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Southgate to Manchester United? Arsenal Onana interest? Alonso Liverpool latest? Ask Ornstein

3 hours 26 min ago

Once a week for an hour, The Athletic’s subscribers can ask me for my views on anything from the world of football.

I have pulled together some of my favourite questions and my answers to them from the latest Q&A below. Thanks to all who took part today.

Want to ask me a question? I’ll be back next week for another session.

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Th W asked: Hi David, any Manchester United director roles updates? Are Manchester United and Newcastle still negotiating Dan Ashworth’s compensation fees? Are United working on move for Julian Ward/Jason Wilcox as part of the new setup?

Ornstein: I’m not aware of any breakthrough yet in talks with Newcastle over Ashworth. Unless that happens (and you have to think it will at some point) I think he is on a five-year contract with a nine-month notice period (I’d need to double-check that to be certain).

Newcastle wanted/want £20million and Manchester United don’t intend to pay anywhere near that. United will look at what Newcastle paid Brighton, consider how long he has been at Newcastle and be reluctant to pay much more. They seem happy to bide their time if needed.

Should that continue to be the case, Newcastle will need to consider whether they want to continue paying Ashworth his full salary to sit at home doing nothing for them. United are also waiting for Omar Berrada to start as CEO this summer but they could recruit somebody else in the meantime.

It has been well documented that there is some admiration for Julian Ward — and he would be available to start immediately — but indications are that he will not be joining. Jason Wilcox is a target I revealed some time ago and I imagine that deal with Southampton would be more straightforward than Ashworth’s with Newcastle, but again United will need it to be right for them (especially with profit and sustainability regulations a lingering concern) before proceeding.

They will have other options too. Many meetings and conversations are taking place, with many candidates for many positions. Some patience will be required to see exactly what the new setup looks like and even then it is sure to evolve, as INEOS find its feet and Berrada begins his post.

Ashworth (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Gert W asked: With the success of Wataru Endo, weren’t there any other clubs interested or were the stats team at Liverpool just ahead of the rest?

Ornstein: The nature of scouting departments these days means he will have been on the radar of many, Gert, but perhaps he was not the right age or tactical/technical profile to be high up on the recruitment lists at some other clubs. Or perhaps he was and for whatever reason (his preference, financials, talks, speed of process etc) it didn’t develop elsewhere.

It’s also possible that Liverpool’s data model saw things their rivals didn’t or, at least, that he was better suited to what they were looking for. Then comes the human connections, the skilful negotiations and more factors that made this a shrewd, discreet move which is starting to look like brilliant value for money.

Josh H asked: Hi David, was there any genuine interest from United for Gareth Southgate? Or was it just the rumour mill working overtime during an international break?

Ornstein: INEOS’ decision-makers definitely like and have links to Southgate — that’s no secret and there’s nothing wrong with it. They probably like a lot of coaches and managers, players and staff.

Sir Dave Brailsford knows Southgate well and they’ve spent time together over the years. Ashworth, of course, worked with Southgate at the FA — but that does not automatically mean he is the top choice if a change is to be made or that he is going to be appointed there at all.

go-deeper

Southgate himself kind of quashed the possibility of it happening this summer and showed great respect to Erik ten Hag. Rightly so, because Ten Hag is in position and we have nothing concrete to suggest he will be leaving.

The new hierarchy at Old Trafford will be assessing everything, including Ten Hag, and Ten Hag will also be assessing them and his future. That is only natural as he approaches the final year of his contract (which includes an option to extend by a further 12 months). It appears no firm decisions have been made yet and, with so much still to play for, that feels sensible.

Dylan B asked: Is there a preferred striker that Arsenal want to sign in the summer?

Ornstein: As with most clubs and positions on the pitch, there will be varying preferences internally and Arsenal will need to come to a firm consensus before proceeding. I’m not aware of this happening yet but that’s fairly normal at this stage.

