Five Positives To Build On: Adversity Brings Forth Opportunities and Heroes

First signs of a rebuild taking shape

All of Jürgen Klopp's success has been built on 'normal', hard and full preseasons; the two preseasons that have been abortive and disruptive were 2020, due to Covid, and 2022, due to the super-late finish to 2021/22 and the early start to 2022/23 because of the Qatar nonsense.

From each of these, chaos ensued: record injury lists that made it hard to balance the team; and the more injuries a team has, the worse it fares on average, as stands to reason. Injury prevention is a science, but injuries can occur for various unpreventable reasons.

Liverpool, like Chelsea, have had a lot of injuries; hence, they sit mid-table. At the weekend, Arsenal only had three, and only one of those, Gabriel Jesus, was of any note. Man City had none. Still, Liverpool ended the weekend a point closer to the top four, despite playing a Big Six rival.

If anything, 2021/22 was also incredibly hard to get over – a long shadow over the summer, with the sense that it was nearing the last big attempts at glory with this group of players, in contrast to the disappointments of 2018 in Kiev and 2019 in the Premier League, when the team was young and on the up; and in 2019, the mighty blow of losing the league on the last day was softened by winning no.6 in Madrid shortly after.

In 2022, the mighty blow of losing the league on the last day was compounded by the mighty blow of losing the Champions League final only due to one of the best goalkeeping displays seen in that final since Jerzy Dudek in 2005. The twin domestic cups were great, but the two big achievements to complete the greatest quadruple in football history were missed by the margin of a single goal each time.

As such, I think that Jürgen Klopp has shown in the past couple of games that he's ready to rebuild this team, which has been underperforming in part due to the physical and psychological hangover from last season (which in turn led to an injury crisis) and much of it is underway. This difficult phase is part of the path out of the woods.

As is the way with the ZenDen, I'm here to find positives. Here are five, for paying subscribers.