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Jurgen Klopp marks four years as Liverpool boss on October 8. The ECHO's LFC correspondent Paul Gorst sat down with Klopp to discuss his time in charge of the Reds.

The German speaks on how he turned the club around, his training methods, all big signings and his plans for the future.

This is the first of a two-part interview. You can read the second part here. This interview was first published on September 19, 2019.

Two pictures adorn the wall of the inner sanctum that is Jurgen Klopp’s Melwood office.

The first, a grey scale collage of past glories, is a firm salute to the golden, trophy-laden history of what preceded the current Liverpool manager during the decades of dominance as England’s best football team.

Joe Fagan, Bob Paisley and, of course, Bill Shankly are all represented. Each legendary manager captured in black and white, proudly celebrating with one cup or another.

The last Liverpool team to win a league title are also recognised, and might, on certain days at the club’s West Derby training complex, act as a source of motivation for Klopp in his hunt to end a 30-year wait for the next.

The other picture, certainly for Klopp, holds more relevance, however. Placed side by side neatly in a wooden frame are four images from a goalless draw nearly four years ago.

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Despite the big results, memorable nights and huge success the German has overseen on Merseyside, it’s clear before he even enters the room that his first game as Reds manager in October 2015 still holds ample significance. It will be four years ago next month that Klopp will commemorate that 0-0 at the old White Hart Lane.

In that time, Klopp has transformed Liverpool from a team who viewed a nil-nil at Spurs as a creditable result into one that were big favourites to beat the same team in the Champions League final. Something they did with aplomb less than four months ago before bringing European Cup No.6 home to 750,000 jubilant supporters who had lined the city streets.

But upon his arrival at Anfield, less than two weeks before that first-ever game against Mauricio Pochettino’s men, what did Klopp think needed to change? And what, if anything, did he feel he could immediately work with as Brendan Rodgers’ successor?

“Wow! A long time ago,” Klopp says in an engaging and exclusive chat with the ECHO. "I didn't look at it as having to change a lot. OK, it was clear that something is not going exactly how the the people want it to go. I said it before and it is pretty much a famous phrase, nobody likes this team, not even the team likes the team, so that was something we had to change first and foremost.

"We have to feel the value they have, that they are in the right place and the right club and the history of the club doesn't feel too much on their shoulders and all these things, so, those were the things we had to change immediately.

"We tried to implement a mood inside Melwood and the dressing room that we can really go for something. Because I really feel in the moment when I came here it was like 'oh now we have a high-class manager, but that's the team'. It not is like somebody said 'sorry for the team we gave you', It was not one second that I felt like this, so we just started working and we didn't have to change things in a replacement way [with transfers]. Get him out, bring him in, I am not like this, so my target was to improve the players.

"To do that, they had to get some confidence back and we did that with some results, not immediately, but we played in two finals and it was good. We had a couple of really interesting and positive games like the Man City away game was really impressive and I think we won at Chelsea as well if I am right. There were a couple of really good results, so I was fine, but it was clear that was only the first step."

Two final appearances in Klopp's first season were proof to those on the outside that a manager who had won titles with Borussia Dortmund in Germany was having the desired effect at Anfield too. Standout victories at Chelsea and Manchester City, in particular, were achieved with an early blueprint of what would become a trademark counter-pressing style of Klopp’s Liverpool.

Victory in both the League Cup and Europa League finals would elude Klopp, but those games alone were justification that his methods were being firmly imprinted on a squad whose confidence levels had plummeted before his arrival just a few months earlier.

The summer transfer window of 2016 was another key checkpoint on Liverpool’s journey under their current manager. Sadio Mane, Gini Wijnaldum and Joel Matip - three players who started June’s Champions League final triumph - all provided a significant and timely injection of quality.

In particular Mane, whose searing pace and trickery helped reconfigure an attack that had gradually grown less reliant on an injury-prone Daniel Sturridge and was instead built around the ingenuity and invention of Roberto Firmino and Philippe Coutinho.

Mane’s successful first season at Anfield ended on April 1 after an injury in the Merseyside derby, but he still finished one below 14-goal top scorer Coutinho.

Klopp says: "In football, there are two ways to improve. One is to sign good players and the second is training, but having time together is always good. You don't have time together in football, usually, but we had it then, which was really good.

"We don't start at minus 20 and say 'by the way, set-piece, we do this, we do that' and you have to explain to six players and you think 'oh God!'. Having a basis is brilliant, but you need world-class players and if they are not world-class already, they need the world-class potential. That is what we need at a club like Liverpool.

(Image: PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

"I think that is what we tried to do and it I think it worked pretty well. All the boys have improved a lot since we were together and that is what you have to do. So whatever we achieved, we did it because the boys always took the next steps, got more mature, got more confident and more convinced about the way we play.

"I think meanwhile, it becomes really natural for the boys and that is so important. For us, our big target was to qualify for the Champions League and it was clear we wanted to do that. But it's the most difficult league to do this in, in England but it happened somehow."

The 2016/17 season was underpinned by a string of impressive performances in games against their top-six rivals. The Reds failed only to beat Manchester United as they took 20 points from a possible 30 on offer.

Those included six from Arsenal which proved to be imperative to a top-four finish as Liverpool edged out the Gunners by a singe point on the final day of the season. Qualification to the Champions League - just Liverpool’s second of the decade - was a giant stride for the club in May 2017.

Gini Wijnaldum's powerful swing of his right boot eventually opened the scoring on a tense afternoon against an already relegated Middlesbrough side at Anfield, before the Reds eased to a 3-0 win to secure their return to Europe's top table.

"That was the next step for us," admits Klopp. "And that is what I mean when I say you don't get the time to do it. We are Liverpool, but we had finished eighth [in 2016] and played in two finals, but it was the 'small' finals of Europe and England.

"It was good, but people only started caring in the Europa League (on the outside) when we reached the final. It's not the big one, so we had to make the next steps. The main target for the club must always be to qualify for the Champions League. That was so important from a financial point of view, from an image point of view, we needed to show that we are back on top of football and all that stuff."

*Don't miss the second part of Jurgen Klopp's chat with the ECHO as he talks Mohamed Salah, winning the Champions League and becoming one of the world's elite football teams.