Declan Rice was an exception, as he was the unanimous top choice and main target. There will be so many factors and variables involved in the decision. As previously reported and widely documented, Benjamin Sesko and Viktor Gyokeres are well thought of. As is Evan Ferguson, but the price Brighton would want and the season he has had perhaps makes him less likely at the moment.

Gyokeres (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

I don’t see it being a Victor Osimhen or Ivan Toney. There will be other options too. I’ve seen Alexander Isak linked and Arsenal went for him in the past, but I don’t have any information on that at this point.

Don’t forget Arsenal have other positions to consider as well; a midfielder, backup to the wide attackers, possibly left-back, a replacement goalkeeper if Aaron Ramsdale leaves.

Much will be determined by finances and, therefore, what they manage to raise through departures is sure to have a significant impact on what they’re able to spend. I’m not saying it’s a ‘sell before buy’ scenario but, like many clubs, there will need to be some balancing of books.

Steven S asked: Hi, David, hope you’re having a great day. Let me ask you a question straight away, there is a story in the German media that Xabi Alonso has ruled out Liverpool. Do you know if there is any truth to this story?

Ornstein: I don’t know of any definitive decision being made yet but clearly Liverpool will have known from the start that Alonso staying at Bayer Leverkusen or moving to Bayern Munich are also strong options available to him.

So there is no guarantee he will come to Liverpool and I’m sure the club will be calm with that possibility. That’s why they are conducting a proper process and I’m sure whatever happens — and regardless of whether or not it is Alonso — they will make a really strong appointment.

Benjamin B asked: The new invasiveness of PSR (profit and sustainability regulations) seems to have been one of this season’s defining stories. We’re now told that clubs are currently in discussions to amend these regulations, with many vocally unhappy with the rules in their current form — do you have any inklings as to which direction these discussions will go in?

Ornstein: It has become a bit of a mess, Benjamin, but don’t forget this was voted in by the clubs originally. The changes we expect to be introduced would see the Premier League fall more in line with UEFA’s new cost control mechanism, rather than a tweak of the existing system.

The clubs can talk about all of these things, which I’m sure will happen at the summer AGM, and make changes if they can agree on them or at least reach the required two-thirds majority in a vote. It’s complicated at present by the Premier League having a different format to UEFA. Then comes the EFL, which, as we’ve seen with Leicester, adds further complexity.

We all agree with the basic principle of sustainability but the regulations that have been drawn up, the way they are being applied, the constant alterations, the confusion, the suspicion, the legal battles — and plenty more besides — are overshadowing the football itself and that is a real shame.

Kristian M asked: Are Arsenal interested in Amadou Onana?

Ornstein: I’m sure there is some appreciation for Onana at Arsenal and elsewhere, but I’m not sure he fits their profile or price bracket.

In the No 6 role, we know Arteta likes Real Sociedad’s Martin Zubimendi (and there will be others). If it’s a No 8 they go for there will be multiple options as well. I don’t really see this one happening.

Thomas G asked: What is your take on the Ange Postecoglou era at Tottenham Hotspur? My early optimism is slowly dissipating as I see similar patterns emerge. Am I just being a bit Spursy about it all?

Ornstein: Postecoglou is a breath of fresh air and that is a view educated by seeing what he is doing/trying to do and — more importantly — listening to those at and around Spurs who are experiencing his work first-hand.

Whatever we think about previous Tottenham managers and the hierarchy, it does sound like a happier place with a better atmosphere than in recent years. It may have been an inconsistent campaign and that was always a possibility when Postecoglou came in, but we’ve all seen in flashes the quality and potential they possess. They remain very much in contention to qualify for next season’s Champions League, which would be an excellent achievement.

Postecoglou (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Injuries have hit them hard but they have continued to play in the style the manager demands and that appears to have gone down well with the players and fans. Those in positions of power at Tottenham are pleased with his work and it is no coincidence that he is being linked to some of the vacancies elsewhere. He is regarded in the industry as an impressive guy who continues to build an impressive career, with a lot of the qualities that clubs are looking for in their prospective hires.

