Fabrizio Romano has claimed that there are ‘no regrets’ from inside Liverpool about Jurgen Klopp announcing in January that he’ll be stepping down once the current season ends.
The German’s time at Anfield is in danger of petering out to an anti-climax after a run of three defeats in six games saw the Reds knocked out of the Europa League and realistically eliminated from the Premier League title race.
Some pundits have duly questioned whether the 56-year-old publicly declaring his intentions to leave has had a destabilising effect on his team during the run-in to the campaign, but that doesn’t appear to be the view from within the club.
FOLLOW Empire of the Kop on Instagram (@empireofthekop) HERE
In his Daily Briefing for CaughtOffside on Monday, Romano wrote: “Despite what’s been suggested by some, my understanding is that there are no regrets on Klopp’s announcement that he’d be leaving at the end of the season.
“Some fans and pundits perhaps feel he should have waited, but he felt it was the best moment, he wanted to be 100% honest with the fans and no one believes that was the issue behind the team’s recent collapse.”
Given how Liverpool’s previously excellent season has disintegrated during April, one can understand why there’s a perception that Klopp might’ve put too much pressure on his players to deliver in the knowledge that he’d be going at the end of the campaign.
However, in the six weeks which followed his exit announcement on 26 January, the Reds enjoyed arguably their best period of 2023/24, with the subsequent 10 matches seeing nine victories, a combined scoreline of 33-10 and a Carabao Cup final triumph.
If anything, the squad seemed galvanised to try and send him out on a high rather than daunted by that ambition, and the collapse of recent weeks is primarily (but not solely) down to fatigue from a hectic season which has seen us have to navigate a top-heavy injury crisis while juggling four competitions prior to Easter.
If Klopp felt that the time was right in January to publicly declare that he’d be leaving next month, he’s more than earned the right to go out on his terms, and you can be sure that he would’ve thought long and hard about when it would’ve been most appropriate to break such seismic news.
Ultimately, Liverpool just didn’t quite have the quality or mental fortitude to go the distance with Arsenal and Manchester City in the Premier League title race, but we’re still in a far better position now than we had been this time last year.
Clearly the reason we’re out of title race is because our forwards can’t hit a barn with a Banjo,