I think Klopp is a great manager who thinks reasonably long term. His single mindedness in the transfer market, and willingness to tolerate flaws in the squad till they can be thoroughly addressed is a double edged sword. On the one hand, if our purchases have shown us anything, buying some option B or C because we have to, at expense, has cost us many millions over the last decade. On the other hand, if your boat has a hole in it, after a couple of years...
Last year I think he had no sense that we could win the title, which is accurate, and was quite confident that we could get 4th, which we did. Most managers would be pretty afraid of that gamble, and try to leverage it for spending. He'd rather wait till he gets someone he actually wants, and he also has a realistic sense that we don't have money to spend all the time. This is like the criticism of Wenger over the years, as though he had no desire to spend money, when its clear there wasn't any. We'll spend, but he wants to get it right when we do. All of this seems to bank on the patience of the fans as much as anything, and on that point he's definitely wrong. Once again, managing this club is a unbelievably hard job due to the weight of expectation. He's as good as we've had in a while at dealing with it.
In terms of his poor defensive record... I think we've had some very well organized defensive teams in the past, and some great defenders. I think you put Hyppia and Carragher in this team a CB, or even our entire best back four, and they'll get goals scored on them. Our system of play will frequently leave CBs exposed on the counter, so you need some really good CBs, or to really honor possession, which is not what we do, with a direct and counterattacking style of play. Those goals will always be scored, I think its silly to not expect some of them.
The set piece defending and just general shitness on second balls is a mix of our height, poor coaching, and some really poor fundamental defending, some of which is just bad personnel. There's no way to coach out some of the idiocy, you just need to get a better defender. Matip was a good piece of business I think, Klavan, not so much. Lovren's key ability seems to be a lack of self awareness, he's the only one on planet earth who thinks he's really good. Klopp clearly knows all this, that's why he was after a great CB. I think he thinks anyone other than a really commanding dynamic CB isn't going to be enough of an improvement to make any difference.