That’s not to suggest he could be leaving — it looks like Postecoglou is there to stay and Spurs would hope for the long-term. Remember also, the club are undergoing significant change behind the scenes, with a new technical director and plenty of movement in the recruitment department, so time and patience will be required. I have no reason to think Postecoglou won’t get it.

Tom H asked: Hi David, who do you think will be the breakout star of the European Championship this summer?

Ornstein: Great question and one I need to research to reply properly to you in a subsequent week, Tom. For now, I’ll say… Kobbie Mainoo.

(Top photo: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

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Liverpool receive Andy Robertson boost as defender avoids serious injury

4 hours 48 min ago

Liverpool have received a major boost with the news that Andy Robertson avoided serious injury in Scotland’s friendly defeat to Northern Ireland.

Scan results on his ankle showed no bone or ligament damage and the left-back, who limped off late in the first half at Hampden Park on Tuesday, is expected to be sidelined for days rather than weeks.

Robertson is a doubt for Liverpool’s home Premier League clash with Brighton on Sunday but if he misses that game he should be back in contention for next Thursday’s visit of Sheffield United.

Vice-captain Trent Alexander-Arnold, who hasn’t played since February 10 due to a knee injury, has been stepping up his rehab during the international break but he’s not yet ready to resume team training.

The England international is around a fortnight away from making his comeback. Liverpool will continue to adopt a cautious approach with him after he came back too early from a previous ligament problem in late January and broke down again.

At this stage Alexander-Arnold is targeting either the first leg of the Europa League quarter-final against Atalanta on April 11 or the league game against Crystal Palace three days later.

Goalkeeper Alisson, who has been out with a hamstring injury since early February, is also eyeing mid-April for his return.

Robertson has made just 15 appearances in the league this season, missing 13 matches after dislocating his shoulder while on international duty against Spain in October.

Greece international Konstantinos Tsimikas deputised at left-back during Robertson’s absence before the Scot made his playing return as a second-half substitute in Liverpool’s 4-1 win over Chelsea on January 31.

Robertson’s most recent start for his club came in the 4-3 defeat to Manchester United in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

Liverpool need to fix their ‘Big Six’ blind spot - this is how they can do it

(Nick Taylor/Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

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Former Nottingham Forest and Liverpool defender Larry Lloyd dies aged 75

6 hours 45 min ago

Former Liverpool and Nottingham Forest defender Larry Lloyd has died at the age of 75.

Lloyd was part of Brian Clough’s Forest side that won consecutive European Cups in 1979 and 1980.

He also won two First Division titles, with Liverpool in 1973 and Forest in 1978, across a professional career spanning 16 years.

“We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Larry Lloyd,” a Nottingham Forest statement read.

“Part of the Miracle Men, Larry was an integral player in the Forest side that memorably won back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980, making 218 appearances for the club in total.

“We send our condolences to Larry’s friends and family at this truly sad time. Rest in peace, Larry.”

We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Larry Lloyd.

Part of the Miracle Men, Larry was an integral player in the Forest side that memorably won back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980, making 218 appearances for the club in total.

We send our condolences to… pic.twitter.com/Y2gxQuqoQa

— Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) March 28, 2024

Lloyd joined Liverpool from Bristol Rovers in 1969, and won the First Division and UEFA Cup as part of Bill Shankly’s side.

He moved to Coventry City and then Forest in 1976, where he won six major trophies.

Capped four times by England, Lloyd finished his career at Wigan Athletic, where he retired in 1983.

He later had spells in charge of Wigan and Notts County.

(S&G/PA Images via Getty Images)

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The signature passing moves that explain why the Premier League title race is so close

12 hours 27 min ago

What if the story of the Premier League title race could be told in two passes?

Not two particular passes. Any pair of passes. Every pair, in fact.

