Why the next Liverpool boss would be foolish and naive to try to imitate Jurgen Klopp's freestyle football, writes IAN LADYMAN

Now that it feels like it’s almost over, it’s hard not to think back at what made it what it was. Jurgen Klopp’s eight-and-a-half years at Liverpool have left an indelible mark on the Premier League in a way that goes beyond what was, after all, just a single title.

For me, the story has often been told in the faces of the opposition. It may be that, more than any individual game, trophy or goal, that will linger the longest.

Some of the best players in the world have suffered through it. That feeling of being tossed about mercilessly and endlessly in Klopp’s Anfield washing machine. A feeling of helplessness, a sense that the size of the challenge is just too great, the forces pinning you back too irresistible.

With that in mind, I think back to Lionel Messi at Anfield on the night of May 7 2019. With the great man’s Barcelona team 3-0 down in a Champions League semi-final second leg and on the way to one of the most humbling experiences in their history, the greatest player some of us have ever seen stood over a restart looking utterly bereft. Confused, shellshocked, lost. All of that and more.

That is what Klopp’s Liverpool football did to the best that Europe had to offer during that particularly golden period that brought the Anfield club to three Champions League finals in five years.

Manchester City, arguably the best team in the world over this same time span, know the feeling well. 

Liverpool did it to Pep Guardiola’s team too. Twice in the space of three months in early 2018, in the Premier League and in Europe, and as recently as last month. That particular game ended 1-1 but how Guardiola and his players survived a classic second half onslaught maybe they don’t even know.

It has, in truth, been unique. Klopp has had his ups and downs over his years in England. No manager is immune to the vicissitudes of form and fortune. But over the course of it all, the German’s team has played a brand of energetic, instinctive, shockwave football that we have rarely – if ever – seen before in this country. 

At times it has felt as though it has been as much about attitude and ferocity as it has been about football or tactics.

And this, looking forward, is what makes the challenge facing Klopp’s successor at Anfield so great and so daunting.

It has been suggested since news broke of Liverpool’s efforts to take the Dutch coach Arne Slot out of Feyenoord that the 45-year-old is favoured because he will be able to continue Klopp’s work, that he will be able to lead, coach and direct the team in broadly the same way.

I don’t buy it. Trying to imitate Klopp would be so foolish and naïve that it’s impossible to imagine a coach of any kind of experience even trying it.

Listening to Liverpool defender Trent Alexander-Arnold talk on a Gary Neville podcast this week, it became clear just how much of what has happened on the field under Klopp has been unscripted. Freestyle football if you like.

What has made it so hard to play against at its best has been its chaotic nature. Playing Klopp’s Liverpool has at times been so unpredictable as it make it almost impossible to fathom. 

Footballers like order. They like to know where the threat is coming from. At times, it has felt as though Liverpool barely knew themselves, only that it would come, and if you have a personality as strong and as deep as Klopp has then you have a chance to pull all that off.

For years Klopp’s greatest trick was to send players out on to the field that were in so many ways psychological extensions of himself. I find it impossible to believe that Slot, or indeed anybody else, would be able to repeat any of this. Take five or ten per cent of that intensity and energy out of Liverpool’s football and the engine starts to stall.

So Klopp’s replacement will be under some pressure immediately to find a new way and that presents the greatest challenge.

There will be much for him to work with. Young talent continues to be promoted from the club’s academy. Players signed last summer, such as Alexis MacAllister and Dominik Szoboszlai, can be expected to improve further. 

Equally, Liverpool will have an issue to address up front if Mo Salah – a year away from the end of his contract – leaves while the question of just who partners Virgil van Dijk at the centre of the back four raised itself again at Goodison this week as Ibrahima Konate struggled against Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

Those are issues of personnel, though. All managers and clubs face those as time rolls by. Slot – if it is to be him – will face questions of identity and philosophy that run much deeper than anything concerning an individual player.

Just how do you take hold of something so personal, bespoke and individual and turn it in to something new, different and at the same time effective? It’s an enormous ask. Players like Alexander-Arnold, for example, have only ever known one way, one path.

At big clubs across England, they have been waiting for Klopp to leave for years. And this is exactly why.

Why are United haggling over Ashworth? 

Manchester United are by all accounts miles away from reaching an agreement with Newcastle United for their football director Dan Ashworth.

United wish to pay in the region of £2m while Newcastle have a number closer to £15m in mind.

It’s common for big football clubs to behave like this when it comes to paying compensation for managers and executives. This is not just a Manchester United thing.

But, sticking with United as the example here, why would they be so parsimonious about such an important appointment as Ashworth yet think nothing of handing over £80m for a footballing bum like their Brazilian winger, Antony?

Ashworth, if all his publicity is correct, can transform United’s wretched recent transfer record pretty much on his own. Antony cannot even transfer a football effectively from A to B.

Odegaard's Norway problem

Arsenal's recovery from defeats against Aston Villa and Bayern Munich has been deeply impressive. Mikel Arteta’s team ground it out against Wolves then turned on the glitter against Chelsea.

Front and central, as always, has been Martin Odegaard and as I watched him shape the rhythm and tempo of that Chelsea dismantling at the Emirates – his passing beautifully free and destructive - it was hard to escape the feeling that he is now right on the shoulder of Manchester City’s Kevin de Bruyne as the Premier League’s best playmaker.

What a shame for him, then, that he will not get to play in this summer’s European Championship. In fact, Norway have not reached a major summer finals since Odegaard was 18 months old. He is 25.

Imagine having Odegaard and Erling Haaland in your team and finishing six points behind Scotland in qualifying. The mind boggles.

What's really to blame for FA Cup replays being scrapped 

Some say there is no longer room in the football calendar for FA Cup replays and they blame the EFL’s intransigence over Carabao Cup dates for that.

But it’s not that. It’s Europe. That’s what gets in the way. Daft ideas like the Europa Conference League. Extra group games in next year’s Champions League. That’s where the clutter is.

Asked about this, Mansfield Town manager Nigel Clough – whose father tried to win the FA Cup for two decades – was pretty clear.

‘There are 92 clubs in the professional game,’ Clough said.

‘Only six play in Europe.’

Quite.