“We were on the edge,” said Jurgen Klopp recently, recalling the demands of the 2021-22 season. “It was good fun, but it was super intense.”
His Liverpool side played 63 games in pursuit of perfection across four competitions during that campaign and now there is the possibility of doing it all over again.
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That edge is where Klopp and his players want to return before parting ways this summer and last weekend marked the point when the long stretch towards the season’s conclusion began.
Saturday’s 4-1 win against Brentford was the first of a possible 26 games in 99 days for a squad who are still competing for every piece of silverware that was available when the season started in August.
As well as the title race, where a one-point advantage is held over Manchester City ahead of tonight’s meeting with Luton, there is a Carabao Cup final to plan for against Chelsea this weekend. Then there is the FA Cup and Europa League, with Liverpool having already advanced to the last 16 of both. Continue those cup adventures to the respective finals and Klopp’s last season will be another 63-game marathon.
Should all go to plan, last week was Liverpool’s last empty midweek of the campaign. Aside from next month’s international ‘break’ — a misnomer given virtually all of Klopp’s first-team squad will be departing for games around the globe — fighting on four fronts could see Liverpool playing twice a week every week between now and May 25.
No other club have the potential for greater congestion. In the same period, from February 17, Manchester City’s maximum number of games was 25, Arsenal’s 21 and Tottenham Hotspur’s just 14, all in the Premier League.
Already, the workload is having an impact. In the last week alone, Liverpool have seen Mohamed Salah (hamstring), Darwin Nunez (muscle tightness), Alisson (hamstring), Diogo Jota (knee) and Curtis Jones (shin) all pick up injuries of varying severity, joining Trent Alexander-Arnold (hamstring), Dominik Szoboszlai (hamstring), Thiago (thigh) and Joel Matip (knee) on the sidelines.
Suddenly, Klopp’s attacking options — which looked bountiful just a few days ago — are being stretched to breaking point at the worst possible moment.
But this is a squad braced to have their limitations tested, just as they did two years ago. Only in the final minutes of the final match of that Premier League season did Liverpool see City secure another title, before Real Madrid then narrowly shaded a tight Champions League final 1-0. Liverpool ended that season with two trophies but were two games from a quadruple.
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Klopp has observed that “there was no book written, there was no data about it” in terms of coping with such an intense workload, but at least now they are more prepared having gone through it once.
“Those experiences can only help,” says Steve Barrett, a former sports scientist with the Football Association and Championship club Hull City. “You can account for the ‘noise’ that comes with these situations. They know how to manage themselves. They’ve shown that ability to put miles in their legs and keep performing to a high level.”
The schedule facing Liverpool has the potential to be extreme.
Beating Southampton at home in the FA Cup fifth-round on February 28 would see the Merseyside derby against Everton on March 17 postponed, then winning a quarter-final would see a trip to Fulham (April 20) also moved. The only two midweeks currently guaranteed to be empty are on the weeks beginning April 22 and May 13, with six Thursday slots potentially taken up by Europa League ties.
The planning for Liverpool’s brutal schedule, though, began over a year ago, when their pre-season plans, featuring trips to Germany and Singapore, were drawn up by Andreas Kornmayer, Klopp’s trusted ally and the club’s head of fitness and conditioning.
“The process starts right from the beginning of pre-season, making sure that players are able to tolerate two games in a week,” explains Barrett. “Klopp and his team are big on this German, running-based methodology. The emphasis is on building that endurance base.
“Pre-season is generally only a four-to-six-week period now, but that’s where you build that underlying foundation of conditioning to really help players throughout the season.”
Squad depth, and retaining it, promises to be key. Klopp has used 31 players this season, with the emergence of young defenders Jarell Quansah and Conor Bradley — the latter will be expected to deputise for the injured Alexander-Arnold in the coming weeks — bringing unforeseen bonuses.
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Klopp and his support staff have attempted to keep plenty in reserve, with the Carabao Cup and Europa League typically bringing wholesale changes. That opportunity to provide rest, though, diminishes as the stakes rise.