That’s impossible to do just by watching the games. Passes wash over you hundreds at a time, week in and week out, with the non-stop ping-ping-ping of an overcaffeinated groupchat. You skim past most of them, pay attention to a few, and probably don’t remember much later except a few zingers here and there. No offence to Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta, but if you got a notification for every Premier League pass you would have muted these guys years ago.

Over time, though, the passes acquire a shape. Players start to vibe with each other. Rapports develop. Patterns proliferate like inside jokes. Lines of attack become as familiar as well-worn arguments. The basic unit of exchange is the passing pair, like a call and response: receive here like this, pass there like that. Tactics are a conversation.

Thanks to mountains of football data, we can scroll through the pass log and take the measure of the entire season, one pair of passes at a time, until the personality of each team emerges from the deluge of details. Whoever wins this very tight Premier League race — and at this point, frankly, your bet is as good as anyone’s — it will go down as a contest not just of wills but of contrasting styles of play.

But we’re already getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with how Arsenal became boring — and scary good.

Arsenal

The last time we saw the current Premier League leaders in league play, they were slowly squashing Brentford like one of those hydraulic press videos.

For minutes on end, Arsenal would win the ball in the opposing half, swing it out to the wing, combine, attack, counter-press, repeat. In the rare moments they didn’t have possession, they weren’t so much defending as tapping their toes and checking their watches, waiting for the ball to fall out of the sky so they could run the whole thing back again.

Maybe this sort of football is fun for you. For the colour commentator on TV, it seemed to offend some sense of fairness, though he dressed it up as a tactical concern.

“Sometimes they’ve got to try and let Brentford out a little bit in order to find a bit of space,” he complained as Arsenal squeezed ever closer to Brentford’s goal. “When you pen a team in for long periods, there’s very little room to get behind them.”

Even as he spoke, Arsenal were doing their thing again. The ball swung from left to right around their high back line, making its way to Ben White in the right half-space. He shovelled a diagonal pass out to Bukayo Saka on the wing, jogged forward 10 yards or so, and got the ball back in space after Saka had drawn a double-team on the wing.

White didn’t launch it into the box right away. Instead he waited for Martin Odegaard and Kai Havertz to twist around each other, scrambling their markers, then slipped a short pass straight ahead to Havertz, who tapped it back to Odegaard a few yards away. Arsenal were bunched together in close quarters now, playing piggy-in-the-middle at the corner of the penalty area.

Still they refused to cross it. They played low and short and fast, always at the edge of the box. After a few more passes and rotations, Odegaard shook free and split the defence with a dagger to Havertz, whose first-time shot was blocked. No problem. All that combination play had shrunk Brentford down until Arsenal’s centre-backs had crept all the way up to the final third. They won the ball back again, combined on the wings again, and kept the routine up for several breathless minutes until, finally, White found Declan Rice for a goal.

This is who Arsenal are now. They’ll strangle the life out of you. Arteta likes to talk about “suffocating” opponents with one of the world’s best high presses. “More than control, I want dominance,” the manager said. “Dominance in the right area and not allowing the opponent to breathe. This is what we do.”

Weird as it sounds given their total of 33 goals in eight games this year, Arsenal are a defensive team these days. Their 0.64 non-penalty expected goals allowed per game are the best by any team other than Man City in Europe’s big five leagues in at least the last seven seasons. It’s stingier than even City themselves have been in the last two. But just like Pep Guardiola’s side, whose meticulous possession play is really about defensive structure, Arsenal’s stranglehold on the game starts with how they pass.

That innocuous one-two out to the winger and back? That tiny third-man pattern at the corner of the box? These are the subtle hallmarks of Arsenal’s suffocating new style.

This is the part of the story where pass pairs come in. By clustering every two consecutive passes in the same possession from the last six seasons — more than a million pairs in total — into 300 broadly similar types, we can break teams’ possession patterns down to tiny fragments to take their tactical fingerprint.

Out of the 300 types, Arsenal have done some version of the short up-and-back pattern near the right corner of the box 110 times this season, for 0.9 per cent of their total pass pairs. That’s not all that much in the grand scheme of things, only about four times a game, but it’s way, way more than most teams — over five standard deviations from the Premier League average.

