Here's my 2 cents. It's ridiculous to think that Watford or Newcastle games are in any way a reflection on Klopp's quality as a manager. But Klopp's honeymoon with some of the players should be over. What we are seeing now is that after the initial lift caused by the new ideas and air of optimism surrounding the new manager, the long-standing deficiencies of this team are becoming painfully exposed. That's normal. I mentioned the "Klopp effect" of getting 10-15% more from the players. Well, allow me to clarify – that doesn't work for every player. Someone like Lucas has been managed by 5 different managers at LFC, made a career out of getting the most out of a limited skill-set and is approaching 30 – it's highly unlikely that even the best manager in the world will find an extra 10% there that no other manager was able to find. Give credit to Lucas – he managed to lift his game in the right moment after the new manager arrived and won for himself a key role in Klopp's team on merit, but it was always going to be temporary.
Skrtel has become an automatic selection in recent years, an island of stability in a sea of misfits and failed experiments. But if he's our John Terry or Vincent Kompany, then he has to be judged by the same standards as those two if we truly want to compete with their respective teams for the title – and if you think of it this way, suddenly it becomes clear that Skrtel has acquired his almost "untouchable" status not because he genuinely matches up to the best defenders in the game, but simply because everybody else was worse/injured/less consistent.
Even Coutinho, who I love as a player, has ended up as the leader and biggest star of this team not because he has unquestionably shown the leadership quality, but almost by default after our other leaders have been sold or retired. Now I have to defend Coutinho a little bit – he did in fact show some leadership qualities with his game-winning goals in important games and at 23 he can't be expected to carry the whole team on his shoulders yet, but from the team's perspective that's exactly the problem – once again, like in the case with Skrtel and Lucas, we have a player placed in a position of key importance who is not quite ready for that responsibility. Luckily for Coutinho (and for us) the reason he's not ready is youth rather than lack of world-class talent.
Rounding up the spine of the team is our best striker (Sturridge) and our #1 goalkeeper (Mignolet). Enough has been said about those two that we should not be repeating ad nauseam.
How about the players who arrived in the past couple of seasons, can any of them fill the leadership void? Lovren, of course, has been billed as a new defensive leader when he arrived and I think he has the right character – but he's just not talented enough. I had, and in some way still have, high hopes for Firmino – I saw how good he can be in Germany, but I am starting to think that because his formative years were spent in a happy-go-lucky team like Hoffenheim, where everybody just had fun playing without much concern for results or pressure from fans (Hoffenheim is a tiny town and the first-division team only existed there because of a wealthy benefactor), he is finding it difficult to adjust to working in a high-pressure environment like LFC. It's early days and he might still "get it" and become one of the leaders of this team – the talent is certainly there. But at the moment he is playing like a stereotypical "luxury player" and that's not going to work in Liverpool.
Lallana has the same problem, actually – he is used to being the biggest talent in a small team and now that he's not, he has ways to go to simplify his game and learn to trust his teammates (by passing the ball to them quicker). At least now he has a manager who will demand nothing less. He is more of a finished article than Firmino, however, and that may count against him. Who else? Milner came here thinking he can fill Gerrard's shoes – and so far he's found them way too big. He gives 110%, but somehow looks scared doing it. Benteke can be a useful player under the right circumstances, but never a leader. Clyne is a quality RB and he provides leadership in a way by making us more solid (finally we can defend with a back 4, yay!), but he's not going to win us games in attack. Who else did we spend big money for? Markovic? Definitely a luxury player. Origi, Moreno, Can – very promising, but still young and raw.
In the end it's very simple – we will not compete for major trophies until we have players who are absolute top-class, both in terms of talent and character, occupying at least some of the key positions in the team. In his first interview Klopp said that he believes in the potential of "these players" and I believe him – indeed we have lots of talented, hard-working players many of whom can be seriously improved by Klopp and almost all of whom can potentially be a part of a title-winning or a CL-winning team. It's not a bad platform to build on; I'm sure Klopp took this into account when he took the job. But what games like Watford and Newcastle have shown is that the construction of this team is missing some very key parts, or the parts that ought to be key are currently occupied by placeholders. Replace those with the real deal and this team will absolutely fly even without a major surgery. This time, the transfer committee have to get it right.
