Jürgen Klopp has flipped old narrative as Liverpool deadly from what Everton cheered like a goal

Having made Liverpool champion of everything, Jürgen Klopp is now taking on some of the most fundamental footballing wisdom, and Everton knows it all too well.

The process of tactical convergence between Liverpool and Manchester City has been ongoing for years. But at the peak of the battle between the two sides, around 2018-2020, it felt like a clash of not only teams but philosophies.

In one corner was Pep Guardiola. Even then, he had moved away from the ‘death by football’ tiki-taka with which he made his name at Barcelona, but his approach has always been a variation on the same theme: control everything. In some ways, Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool were at the polar opposite end of the spectrum, looking to engineer chaos and then take advantage of it.

Klopp’s approach has an uncanny knack for bloodying the noses of big opponents. There have been some big losses to Manchester City over the years, but some big wins too, with Liverpool’s bravery in the press often enough to unsettle the metronomic efforts of Guardiola’s not-quite-automatons.