If you had to forge Arsenal’s signature from pure passing data, it would look like a cramped little scribble on the right wing.

Arteta’s team didn’t play like this a couple years ago. As recently as 2021-22, Arsenal were pretty good at passing the ball but not so great at “dominance in the right area.” Their field tilt, or share of both teams’ attacking-third touches, was just 57 per cent back in those faster, looser days, far less than the 71 per cent now. They used to let you breathe.

The dominance that Arteta craved began on the wings. As Saka and Odegaard matured into one of the world’s best attacking partnerships, White started slinking up the sideline to support them. The trio aren’t just the heartbeat of Arsenal’s chance creation. While their patient combinations nibble away at the edge of the opposition, the centre-backs and Rice inch forward behind them to tighten the noose in rest defence. When they lose the ball, Arsenal are right on top of it, ready to recycle it to the wings. It’s a virtuous — and sometimes virtually endless — cycle.

For years, Arsenal’s scattered pass pairs betrayed a team in search of a style. This season, all those tight exchanges at the corner of the box look like nothing so much as fingers wrapped around a throat.

While Arsenal are busy slowing the game down, Liverpool are stomping on the gas.

Even though they’ve never been as patient as City, Jurgen Klopp’s team used to be England’s second-most circulating side. You may remember their glory days of 2019-20 for the flurry of long-range balls that took defences by storm — and they certainly did plenty of that, at least compared to Guardiola’s short-passing machine — but their signature pass pairs back then involved a lot of sideways play at the halfway line as they poked around for an opening to rain down fire.

Lately they’ve become something else entirely.

In 2021-22, when Thiago Alcantara shifted to his favoured left side and took over the team, Liverpool began passing through midfield much more than they had before. Last season the squad underwent an awkward, injury-riddled rebuild and sat deeper, sometimes struggling to get out of their half.

This season’s edition of Liverpool split the difference: they still play through the middle, but they go fast.

Why go through midfield? Because that’s where Trent Alexander-Arnold, who remains Liverpool’s most important ball progressor, hangs out these days.

Over the last couple of years, Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah have swapped channels. Salah has moved from the right half-space out to the wing, where he can find more space to play facing goal, while Alexander-Arnold has tucked in to access more of the pitch as an inside full-back, or half-back.

To some extent they’ve even traded signature passing pairs. From 2018 to 2021, the narrower Salah loved to receive a short pass from left to right in the centre of the attacking third and stab a finishing ball into the left side of the box. That’s an Alexander-Arnold special now.

On the other hand, for each of the previous five seasons, one of Alexander-Arnold’s trademark patterns involved receiving a lateral pass out on the right wing and launching a diagonal cross into the box for a striker or box-crashing left winger to run onto. Now Salah does that exact same pass pair nearly as often as Alexander-Arnold used to. (Not coincidentally, his expected assists per 90 minutes are at an all-time high, more than double last season’s average.)

But Liverpool’s need for speed isn’t just about the players on the ball — it’s also about the runners.

In the old days, Roberto Firmino would drop into midfield from the centre-forward slot while Salah and Sadio Mane ran in behind from the wings, forming a sort of narrow V-shape up top.

This season, with human cannonball Darwin Nunez at striker and the snaky Luis Diaz out on the left, that V has flipped upside-down to become an arrow aimed straight at goal.

Unlike Firmino, Nunez is a tireless depth runner who loves to stretch the back line to its snapping point. Diaz plays wider than Mane used to and prefers the ball to his feet so he can dribble at defenders. Together they open space between the lines for Liverpool’s rotating cast of young attacking midfielders to push the tempo through the middle.

