Managers are always selling. They could be characters in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. Every day, a sale is made. To the media, to the players, to the fans and to their bosses. Either they’re that little bit closer to success. Or someone is selling the idea that they’re not quite that clever, that they can’t handle certain situations, that they were once great but now are past it.
The two men who square off in today’s late Barclays Premier League kick-off are two of the finest salesmen around. It’s not a back-handed compliment, by the way. They’re not carnival barkers or guys you see in infomercials. You’re only a con man if you don’t deliver. And both Arsene Wenger and Jurgen Klopp have delivered, at least to the satisfaction of their employers.
Wenger is entering his third decade as Arsenal manager. Klopp signed a mammoth six-year extension in the summer after just eight months on the job.
That doesn’t happen without that critical element of leadership: buy-in. Get it from the players and they will follow you. Get it from the bosses and they’ll let you do as you please.
Wenger has, over time, turned Arsenal into a kind of top-down cult of personality that would have made Mister Kurtz proud. It’s not an ego trip – contrary to popular belief, he does have folks who he consults and some even contradict him occasionally – it’s a man’s footballing precepts deeply embedded in every sinew of a club.
The concepts of possession, of playing the extra pass to get into better shooting opportunities, of building primarily through technique rather than graft, of finding pieces who fit his puzzle rather than the best pieces available . . . all of this is an extension of the Wenger way. It’s been lampooned, it’s been criticised, but the fact that it endures means the owners are fine with it. And, incidentally, it’s not that the Wenger approach – which seemed so novel in the late 1990s – is necessarily antiquated. He does grow and evolve, it’s just that he does it in his own way, on his own schedule.
There’s plenty that sets Klopp apart from Wenger. He himself joked about it with the kind of turn of phrase that the media love and which the Arsenal boss regularly throws out as well.
“Arsenal under Wenger are like a symphony: beautiful, but quiet,” Klopp said last year. “Me, I prefer noise, I prefer heavy metal.”
Now that’s a statement you can hang your hat one. That’s branding of the highest order. And in a sport where the commercial folk are quickly becoming as important as their football equivalents, it’s gold dust. Just as Arsenal had – and have – a very defined identity under Wenger, Liverpool are building around the Kloppology. And that’s why they’ve committed themselves until 2022 and given their manager as much freedom and decision-making latitude as any Anfield boss in the past decade.
Speaking at the team’s hotel in Palo Alto, California this past summer, Klopp made it as clear as he could that he was as invested as anyone in the project and that the buck would stop with him.
“You learn from everyone and everyone gets a say, because it’s a democracy,” he said. “But it’s the kind of democracy where, in the end, one person has to make a decision. And that person is me.”
Klopp has the mannerisms of a Messiah, albeit a wise-cracking, self-deprecating one who dispenses enthusiasm with the same ease that Wenger oozes intellectual certainties. You believe Klopp because you want to believe him. You believe Wenger because, as the popular Arsenal meme goes: “Arsene knows.” One is your mate who convinces you to dive off the cliff into the waters below, because it’s going to be fun and cool and he’ll be right there with you taking the plunge. The other is the guy who convinces you it’s safe to jump, because he has studied and evaluated the situation and knows the water is deep enough.
Both men predicate their work on their powers to persuade. And both clubs have been persuaded of the need to model themselves in their managers’ image.
The jolts of hype and hope fostered by Klopp – coupled with the usual Wenger way of doing business way early and in minimalist fashion – mean that many see these clubs with the same realistic objective: a top-four finish and, in Arsenal’s case, maybe a run at the Champions League. Given the massive spending and shiny new managers at the Manchester clubs, the strides made by Tottenham under Mauricio Pochettino and the fact that Chelsea can’t possibly be as bad as they were last season, it seems like a reasonable goal.
And yet it’s easy to forget that six league places and 11 points separated these two sides last May. For all the negativity surrounding Arsenal, they are by far the more settled side and their one summer pick-up – Granit Xhaka – addressed one of the two main problem positions in Wenger’s XI: holding midfield. (The other bugbear position of course is centre forward – or, more precisely, Wenger’s obsession with Olivier Giroud – and here you can only hold your hands up.) Still, with so much of the competition in transition, it’s not unthinkable to suggest that Arsenal could be the ones benefitting with a title run. Stability matters.
Liverpool, on the other hand, have been turned inside out. Not just in the squad – and seven newcomers is a lot – but, crucially, in the way Klopp works. He said over the summer that this will look more like a “Klopp team” because, unlike last year when he took over in October and the side reached two cup finals – he’ll actually get a chance to work with the players. That means preparing them physically for this high-energy style and mentally for the tactical movements required by his form of counter-pressing. There was plenty he wanted to do with the team last season that he simply could not do because he lacked the time and opportunity.
Whether that’s enough to make up the gap on Arsenal and the other sides likely to occupy the top four remains to be seen. But more enthusiasm and momentum at Anfield, coupled with a sense that Liverpool are actually learning and implementing what he wants is probably just as important as a place in the Champions League.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here