https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...luence-has-grown-liverpool-following-anfield/
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How Pep Lijnders' influence has grown at Liverpool following Anfield power-shift
Jürgen Klopp’s No 2 is playing an increasingly important role in Liverpool’s transfer business
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The signing of Cody Gakpo, a brilliant young Dutch talent, World Cup star, and – perhaps most satisfying for Liverpool – a long-term target for Manchester United, was a spectacular way to start the new year for a club who had been struggling to keep their usual pace in the Premier League.
Yet even
Liverpool’s Gakpo transfer coup was telling about the way in which the club have been forced to address short-term issues in the transfer market while injuries to key players have stacked up. By the time the club fell to defeat to Brentford on Monday, 15 points off leaders Arsenal by the end of the night in west London, it was as much a case of those who were missing. Gakpo likely begins his Liverpool career against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup third round on Saturday, and his club need him to start in a hurry.
The three big injury absentees are Luis Díaz, Diogo Jota and Roberto Firmino, and their rehabilitation has been frustratingly slow. Díaz and Firmino were both injured in training. Jota, who was carried off in the win over Manchester City on October 16, had already come back from an injury in pre-season, and he was not the only one absent in August. As Liverpool faced the second half of the season with uncertainty over when these three attackers might be available again, the Gakpo deal, with a potential full value of £45 million, was the club’s best option.
What has happened to the great Jürgen Klopp team of the era? Only they have seriously challenged the dominance of the Abu Dhabi-era, Pep Guardiola City. Without Klopp and his players it would be a five-year City title hegemony. In that time Liverpool have become champions of Europe on a net spend that, in February of last year, ranked only 14th highest in the European game over the previous decade. They have had to fight against a range of clubs who have consistently outspent them. Yet now they face a struggle to make the Champions League places, a competition in which they have reached the final in three of the previous five years.
On Sky Sports on Monday night, Telegraph Sport columnist
Jamie Carragher did not like what he had just seen of Liverpool and wondered about a change in their style to a less hard-running, more technical, approach. “I don’t know if there’s an influence from Pep Lijnders who is Jürgen Klopp’s No 2, who has a huge influence on what goes on,” Carragher said. “Maybe a Dutch way of thinking; getting players on the ball.”
Certainly,
Lijnders has a major part in key decisions at Liverpool. He returned to the club from the Netherlands after a brief spell as manager of NEC in the summer of 2018 at the beginning of two extraordinary seasons in which Liverpool won the Champions League and then the club’s first league championship in 30 years. As the recruitment picture has changed at Liverpool, so Lijnders’s influence on that side of the club has grown exponentially. The technical director, Michael Edwards, signalled his impending departure in November 2021 and his successor, Julian Ward, is now working his notice having assumed the role only in July.
Three of the four big signings that Liverpool have made in the past two seasons – Díaz, Darwin Núñez and now Gakpo – have been advocated by Lijnders. Which is not to say they have been bad acquisitions, just that a Dutch coach who spent his formative coaching years in Portugal has gravitated to players who have come of age in those country’s leagues. The fourth, Ibrahima Konaté, came from the Red Bull group, a reliable source of players in the past for Liverpool.
The signings do demonstrate the scope of Lijnders’s influence at the club.
Especially with Mike Gordon, the president of owners Fenway Sports Group, stepping back from recruitment and his role signing off on contracts as well as the departure of Ian Graham, the club’s director of research. In addition, Lijnders, 39, regularly takes first-team sessions. He has turned down the chance to be a manager elsewhere to stay at Liverpool.
Liverpool were offered the chance to sign Christopher Nkunku in the summer but Klopp and Lijnders declined. The France international’s positional flexibility meant he would have been a long-term replacement for Firmino and competition for Mohamed Salah and Díaz in the wide positions. By the time Liverpool went into this new year injury crisis, Chelsea had already struck an agreement with Nkunku, and his club RB Leipzig, for the summer. This is the kind of bad luck that can affect any club. The strength of Liverpool in recent years is that they have so rarely put a foot wrong.
The club are prepared to return to their summer target Matheus Nunes, the Portugal international, formerly at Sporting Lisbon, and another Lijnders recommendation before he eventually joined Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Liverpool made a commitment to go back for the 24-year-old, an attacking midfielder, and as things stand a deal will be agreed at around €50 million (£44 million)for him to join in the summer.
The great prize of European football in that summer window will be Jude Bellingham, a player whom Liverpool want above all. They will, nevertheless, be up against every club richer than them in world football, including City.
The hope for Liverpool has always been that Bellingham and his family would see Anfield as the best place for his development. He will, in any case, be a very wealthy young man whoever he chooses and his career decisions thus far have never prioritised money. The worry for Klopp and his staff is that City can make a better pitch for Bellingham.
Another regular complaint is that Liverpool have signed just one midfielder in the last 4½ years – Thiago Alcantara, another on that very long injury list at the start of the season. Yet Klopp did insist on that four-year contract for Jordan Henderson, agreed in August last year, that made Henderson one of the club’s highest earners. There is no questioning Henderson’s immense contribution to Liverpool’s recent history. The bigger concern is how much he can contribute in the future.
The same goes for Fabinho, the Brazilian midfielder who was such a critical part of the team’s success in the past five seasons. There is a perception that he has simply run out of steam but given that he turned only 29 in October, the question would be why that is the case. He is by no means old by the standard of modern players.
The story circles back to the injuries. How soon will Jota, Firmino and Díaz be back? Why is it taking so long?
Klopp has seen departures over recent years to his medical department, most notably the club doctor, Jim Moxon, who left last year. Dr Andreas Schlumberger, a long-term Kloppite who worked with him at Borussia Dortmund, is in charge of recovery and performance at the club. It will be his job to get the players back who can steady Liverpool’s season. From Klopp’s point of view, he cannot afford to lose any more.
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