We aren't even a third of the way through the season but Liverpool v Manchester United is a mega event.
I blame the managers. Of course; that's the first thing they taught me at Football Chairman school: blame the managers!
Red Monday is as much about Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho as it is
about two clubs whose shared history sometimes looks too big a fit for
either of them. Monday is when they get their first meaningful progress
reports of the season.
Liverpool can go top of the Premier League if they win by three clear
goals, which means that the Klopp household will be a lot happier with
the report which drops through their letterbox. Jurgen is a bright boy
who gets on well with those around him and learns quickly.
If United lose they are bogged down in eighth place with Palace, Watford
and Bournemouth snapping at their heels just two points behind. If that
happens Mourinho's report will have to include phrases like "Jose must
learn to pay attention to his past mistakes" and "Jose should focus more
on his homework and not so much on the referee."
Both men are good fits for their current jobs.
Klopp wound up
in Liverpool because it is a club and a city which would give him the
chance to do what he is good at. At Dortmund he took over a dowdy
organisation who had been through three managers in a year. He improved
players through good coaching and hard work. He had a sincere connection
to the people who paid to watch his side. He enjoyed not being Bayern
Munich manager more than he would have enjoyed being Bayern manager.
It
is hard to imagine him being interested in managing a club like Bayern
or Manchester United where every transfer has to be a statement, every
quote has to be a headline and every defeat is a catastrophe.
Liverpool,
in the long famine since they last won a title, have tried waking up
all the ghosts in the old bootroom. No luck. They have looked to France
with Gerard Houllier, to Spain with Rafael Benitez and to the X Factor
with a young and upcoming Brendan Rogers but despite a few nice sunrises
it always went dark again.
Klopp seems to be precisely the right man at the right time. He had
hardly been a wet day at Anfield before the club extended his contract
to keep him there till 2022. They made the right move. Houllier had
brought the culture of French football with him to Anfield. Benitez
brought a chunk of Spain with him. Liverpool, though, is always
Liverpool.
Klopp's way has been to absorb himself into that rather
than to make the club absorb itself into him, his personality and his
beliefs. He is embedded now and he pays enough respect to history to
keep a sentimental city happy. Now enough of his own ethic is starting
to seep onto the field to make that city look to the future with hope
and patience.
Down the road, Mourinho wanted the United job because of their past
and his sense that he was the man - maybe the only man - big enough to
handle all that.
You have to admire the bravado and showmanship
which Mourinho brings with him anywhere he goes. He strides toward the
challenges that other managers would be wary of. He buys big and
fearlessly. He gets in people's heads and he gets on people's nerves and
when he gets knocked down he gets up again.
Jose hasn't turned United into a Portuguese club, he has made them a
Mourinho club - or he is the process of doing so. If he pulls it off he
will own the place. If he fails he will move on.
He has been
around the block at enough big clubs not to be surprised at the media
obsession with the Wayne Rooney situation. I don't believe that Jose dug
a hole for himself when he said early on that he didn't see Wayne as a
midfielder. I think he was right.
Wayne Rooney is 30 now. He
started playing in the Premier League in 2002 and made his debut for
England in 2003. In modern football that is an epic career - already. He
has been one of the great strikers of the Premier League era and, even
if he has lost a little bit of pace, he has not forgotten more about the
cunning art of being a striker.