The result is a very good team that doesn’t play much like other elite sides. When algorithmically sorted by their passing pair preferences, teams tend to gather into six or so general styles of play: those that circulate in the attacking half like Arsenal or Manchester City, those that launch it up the wings like Brentford or Everton, and so on. Then there’s Liverpool, whose deep passing and fast attacks have more in common with Chelsea or even Burnley than the high-control group that usually wins titles — a group Liverpool themselves were in last time they won the league.

(Suhaimi Abdullah/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Not many teams can play direct and still dominate games, but that’s what the last, latest draft of Klopp’s Liverpool manage to do. By direct speed, a measure of vertical yards gained per second in open play, they’re the ninth-fastest team in the Premier League. That’s almost unheard of from a title contender in the era of positional play.

The glue that holds Liverpool’s game together is that they still find a way to press effectively — not a slow, compact, suffocating defence like Arsenal’s, but a high-speed barrage of bodies chasing after the ball, a sort of youthful tribute act to Klopp’s old heavy metal days.

This frantic Slinky-down-the-stairs style — stretching the game vertically, then squishing from behind — is exhausting and sometimes porous, but it works. This season’s defending, Klopp says, “is much clearer again. Offensive line, the way it starts, the high press, the midfield press, everywhere, it is clearer they are all in. That makes a difference.”

If Liverpool can keep having their cake and eating it — demolishing opponents with long balls to a line-stretching striker and spiky progressive passing pairs through their box midfield, all backed up by a relentless press — Klopp might just go out in one last blaze of glory.

Manchester City

Man City are still Man City. What’s left to say about a team that have been the best in the world for what feels like half a lifetime?

They still smother opponents high up the pitch. They still pass and move majestically, as if all eleven players are programmed in some secret mathematical language no mortal has managed to crack. They still have Erling Haaland stamping around the box like a cranky T. Rex with a man bun, gobbling up Premier League centre-backs for brunch.

Except, for some reason, it’s not working quite as well as it used to.

Compared to 2021-22, the last year Before the Haaland Era (BHE), City’s points per game rate has slipped from 2.45 to 2.25, their goal difference from +1.92 per game to +1.25, their expected goal difference from +1.68 per game to a downright pedestrian +1.04. It’s enough to make a perfectionist like Guardiola tear his hair out.

Along the way, City cast off old and unwanted players, signed a platoon of new talents and retooled to become bigger, faster, stronger and dribblier than ever. They’ve still become measurably worse.

The pass pair data doesn’t offer many hints as to where a screw or two may have wriggled loose. City’s signature patterns still show the same high circulation that’s always made Guardiola’s side a surefire winner. So why aren’t they — you know — winning quite as much as they used to?

One easy answer is that the players doing the circulating have changed.

City have spent most of this season without an injured Kevin De Bruyne — a massive loss, obviously — but he’s been capably backed up by Julian Alvarez and Phil Foden, who’s in the form of his life. Jack Grealish, a key figure in the treble run a year ago, has been injured a lot and often relegated to the bench, but only because Jeremy Doku hit the ground running past every defender in sight. John Stones has been in and out of the lineup, too, although this kind of thing happens all the time in Guardiola world without seeming to dent the team much.

(Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

There’s been no seismic shift in the stylistic data, no single easy explanation to make the decline make sense. A lot of piecemeal changes have left this team just a little bit creakier at both ends of the pitch — enough, in this season of small margins, to keep things very interesting.

And yet one key data point hasn’t changed: even now, one point behind two very good teams with 10 games to go, City remain comfortable favourites for the title, just as they’ve been all along.

Maybe pass pair data doesn’t hold all the secrets to football. But what else outside Pep Guardiola’s brain possibly could?

(Header photos: Getty Images)

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Appointing a Liverpool manager: A guide to the dos and don’ts

13 hours 27 min ago

To understand how Liverpool are going about hiring their next manager, it’s worth reviewing how they appointed the current one almost nine years ago. 

Ian Ayre, who was the club’s chief executive, made first contact with targets.

Two of those conversations produced interviews, the first with Carlo Ancelotti and the second with Jurgen Klopp. Both men flew to the United States, where Liverpool’s owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) are based, following dialogue instigated by Ayre. 

