organised we need to be, so that’s what we work on. That’s what I really love in pre-season, that you can work on these things twice a day - perfect.”
Working on tactical advancements and long-term tweaks is something that a club like Liverpool are rarely able to do once the season is underway. The Reds played the maximum number of games available to them last term, meaning the time and space on the training pitches was patently not available.
The spaces between games were largely about resting and training sessions designed to maintain rhythm, so this coming week is the ideal chance for Klopp and his team to once more develop a new way of playing.
"First of all, the most important thing is we don't match ourselves with the past," Pep Lijnders said last year. "We have to be prepared to be fresh, we have to be prepared to be unpredictable and we have to be prepared to be organised."
Last year's way of instilling some unpredictability into the game-plan centred largely around a shift in thinking over the right side of the team. It was perhaps a surprise to many when Harvey Elliott started three of the first four games in the centre of midfield, but it was a tweak that paid off.
It allowed him to move further out on to the right side to supplement Mohamed Salah as right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold moved more in field to utilise his supreme passing range and creativity. When Elliott was sadly injured with a broken ankle at Leeds in September, captain Jordan Henderson took the right-sided midfield spot and the general adjustment was one of the biggest tactical successes of last season.
This coming campaign, the arrival of Darwin Nunez allows Klopp's side to lean on the power of a more traditional target man up top. Anfield insiders have already spoken about the minor change in playing style to accommodate the £64m striker and getting him up to speed will be imperative before the season starts.
While there is no real external pressure on Fabio Carvalho or Calvin Ramsay to instantly produce at Anfield, the expectation on Nunez, given his transfer fee and the fact he is essentially replacing Sadio Mane, is more acute. It means Klopp and his staff will have to muse over the best ways to extract the maximum from the former Benfica man as a new-look Liverpool strike force gets set to be unleashed this coming term.
A more conventional frontman leading the line does, however, allow Liverpool to utilise a 4-2-3-1 formation more readily than has previously been the case at Anfield. With Diogo Jota, Roberto Firmino and new signing Carvalho capable of operating behind the striker, the Reds have ample attacking options to work with as they aim to become more flexible and, as Lijnders says, more unpredictable in the final third.
From Carvalho's perspective, the former Fulham youngster will report for duty on Monday morning and it will be interesting to see where Klopp and Lijnders feel the Portugal Under-21 international is best suited. A versatile player who can operate in a number of roles, the teenager could be the surprise package this term.
The 4-2-3-1 option has rarely been taken by Klopp. A bold approach to a 1-1 draw with Manchester City at the Etihad worked for a period in November 2020 before Pep Guardiola's men responded, but the move away from the favoured 4-3-3 has only really been on an ad-hoc basis when chasing a game.
Given the success Liverpool have enjoyed over the last few years, it would represent a shock if the tried-and-trusted 4-3-3 was ditched permanently, but these next few weeks do offer Klopp and his staff the time to work on other ways of picking the locks of opposition defences.
“We were constantly in a room together in pre-season [last year]," Klopp said in December. "It was a long camp [in Austria], and we had a lot of time to talk about it.
“It’s clear the influence of Pep and Vitor Matos (development coach) is massive because they are brilliant football brains. Peter Krawietz (assistant coach) is constantly thinking too about how we can use the things we have by analysing everything.
“If the players feel the benefit, that’s very helpful, but you can only be offensively creative if you have defensive protection. It’s not children’s football, it’s a constant process to find that balance.”
The players who were involved in international fixtures last month will join up with the rest of their team-mates for the flight out to Thailand as the Reds prepare to meet Manchester United at the Rajamangala Stadium on July 12.
Liverpool players returning for day one of pre-season on July 4 : Adrian, Fabio Carvalho, Ben Davies, Luis Diaz, Harvey Elliott, Roberto Firmino, Joe Gomez, Jordan Henderson, Caoimhin Kelleher, Ibrahima Konate, Joel Matip, James Milner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Nat Phillips, Calvin Ramsay, Thiago Alcantara, Neco Williams, Rhys Williams, Sepp van den Berg.
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