If the sign of a good manager is that other clubs wish they had got hold of him first, an Anfield regular tweeted this week, then Liverpool have just made a brilliant signing in Jürgen Klopp.

At this stage, before the German has even met most of the players he will be working with, it is safe to say both that Klopp is a good manager and that Liverpool are feeling fairly pleased with themselves. To be at the unveiling on Friday morning was to be left in no doubt that Liverpool have landed a trophy manager. Upwards of 200 turned up for a start – World Cup press conferences have taken place with considerably fewer people packed into the room – and the incessant clicking of camera shutters was so distracting that at one point Klopp had to ask for a question to be repeated because he had not been able to make it out over the din. All the new manager was doing was sitting behind a desk insisting he was not a genius: “I don’t know any more than the rest of the world.”

By the time he got round to stressing his normalness by suggesting his mother might be watching on television in Germany, ready to upbraid him for any Charlie Big Time lapses, the resemblance to a sketch from Life of Brian was almost complete. All it needed was Terry Jones to intone “He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a successful football manager from Stuttgart”, and in the end Klopp provided the biblical link himself.

“People should not make me out to be like Jesus, I don’t walk on water,” he said. “I understand that there are huge expectations surrounding this club, and expectations are important in life, not just football, but I hope no one really thinks I can perform wonders. Of course I cannot. I am not really enjoying all this attention, to be honest. I didn’t ask for it and I am hoping that after the initial big hype we can all cool down a little and get to work.

“I am glad everyone seems happy I am here, but some people seem to think that because Jürgen is here everything will change. I can’t promise that. Some things will change, for sure, and I might be different to other managers in some respects, but we cannot change the whole world in one day. I am sure Liverpool fans are clever enough to understand that we need time. If things need changing I want to do it as soon as possible, but patience is important.”

Time is what every manager asks for, with Brendan Rodgers no exception. The trick is to buy it with results, visible improvement and perhaps even silverware. As Klopp attempts to move from trophy manager to manager responsible for trophies, he can be under no illusions that being in charge of Liverpool at the moment is anything other than daunting.

Many thought Rodgers faced the most difficult task in the Premier League, in attempting to reconcile Liverpool’s glorious past and great tradition with the present reality of four bigger, better-financed clubs ahead of them in the pecking order. It was no real surprise that he became one of the first managerial casualties of the season because he had so little margin for error. The good will engendered in the 2013-14 campaign was mostly used up last season, and a faltering start this time round left him vulnerable.

Klopp has a vastly more impressive CV than his predecessor, with two Bundesliga titles and a Champions League final appearance with Borussia Dortmund, yet the challenges remain the same and if Liverpool’s American owners ran out of patience with Rodgers because too many of his signings had underperformed, the new man can add an understrength squad to his list of handicaps.

The good news is that Klopp seems big and bold enough to flourish in English football, a character the Premier League should enjoy having around. He certainly knows how to press all the Liverpool buttons. Michael Heseltine at Tory party conferences has gone down less well with his target audience than this tall German promising to turn doubters into believers, stop thinking about money and concentrate on football, and play an emotional game to rekindle the best atmosphere in the world. “In a special Liverpool way we can be successful,” he claimed.

It would have been slightly impolite to ask him to expand on that statement before he has had a chance to introduce the notion to his players, but full marks for telling Liverpool supporters exactly what they want to hear.

One of the things that has bothered Liverpool managers of the past couple of decades, apart from the lack of league success, is the perceived carping from within. Several members of Liverpool sides that did win trophies are now prominent in the media, so that present-day failings tend to be double-magnified. Klopp is refreshingly unconcerned. “I can cope with criticism,” he said. “It is normal in football and I criticise myself enough when things go wrong, I don’t need any help from outside. I don’t claim every decision I make is perfect, but this is football. You often have to make the decision first and then see how it runs.”

Klopp can take a lot of the credit for turning Robert Lewandowski into the world-class performer he is today, and cites the Polish striker as the ideal raw material with which to work.

“For me the character of a player is the most important consideration, he must have the will to improve himself,” he said. “When I am managing a club I think each young player should smile, because the door is wide open for him. He has the chance to do anything. I don’t care so much about experience , it can be important but it is not the main thing. The best players in the world today are around already, you can see them. What I enjoy more is trying to identify the best players of tomorrow, who has the capacity to improve himself most, to take a young player from a small club in Poland and see what he can turn into.”

Klopp does not mean a Bayern Munich striker either, though there was speculation that he too might have been able to follow Lewandowski to Bavaria had he been willing to wait and see if Pep Guardiola was going to vacate the position. “I was never going to do that,” he said. “I am not the type to wait, not even a minute. I did not draw up a list of clubs I fancied either. I just thought I would see how I felt about my next move when the phone rang, and that’s what I did. When FSG called it felt good, it was an easy decision to make.”

It was probably an easy decision for Fenway Sports Group to make too, given that a manager who would interest most major clubs around Europe was available straight away, and on his first day at Anfield Klopp made a hugely favourable impression. While the next few months will show whether having a covetable manager is an acceptable substitute for putting a few major trophies on the sideboard, the overriding feeling is that Klopp and Liverpool are going to be good for each other. Yet this, as the German knows, was the easy bit. “It is not so important what people think when you come in,” Klopp said, quite sagely. “It is what they think of you when you leave that matters.”