Klopp’s agent Marc Kosicke was wary of pranksters, which resulted in a video call to ensure the person at the other end of the line was genuine. From there, the process of getting a deal done for Klopp was relatively straightforward. Kosicke told Ayre his client was interested and a meeting was arranged with FSG in New York City at the offices of law firm, Slaughter and May.

That setting sounded ideal to Klopp, believing it lowered the chances of him getting recognised — though things didn’t turn out that way.

In Munich at the start of his trip, he was stopped by flight attendants who wanted a photograph; when he got out of his car in Midtown Manhattan, he was spotted by a German exchange student who asked for a selfie; then, at his hotel, a tourist from Mainz — the German city where Klopp first entered management with Mainz 05 in 2001 after a decade playing for the club and spent a further seven years in the dugout — wanted to talk to him, as did as a group of holidaying Turkish football fans.

Still though, nobody made the link between Klopp and the decision-makers at FSG, who had travelled from the U.S. cities of Boston and Los Angeles to consider the options in front of them.

The opinion of Michael Edwards was considered, a person whose significance at the club had been marked by a promotion to technical director barely six weeks earlier, but the final call was ultimately made by the owners. From then on, FSG president Mike Gordon was largely the point of contact for Kosicke and Klopp. 

Klopp with Liverpool’s then managing director Ayre, left, and chairman Tom Werner on his appointment in 2015 (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

The story is a reminder that Liverpool are entering new territory, as the club sources Klopp’s replacement.

Maybe football gets too hung up on job titles, but the role of sporting director didn’t exist when Klopp succeeded Brendan Rodgers at Anfield in October 2015. It is perhaps more significant, however, that any comparable position did not carry the same level of responsibilities.

Things are different at Liverpool now, as the club head into a new era with Edwards effectively replacing Gordon as the FSG man closest to ground level and Richard Hughes, the new sporting director arriving from fellow Premier League side Bournemouth, leading the managerial search.

FSG wants more decisions to be made on Merseyside and when each prospective candidate sits in front of Liverpool officials, it will be Edwards and Hughes especially they will need to impress – a departure from how things have been done in the past.

While many of the people involved in each of these decisions had served Liverpool for a number of years, thus gaining an understanding of the special demands imposed on any manager, Hughes’ very first call, operating in unfamiliar territory after nearly a decade at Bournemouth, could prove to be his biggest.

So what are some of the dos and don’ts of how to hire a Liverpool manager?

Don’t be blinded by process

If recent history teaches us anything, it is that there is no one ‘right’ way to appoint a Liverpool manager. 

Before Klopp, Rodgers was recruited ahead of the 2012-13 season on the strength of a presentation he gave to FSG, which involved a 180-page dossier.

Before Rodgers, FSG leaned on Kenny Dalglish to re-establish a sense of identity that had been lost under Roy Hodgson, who was hired in summer 2010 by a combination of Ayre, managing director Christian Purslow and temporary chairman Martin Broughton during a period where the club were up for sale and their owners, American businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett, were unable to agree on pretty much anything.

Before Hodgson, Rafa Benitez got the nod in 2004 because chief executive Rick Parry and owner David Moores believed he could do at Liverpool what he’d achieved at Spain’s Valencia, where he had steered a team on a much lower budget than Real Madrid and Barcelona to two domestic titles.

Before Benitez, in 1998, Gerard Houllier was recommended by secretary Peter Robinson, who thought Liverpool needed to embrace European methods to move forward, which seemed like a giant leap at the time, seeing each of the club’s previous five managers could be viewed in some way as an “in-house” choice, given already established associations.

Embrace Europe – but without breaking the bank

While Edwards has never recruited a manager, Hughes has experience from as recently as last summer, when he brought Andoni Iraola to Bournemouth after making the surprise decision to part with Gary O’Neil, who had stepped up from an assistant role following the August 2022 sacking of Scott Parker, less than four months after he’d delivered promotion, and kept them in the Premier League.

