There are different forms of footballing heartbreak. For Liverpool, the sight of Wolves on Saturday had the game gone ahead would have been a reminder of the better kind. Thanks to the vagaries of the fixture list, the men from Molineux were the final-day visitors to Anfield twice in four seasons. Jurgen Klopp’s team won both games, and in vain. Manchester City trailed but prevailed in their respective matches and became champions on each occasion.
With 97 points in 2018-19 and 92 last year, Liverpool fell short by one on each occasion. Now that 97 and 92 feel distant tallies; not because they only have nine, but because they have dropped as many and seem headed for far fewer than in three of the last four campaigns.
Now they have an unwanted reminder that there is a different kind of despair. Even amid an unconvincing start to the season, even with the disappointment that accompanies a defeat at Old Trafford, there was nothing comparable with the trauma in Naples. That 4-1 evisceration has the potential to prove a one-off, but also to be the kind of symbolic indication that a dream and a team is fading.
Klopp has conjured many a memorable phrase over the years. “It looks like we have to reinvent ourselves,” delivered in the bowels of Napoli’s theatre of intimidation, may be his latest addition. Arguably, the reinvention had already begun, perhaps partly against his will. Gini Wijnaldum and Sadio Mane were pillars of his first great team and are gone. Each excelled at pressing and when Liverpool’s pressing game breaks down, as it did completely against Napoli, the space behind their high defensive line is easily exploited. More than anyone else, Wijnaldum made Liverpool compact and Klopp had never seen them less compact than they were on Wednesday.
Reinvention is not necessarily a smooth process. Joe Gomez was supposed to be the future of Liverpool’s defence and is two months into a new five-year contract. Instead, his shocking display underlines the importance of the absent and younger Ibrahima Konate. In the immediate future, Joel Matip may be a more reassuring presence.
In a post-Wijnaldum midfield, it can feel harsh to blame the injured Naby Keita when, unlike many another, he was not hideously culpable in Italy but he was supposed to be part of the succession planning; he is nine years younger than James Milner, eight older than Harvey Elliott, a supposed bridge between generations. There were 17 years between Klopp’s midfield. No wonder they were so stretched.
If Liverpool could have benefited from the physicality and dynamism the enigmatic Keita has only sporadically delivered or the durability he has lacked, there was a glimpse of hope for the next game. Thiago Alcantara’s reputation as a passer precedes him, but he was Liverpool’s tackler in chief against Napoli: in his half-hour cameo, he made six tackles, more than the three midfielders and two full-backs who started mustered between them. With extra days to recover before the next fixture, he could now offer an injection of class against Ajax on Tuesday.
Liverpool’s midfield has become emblematic of wider problems. It is where they have the most players and yet not enough enticing alternatives; from a group of 10, the mismatched trio who were overrun in the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona were the only three believed fit enough to start. For much of last season, especially the second half, Klopp seemed to have too many options as he had his strongest, deepest-ever squad. Now it feels as if he has too few compelling choices. Some are making up the numbers.
In attack, the quest for a combination to rival that of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Mane – or, more recently, the Egyptian, the Senegalese and Luis Diaz – continues. Klopp has looked to South Americans for revitalisation but, in this most South American of European cities, they had contrasting fortunes. Diaz threatened the kind of solo heroics in vain Gareth Bale produced for Tottenham against Inter Milan in a breakthrough display a dozen years earlier. But Darwin Nunez was benched and if part of that reflected the way Firmino remains a crutch for Klopp, it was also a sign the £64m man is not yet fully trusted. If temperament is a factor, an oddity of a display at Goodison Park, when he had eight attempts at goal but many were unconvincing and his touch was poor, may not have helped his cause.
Perhaps, though, it was not the first time when Klopp got his selection wrong. Omitting Fabinho, albeit an out-of-form Fabinho, backfired at Old Trafford. Liverpool have been improved by Klopp’s substitutions several times this season; under other circumstances, that is evidence of alchemy but now it prompts questions if his initial choices were right. Now a short-term fix entails more acute decision-making, with the improvement in defence and midfield Matip and Thiago may offer, along with the restoration of the intensity that enabled them to start with a flourish, not begin on the back foot.
And while Klopp has tended to be the motivator supreme, he is a manager who has specialised in galvanising players but Liverpool keep making such slow starts. If either the message or the messenger is stale, reinvention becomes tougher. And a season only eight games old has shown underlying concerns that a process of decline has begun. If near-misses have a kind of doomed glory, as several of the seasons before Klopp rejuvenated Liverpool showed, there is nothing magnificent about mediocrity.
