It’s never just one thing. Football, whatever the cliche may say, is not a simple game. A team is a hugely complex organism: a malfunction in one area can have profound consequences elsewhere. Everything is connected and contingent; nothing is independent. Jürgen Klopp must feel at the moment as though he is engaged in a game of Whac-A-Mole, bashing at problems here and there, and yet also knowing that these moles are related, that a mole in one corner is breeding moles elsewhere.
But let’s begin with the most obvious issue, the great culture war of our time: the Trent Alexander-Arnold Conundrum. Already, it’s one of those issues that has become almost impossible to discuss properly, arguments yielding to meta-arguments as everybody rushes to deeply entrenched positions. Alexander-Arnold is a generational genius and Gareth Southgate should be sent to the Tower for his refusal to select him for England. Alexander-Arnold is a fraud.
