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Today is exactly three years since Liverpool last lost a Premier League match at Anfield. It’s worth taking a step back and appreciating how crazy that is. 1095 days. 55 games. Somewhere in the region of 5000 minutes of football played, and not a single frontline team has left Anfield with nothing more than a single point.
To put it in context, Manchester City have lost four home league games in this period. Manchester United and Arsenal, both seven. Chelsea 10. Tottenham Hotspur 12.
Of the 92 teams in the first four levels of English football, Liverpool were the only ones to be undefeated in the league at home in the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons, while in 2019/20, League One Portsmouth is the only other side to do so far.
Remember April 23, 2017 when Sam Allardyce’s Crystal Palace won 2-1 at Anfield courtesy of a Christian Benteke brace after Philippe Coutinho had given Liverpool the lead with an excellent free kick. At the time, it felt like a potentially fatal blow in the pursuit of a top-four result, as it meant Liverpool was just three points off fifth of Manchester United, who had a game on hand.
Liverpool managed to stabilize and win three of their remaining four matches (without conceding a single goal) to reach fourth place on the last day against Middlesbrough, and then the Champions League standings through the playoff tie against Hoffenheim, which turned out to be a gateway for everything that has followed since.
Clearly, Jürgen Klopp has completely revolutionized Liverpool on the field during his tenure. He changed the dead wood, improved those he wanted to keep, and brought a series of brilliant additions, a mix of bargains, calculated bets, and a couple of mega money signings, to build the team in his own image.
However, that’s only part of a twofold process that has underpinned Klopp’s success. Not only has it built one of the best sides in Liverpool’s history; he has also simultaneously renewed the entire collective psyche of the fan base. It is something he proposed at his first press conference in October 2015, when he affirmed his famous goal of turning skeptics into believers.
He acknowledged that he had inherited two things: a squad that had some quality but was full of holes and lacked identity, and also a group of supporters who had begun to lose hope and belief, almost as if seeing Liverpool had become a duty rather than a source of pride and joy.
(Image: Photo by Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
Piece by piece, Klopp removed that pervasive sense of sadness and gradually re-injected life across the company. He knew from his time in Mainz and Borussia Dortmund how crucial it is to build a strong and trusting relationship with supporters, and that recreating something similar would also be an integral part of his Liverpool vision.
He knew that, at best, if he could harness his positive energy and turn it into a fortress again, Anfield could give Liverpool a significant advantage. In the worst case, however, you could do the opposite. In the last days of Brendan Rodgers’ reign, Anfield was often not a particularly pleasant place in terms of atmosphere. There was paranoia, frustration, and fatalism never far below the surface, and it wouldn’t take much for that to seep from the stands and make things even more difficult for a Liverpool team struggling on the field. Fans had been scarred by previous disappointments, and certain demons needed to be exorcised.
Klopp realized that exactly a month after taking the job, when supporters left Anfield en masse long before the final whistle when Crystal Palace won 2-1 at Anfield. After the game, Klopp did not contain his emotions and said: “After the goal in the 82nd minute, with 12 minutes to go, I saw many people leave the stadium. I felt pretty lonely right now. We decide when it ends. Between 82 and 94 [minutes] you can score eight goals if you want.
“Don’t do a great thing about it, but we are responsible that no one can leave the stadium before the final whistle because anything can happen. We have to show this and we didn’t.”
Klopp was not mad at losing. He was disappointed by the way the loss was generally accepted by the local crowd who gave up the white flag instead of roaring their team full time. A few weeks later, Divock Origi scored a 96-minute draw against West Bromwich Albion, and Klopp led the team arm in arm to greet Kop later.
While rival supporters flocked to social media to mock Klopp for ‘celebrating’ a 2-2 draw at West Brom’s home, it was a landmark moment in his tenure: a symbolic signing of a deal with the faithful at Anfield. .
You stand behind us all the time, whatever the circumstances, and we will give absolutely everything we have on the field.
That mutual bond has since grown in line with the team’s own improvement, together building that collective muscle memory. One can point to the 4-3 victory against Dortmund in the Europa League as another important catalyst in that process. In the 2017/18 Champions League race, you have to see that it reaches a whole new level, and then last season, Barcelona happens. None of that took place in the Premier League, but it all contributed to this three-year undefeated streak.
Going down 1-0 is no longer a panic. Liverpool have yielded first four times at Anfield this season (Newcastle, Tottenham, West Ham and Bournemouth) and win again every time. Even when Leicester City scores 1-1 with 10 minutes of normal time to go, no one is thinking: Ah, here we go, that’s all. We are definitely losing points today. Now there is a stubborn refusal to accept anything but the victory that flows between the field and the stands.
Klopp believes, players believe, and followers too. Of course, for a three-year career without losing a single game at home, you must have players like Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané, Virgil van Dijk, and Alisson Becker.
But you also need the right culture, the right mindset, and the right atmosphere so that everything falls into place the way it has. Klopp has not only held a master class in football management in recent years, but also a psychological one.
Can Liverpool move closer to or beat Chelsea’s undefeated 86-game home run between 2004 and 2008? It will take some work, but with this team, at Anfield, it seems like no mountain is second to none.
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