At Madrid’s Rayo Vallecano, Iraola had taken an unfashionable club into European competition — a feat those running Bournemouth might like to achieve too at some point. The same thought process should be applied to Liverpool, as it was under Klopp, when he arrived with a track record of winning titles at Borussia Dortmund ahead of rivals with much greater resources while also going far in Europe.

To a large degree, the remit for the Liverpool manager has never changed: show you are streetwise enough to balance ambitions domestically and abroad and you’ll be fine.

There was an exception to this rule – Hodgson, who arrived at Anfield fresh from reaching the Europa League final against the odds with Fulham. The west Londoners, however, finished 12th in that same 2009-10 season, after coming seventh under Hodgson the year before. Neither of those league positions would ever be received positively at Liverpool. 

Hodgson’s six months is the shortest reign of any manager in Liverpool’s history. Though he failed because of results, albeit at a difficult time as the club’s financial problems illustrated, he also failed because of what he said, and quite often, what he did not.

Hodgson took Fulham to the 2009-10 Europa League final (Christof Koepsel/Getty Images)Misfits are welcome

It would be tempting to conclude that Liverpool managers need to be great communicators but neither Benitez, nor Bob Paisley before him in the 1970s and 1980s, fall into that category. They were awkward, but such personality traits were overlooked because of their achievements.

It is often said – certainly since the days of Bill Shankly (1959-74) – that any Liverpool manager does not just represent the club but the city. It is a civic duty, and anyone taking the job must, at least, have some appreciation for what the place has been through.

Anyone who has spent time in Benitez’s company will tell you he falls to the right politically, but it is more accurate anyway to say Liverpool is a city in opposition to the establishment rather than left-leaning.

A misfit like Benitez, who was perceived as being a misunderstood character, managed to fit in.

Benitez was loved by Liverpool fans (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)Tactics

For Hughes, there are also tactics to consider. Or more accurately, the style of the team any managerial appointment would bring. 

Match-going Liverpool fans have rarely cared that much about this sort of thing, so long as the team won. It has become more of a talking point, however, over the last decade, with the voices of a global fanbase becoming more prominent.

Everyone wants to see gegenpressing and tiki-taka, preferably both at the same time. For Hughes, the only consideration should be this: can the incoming manager get a tune out of the majority of the players he is inheriting? 

Most are young enough, talented enough and smart enough to understand what it takes to transition from a Klopp demand, to say, a Xabi Alonso demand — which might involve more touches of the ball.

Sentiment doesn’t guarantee success

A decision to appoint Bayer Leverkusen coach Alonso might also involve sentiment, given that he was a part of the Benitez midfield that won the Champions League in 2005, which helped him become a hugely popular figure at Liverpool. 

That is not a bad thing, with fans probably more inclined to give a returning hero some leeway if results do not click immediately, but even at a club as conscious of their history as Liverpool, it should not be considered a guarantee of success.

Graeme Souness’ illustrious history as a player with Liverpool did not help him deliver the required amount of silverware as manager in the early 1990s and while Roy Evans engineered a revival, it was still not enough to win the title. Dalglish’s comeback after Hodgson departed in January 2011 lifted fans’ spirits, and he won the League Cup 13 months later, but Liverpool ended that 2011-12 season in eighth place, their lowest league finish since 1993-94.

Souness’ Liverpool return did not end well (Daniel Smith/Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)

Alonso would still seem an obvious choice, mainly because he has transformed an underachieving Leverkusen team into one that is likely to end Bayern Munich’s run of 11 straight titles in Germany’s Bundesliga, and one which has not suffered in Europe due to their domestic pursuit.

Even if it is not Alonso – whose sample size of work is small, as he has only managed at a senior level for 17 months – in the dugout come August, Hughes would be well advised to remember that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

If not Xabi Alonso then who? Analysing Liverpool's Plan B managerial options

(Top photos: Getty Images)

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