“At the top level, they’ll be taking bloods, saliva, urine markers,” says Barrett. “Everything like that, to leave no stone unturned and to gather as much insight to make decision-making as educated as you possibly can. There’s an element of good fortune, but the more prepared you are for these times, the luckier you tend to get.
“You’ll see clubs individualise (players’) programmes more and more. If you’re playing every single game, then those are your training stimulus. You’re playing games and it’s about how quickly you can recover, with all the different strategies a club can use. If you were looking at a player like Harvey Elliott, someone who is in and out of the team, they’re the key ones you have to keep on top of between games. It’s not easy for those players.
“You’ll see some clubs now moving away from doing doggies (running drills) after a game. If you’re at home, you might see teams having a training session after the game. You might not have time to bring them in the next day for a big session, so push them harder after a game and then they’re on a mini-recovery, similar to the guys who have played.
“It’s very much about going to the different units and taking it game by game — starters, non-starters, subs. Then it’s very much viewed on an individual basis and making assessments of every player. Sports scientists, medical staff, nutritionists, psychologists; they’re all playing a part.”
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Liverpool’s backroom team was built for periods such as these. Supporting Klopp and his assistants Pep Lijnders and Peter Krawietz are a small collection of fitness coaches, physiotherapists, masseurs and nutritionists tasked with ensuring players are in the best possible physical condition. Liverpool have also used Zone7, an AI-based injury prevention tech company, since the beginning of the 2021-22 season.
Running parallel is the attention given to the mental well-being of a squad under increasing pressure. Liverpool have called upon Lee Richardson, who managed Chesterfield from 2007-09 in English football’s third and fourth tiers, as their performance psychology consultant since 2019. “I can help any player who wants to be helped,” he said in an interview four years ago.
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The dangers of fatigue do not begin and end with physical fitness as a season reaches its pinch point. A mental toll is taken when playing close to the edge of a team’s capabilities.
“The conversations I tend to have surround making sure players give themselves plenty of rest and recuperation,” says Dan Abrahams, an experienced sports psychologist who has worked with clubs in the Champions League and Premier League this season.
“You also need to give them space to get away from football when they’re not in training.
“So many players, when they go home, they’ll keep thinking about the game. Their brains will be predicting what might come up, who they’re coming up against. The problem there, from a nervous system perspective, is that they’ll be releasing their stores of adrenaline.
“From a brain perspective, they’re depleting stores of sugar and glucose, so if you’re not having mental rest away from the game itself, you can start to really experience mental fatigue. It’s so important for them to have distractions. That’s rule number one.”
Rest days will likely be few and far between given travel days in Europe and overnight stays for domestic games. A balance must be struck to avoid players becoming drained.
“Mental fatigue delivers on several fronts,” adds Abrahams. “The cognitive side of the game, your mental processes, is the awareness, anticipation and decision-making.
“When you’re experiencing mental fatigue and you go into a game with depleted levels of adrenaline and glucose, you’re not going to be as aware or anticipate as quickly. Your decision-making suffers and your visible coordination suffers. Players are slower to anticipate, they’re not pressing as hard.”
The added curveball this season is Klopp’s long goodbye and a final fortnight which could — theoretically — include a rearranged Merseyside derby, a Premier League title decider that may also be his final match at Anfield, the Europa League final and the FA Cup final. Throw in the emotion of Klopp’s departure and it has the potential to be a tidal wave of emotion.
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“It’ll come down to individual differences in perception of the situation,” says Abrahams. “Does Klopp stepping away cause a positive intent or a negative intent? The positive intent is approach behaviour: ‘So Jurgen is leaving, I’m going to give it my all’, front foot, freedom, doing things to win rather than not to lose. The negative intent is: ‘The manager is leaving and we don’t want to mess it up or make errors’. They play in avoidant mode, which is back foot and fearful.
“I would probably say that because these players are all so good, with a culture of intensity, that I’d think they’d be closer to the positive and proactive approach.”
Deep breath and prepare to jump in: the next time Liverpool might come up for air could be at season’s end.
(Top photo: George Wood/Getty Images)