PART of the goal for Fenway Sports Group when they chose to replace Brendan Rodgers was finding a manager who could galvanise, energise and excite.

Jurgen Klopp? Check, check and check.

You don’t get points for press conferences, but his first meeting with the media lived up to the hype and more. He offered up the expected (talking up the club’s history and fanbase), the less- expected (John W. Henry, Tom Werner and Michael Gordon are – apparently – “cool guys”) and a clever Euro-aphorism (“You don’t take history in your backpack and carry it with you.”

You can see the logic. Go out and sign the biggest and best name realistically available. And, this time of year, that was Klopp. He had awoken one sleeping giant, there’s plenty of reason he can awake another. When he arrived at Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2008, they had finished 13th the year before and hadn’t been in the top six since 2004. They had the third-highest average attendance in the world – around 80,000 a game – but were teetering on the verge of

bankruptcy. He stabilised them with consecutive fifth-place finishes, then won back-to-back Bundesliga crowns, then – when Bayern’s spending went into overdrive, delivered two second-place finishes. Along the way, he reached a Champions League final at Wembley.

The fact that he did it operating largely on a shoestring and, once they won the title, losing one or more key elements every year – Nuri Sahin and Lucas Barrios in 2011, Shinji Kagawa in 2012, Mario Goetze in 2013 and Robert Lewandowski in 2014 – only cemented his reputation as a folk hero. Meanwhile, his much-admired and copied “gegenpressing” was drawing rave reviews, with many seeing it as the natural evolution of Pep Guardiola’s pressing philosophy.

His infectious enthusiasm promises well. The fact that he’s been to the mountaintop – and come tumbling down last season – does too. Then there’s the fact that, when he left Dortmund, he said he would take a year’s sabbatical, only to cut things short to come to Anfield. That shows commitment and belief, particularly when you consider that a number of jobs (Bayern? Arsenal? Manchester City? Real Madrid?) could become available in the summer. Evidently, if he’s chosen Anfield, he’s feeling the vibe.

The downside? Last season was a disaster, with Dortmund stuck in the bottom half of the table until April. The fact that Dortmund were hammered by injuries – only two outfield players started more than two-thirds of the club’s league games – offers considerable mitigation.

Yet at the same time, Klopp himself talked about how he realised it had become necessary to transition from a team that played at breakneck speed all of the time to one that could, especially against weaker side, pick their spots and control the game through possession. On that front, he came up short.

This being Liverpool, there will also be concerns about the transfer policy. Rodgers’ alleged disagreements with the much-discussed “transfer committee” – which actually isn’t quite as exotic as it sounds, many clubs have a similar set-up – quickly became media fodder. Klopp is used to working with a director of football – Michael Zorc became something of a transfer savant at Dortmund – how quickly he and the transfer crew get on the same wavelength will likely help determine his success.

Then there’s the issue of how you define success. Klopp himself was clever enough not to promise league titles in x many years, much as the media tried to get him to commit. He knows that the resource-gap with the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal and the Manchester clubs remains stark. But right now, simply regenerating the club and giving the Anfield hopeful the sense they’re going places, rather than being stuck on Rodgers’ treadmill to nowhere, is already a good start.

THE raft of suspensions that hit FIFA last week raised more questions than they answered and that may explain why so much of the media reacted with the usual “they’re all corrupt/they’re all as bad as each other” trope.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. Provisional suspensions – like the ones meted out to FIFA Supremo Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the UEFA president and frontrunner to replace him – sound awfully serious until you remember that, if the FIFA Ethics Committee had solid evidence against them, they would be proper, permanent bans. In fact, the Ethics Committee are waiting for the Swiss Attorney General to take the next step. For all the hoopla, all we have right now is the fact that Blatter is being investigated as a suspect for undervaluing the Caribbean broadcast rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cup and making £1.3m “disloyal payment” to Platini. And the Frenchman has been interrogated as a witness but isn’t being formally investigated. Neither has been charged and, as Blatter’s lawyers point out, Swiss authorities can’t treat someone as a suspect indefinitely: they’ll soon either need to charge him or end their proceedings.

The impression, confirmed by seasoned FIFA watchers is that the Ethics Committee simply took their cue from Swiss authorities. With the organisations chief counsel Marco Villiger and Quinn Emanuel, the high-powered US law firm brought in to advise, effectively running FIFA, it was felt there was little choice but to play it safe.

The criminal threshold is obviously far higher than the ethical one and, in theory, the Ethics Committee could ban both even if the Swiss authorities drop their investigation. But frankly, that appears hugely unlikely at this time.

As for the election, scheduled for February 26, whether it goes ahead or gets postponed will likely depend on Platini’s emergency meeting with UEFA member nations next week. If he thinks he will be cleared between now and then, if he can persuade his constituents that he will be and if he’s confident that he’ll pass FIFA’s integrity test for presidential candidates, then we’ll go ahead as planned. But those are three big “ifs”.

Any doubt and UEFA has two options. Either back an alternative candidate – perhaps one they can shunt aside if Platini gets the green light – or push for a postponement of the election. Right now, not least because it would suit both Platini and his arch-nemesis, that seems to be the most likely outcome.

One thing stands out about Sam Allardyce’s appointment as Sunderland manager. According to a source familiar with the situation, Big Sam agreed to a relatively modest salary with a massive bonus for avoiding relegation. It’s common sense from Sunderland’s perspective and cuts through the rhetoric. He’s there to do a job and that’s it. Next year, is next year.