Failed Jurgen Klopp offer, £95m transfer mistake and how Liverpool left Man United behind in five key moments
Liverpool beat Manchester United 4-0 at Anfield on Tuesday and the gap between the clubs has rarely looked wide
A quick glimpse at the league table would suggest that the gap between Liverpool and Manchester United isn’t that large. Indeed, the Reds’ fierce rivals finished second in the Premier League table last season while they themselves had to battle until the final game to secure Champions League qualification.
Yet in reality, the distance between the two clubs is a chasm. This was made abundantly clear at Anfield on Tuesday night when an electric performance from Liverpool saw them hammer an apparently disinterested United 4-0.
And that wasn’t even their biggest win of 2021/22 over the Red Devils, as it followed a 5-0 humbling at Old Trafford last October. United might have changed their manager between their two thrashings by Liverpool but it made little difference to their effectiveness in either match.
What makes this even sweeter for Kopites is that their side lagged behind their great rivals for around two decades while Sir Alex Ferguson had United dominating English football. While they dipped after his retirement, they were still in a much better place than Liverpool when the Reds were looking for a new manager in 2015.
There have been countless appointments and deals made by both clubs which have contributed to the role reversal they have experienced in the last few years, so here’s a look at five of the most important.
Michael Edwards
How many fanbases want to build a statue to commemorate a sporting director? It won’t be many, but Liverpool supporters hold the work Michael Edwards has conducted during his decade with the club in such high esteem that they might be one group who would.
Edwards and his team of data analysts have overseen perhaps one of the best five-year runs of transfer business the football world has ever seen, particularly in light of the Reds’ net spend in that period.
Where Manchester United has boasted about having scouting reports on thousands of players dating back years but having little to show for it, Edwards is content to do his excellent work in the background. So reticent is he to take credit for the success he has helped the club to enjoy, it was a genuine surprise to hear from him when he announced he would be leaving Liverpool at the end of this season. Better get cracking on that statue, lads.
Jurgen Klopp
While players will always be the most important factor in determining success, a team’s manager isn’t far behind. A top coach can make a group of footballers perform at levels that seem far greater than the sum of their parts.
By hiring Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool secured a more suitable manager than any with whom United has tried to replace Ferguson. To make matters worse, they sounded out the German while he was with Borussia Dortmund about becoming their boss, but executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward did a bad job of selling the club.
According to Raphael Honigstein: “Woodward told Klopp that the Theatre of Dreams was ‘like an adult version of Disneyland’, a mythical place where, as the nickname suggested, the entertainment was world class and dreams came true. Klopp wasn’t entirely convinced by that sales pitch — he found it a bit ‘unsexy’, he told a friend — but he didn’t dismiss the proposition out of hand either.”
Never mind unsexy, that sounds positively vomit-inducing, and anyone who knew the slightest thing about Klopp’s outlook on life would know such descriptions would be unlikely to appeal. It was a hideous mistake on the part of Woodward and United has paid for it since.
Paul Pogba
This is not so much an attack on Paul Pogba’s performances – United fans are happy enough to do that themselves – but rather a critique of his signing and how he has been used by the club.
The Frenchman rejoined United in the summer of 2016 for a fee of around £95million. That’s more than Liverpool spent gross, never mind net, on new players that season. With that remarkable level of financial outlay – and he’s reportedly earned £15million a year on top of the transfer fee – it’s imperative to get the best out of the player.
Yet aside from the odd period here and there, United never has. As recently as October 2020, Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville had a heated debate on Monday Night Football about what Pogba’s best position might be.
That was four years after he joined and his club still didn’t have a clue. It’s hard not to wonder if similar conversations might be held about Jadon Sancho in 2025 and the way things are going for him.
Even when a signing Liverpool make is not a resounding success, which is rare these days, they do at least have a sensible plan on how to use the player.
Virgil van Dijk vs Harry Maguire
As good as Liverpool’s attack has been in the last few years, they’ve arguably never been as devastating as they were in Mohamed Salah’s first season with the club, 2017/18.
Yet while their defensive issues were at times overplayed, at that point the front of the team was built on sand to some extent. The Reds needed a top defender, but also one who would align with how Klopp wanted his team to play.
Enter Virgil. As an example of how they’re not perfect, Liverpool made a mess of their first attempt to buy the Dutchman from Southampton, but they bided their time and got their man in the end. To say it’s gone well would be an understatement. He’s still yet to lose a league game at Anfield and Liverpool has become champions everywhere since he signed.
But where van Dijk was once the most expensive defender in the world, he no longer is thanks to United signing Harry Maguire from Leicester City. They too needed a colossus to tie their backline together but in a similar fashion as with Pogba, they targeted a good player rather than the right player.
Maguire excelled with Claude Puel’s Leicester, who defended deeply. Their conservative nature is echoed to some extent by England, and Maguire usually does well for his country too.
It’s unfair to label his role with the Foxes as merely ‘see the ball, head ball’ but that was a large part of it thanks to his ability to win aerial duels. Far more is expected of defenders at elite clubs and the lack of structure around Maguire has hampered his ability to perform well. Where once he cost £80million, it’s hard to see any team offering anything close to that now.
Alexis Sanchez and Cristiano Ronaldo
If buying a player and not knowing how best to use them is not smart and signing one and expecting them to prosper with a different style of playing is a little better, purchasing players merely to stop your local rivals from getting them must be the stupidest strategy of all.
And United has done this not once, but twice. In the last four years, both Alexis Sanchez and Cristiano Ronaldo appeared destined to join Manchester City, only for the Red Devils to swoop in and take them to Old Trafford instead. Sanchez was United’s top earner in 2018/19 and Ronaldo holds that title now but neither made the team perform better.
While there have been exceptions such as Thiago Alcantara, on the whole players do not join Liverpool immediately to become one of the highest-paid members of their squad. They have to work hard to earn success and are then rightly rewarded for their efforts.
Unsurprisingly it tends to lead to better results, with the hunger and desire shown by Liverpool’s players at Anfield on Tuesday providing a sharp contrast to whatever meager efforts the United players offered. For the many reasons listed above, it’s going to be a long road for them to travel before they’re competing on an even keel with the Reds again.
