THE SLOT MACHINE

Via the shock exit of Jurgen Klopp, key figures tell the inside story of how a group of rising stars and future kings were brought to Liverpool - and how their new Dutch boss led them to the top of the Premier League

- Chris Flanagan

Aghast, dismayed and utterly crestfallen, his face wearing a look of all-consuming shock, the young lad simply refuses to believe what the television reporter in Liverpool city centre has just told him.

Out of the blue, all his worst nightmares have just come true. The manager who has thrilled a generation of fans on the red half of Merseyside has suddenly quit.

"He's leaving Liverpool?" another fan asks, suspecting the TV camera was part of some elaborate ruse. "He wants a rest," explains the reporter. "He said he gets very tired, the pressures are great, he wants a rest. I've just been at a press conference where he announced it." That was 1974. The Granada reporter was Tony Wilson, later a key player in the Madchester music scene. The departing Liverpool manager was Bill Shankly.

Fifty years on, Jurgen Klopp's Anfield departure stunned an entire fanbase in just the same way. In a heartbeat, the club's most decorated era for decades looked like it was over. Following Klopp as Liverpool boss? Impossible.

Halfway through the club's first season without the charismatic German though, Liverpool had raced six points clear at the top of the Premier League table, with a game in hand. Anyone predicting that last January, on the day Klopp announced his exit, would have received some strange looks. "There's a care home next to where I live, and I'd have sent you in it," chuckles former Reds title-winner Mark Lawrenson.

Yet, far from getting weaker, Liverpool have only improved under Arne Slot.

THIRTY YEARS OF HURT

Klopp's greatest day should have come at a packed Anfield, on May 9, 2020.

Winning the Champions League a year earlier was special enough, but the club's 19th league title, a first for 30 years, was his finest hour. Liverpool were 25 points clear when COVID shut down football that March, the trophy presentation pencilled in for the final home game of the season, against Chelsea in early May.