As Liverpool close in on the final two games of a long and at times difficult campaign, plans for the summer are starting to accelerate rapidly.
Earlier this week, it was confirmed, as the ECHO reported in March, that Jurgen Klopp and his players are returning to Singapore for their pre-season tour.
Friendlies with Bayern Munich and Leicester City have been pencilled in as the Reds once more look to swell their already considerable following in Asia with another venture to the Far East.
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Ben Latty, the club's commercial director, said: “We were so impressed with the welcome and the facilities - from the training ground to the stadium and the infrastructure last year - that when the chance to return came up we jumped at it.
“Pre-season is hugely important to us for a number of reasons, it’s a chance for fans who may never get the opportunity to come to Anfield to see their idols, and for the team to prepare for the season ahead. In Singapore, almost a fifth of the population identify as Liverpool FC fans, which is amazing, and we can’t wait to meet them again.
“Singapore is an easily accessible travel hub for LFC fans across the region to reach. It is also strategically important for a number of our partners, including our principal partner Standard Chartered Bank, who we were delighted to renew our relationship with for a further four years when we visited Singapore last year.”
Pre-season at Liverpool is now essentially split into three parts with a week's worth of training at the AXA Centre in Kirkby followed by a commercially-driven jaunt outside of the continent. Then the real work begins, with a European-based training camp designed to be more hands-on ahead of the new season.
In recent years trips to the United States and Thailand and Singapore have been followed by stays in France and Austria, although the summer of 2021, when COVID restrictions were very much still in place, saw Liverpool stay at two locations in Salzburg and Tyrol for the best part of month.
The summer of 2023 will see a significant change in how Liverpool look to operate. Or, more specifically, how Jurgen Klopp wants to. The Reds boss admitted in January that the schedule of last year was an imperfect one that, with the benefit of hindsight, he would have changed.
"I wouldn’t go in the first week [of pre-season] to Asia," Klopp said in January. "Not because Asia isn’t great, but I wouldn’t go [even] in the third week. But it’s not really in our hands. Is that the reason [for our struggles]? I don’t think so, but it would have been better to do it differently. We learn from these things."
Liverpool are said to typically earn around £10-12m for such tours and while there are some within the football operations side who are not always overly enamoured at the thought of their players being whisked thousands of miles away to train in conditions that can be less than ideal in preparation for a Premier League season, there is also an acceptance that such visits are extremely lucrative and a club the size of the Reds, with their worldwide following, must be undertaking.
Liverpool's summer schedule in 2022, however, was blighted by a succession of injuries. First, Diogo Jota suffered a recurrence of a hamstring issue he picked up on duty for Portugal in June before Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain suffered a similar fate in the friendly win over Crystal Palace.
Curtis Jones's stress reaction issue, one he is still managing through the use of a specialist, was detected after the Community Shield victory over Manchester City at the end of July. That was around 24 hours before Ibrahima Konate was forced off with a problem of his own during an Anfield friendly defeat to French side Strasbourg.
Thiago Alcantara then pulled up after 51 minutes of the 2-2 draw with Fulham on the opening day before Naby Keita suffered a setback that would sideline him until late December. It all pointed towards a squad who were undercooked.
Clearly, there are lessons to be learned from the injury list that piled up in the early weeks of this season and Klopp seems intent on making sure there is to be no repeat next time out as he looks to get Liverpool challenging at the summit of the English game once again.
Liverpool will visit a training camp in the Black Forest this summer before their venture to Singapore. The friendly with Leicester will take place at the National Stadium on Sunday July 30 before the meeting with Bayern at the same venue on August 2.
It's unlikely, as things stand, that the Reds will host a home friendly having asked the Premier League if they can play the first game of the new term away from home to accommodate the finalising of the Anfield Road expansion project.
But with Klopp determined to stave off the injuries that have affected so many of his players' campaigns, an intense, football-based training camp will be undertaken prior to the more commercially-driven jaunt across the world. It's understood that two friendlies with Karlsruhe and another German-based club on July 19 and 24 form part of the agenda before they return to Merseyside for a few days prior to flying out east.
There are some at the club who have spoken about Klopp's determination to ensure that next season runs smoother than one that has seen them lose 15 times across all competitions. The Reds boss has spoken openly about the importance of the summer preparation in returning his team back to the heights they have generally enjoyed in the last five years, but it is also believed the manager has been much more candid in appraisals of this term behind the scenes.
It is why the decision to swap the European and Asian legs of the summer tour has been taken early. The collective determination to bounce back is almost tangible at the AXA Centre.
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