THIS is Daniel Sturridge’s 10th season as a first-team footballer at a Premier League club. He has started just 94 league games in that time. But there are circumstances and dynamics that contribute towards a dubious statistic that makes Fabio Aurelio or Daniel Agger...
IT is one of those strange football contradictions: you never quite know what you are going to get from Jürgen Klopp, even when asking the most simple of questions. Yet the manager strives for a form of consistency; a predictability even, in his forcefulness that all...
A FEW years ago, I interviewed a young academy coach who worked for a football club in the north west of England. Immediately before our meeting, he had trained players aged 16 and under in an outdoor session and despite the rain, the first detail that struck me was...
ASK any of the greatest Liverpool players and they will speak of the same outstanding quality among the greatest managers they have served: the ability to make a decision and stick to it. It explains why Jose Mourinho is currently viewed as vulnerable as he has ever...
IF YOU haven’t read Michael Calvin’s Living on the Volcano, you should – particularly if you happen to be a football manager. It acts as an essential survival guide for those attempting to operate in the most perilous of sporting environments in the year 2015....
I HAD never seen Jürgen Klopp in the flesh before he was unveiled as Liverpool’s manager. And there he was: tall, powerfully limbed; dressed immaculately, making Ian Ayre — the person presenting him — look slightly inadequate suddenly. Like Liverpool...
ALBERTO Aquilani hadn’t played a game for Liverpool when a banner in his name was unfurled on the Kop for the first time. It displayed the Italian’s shirt number in Roman numerals next to an emphatic message telling of a hero rising, as if the new signing was a...
TWO weeks ago, I wrote an article in the Independent on Sunday, detailing the problems at Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers. I realised the conclusion especially would make grim reading for Liverpool supporters. Having spoken to a lot of reliable sources before its...
NAME-DROPPING time: I interviewed Jamie Carragher last week for a new project I’m working on. More about that next year, in case you’re interested. He was considering Istanbul and 2005. A decade later, he still can’t really comprehend how it all happened. Even with...
HERE we go again, you might think. I have used this saying before but no club is a prisoner of its past as much as Liverpool. Whether it is the bronze bust of Bill Shankly that surveys Melwood’s reception, the replica of the fifth European Cup that stands on a plinth...
