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Jürgen Klopp has reoriented Liverpool's style in a stark yet still under-discussed way in recent months.

From the go-go style we saw earlier in the season, Klopp's team is now more controlled, more possession-oriented. Early season performances had fit all the hallmarks of a Klopp side: blowing opponents away with a gust of pace, craft, guile and will. Liverpool out-sprinted everyone. Opposing sides could not pick up or keep up with all the moving parts, particularly Liverpool's wide-men (the forwards and fullback) who whirred around Roberto Firmino.

That all-gas, no-break style was almost a cliché of Klopp's brand of football. But since Liverpool assumed a commanding lead at the top of the table, the manager has evolved the team's style. They are passing more and spending longer on the ball on a possession to possession basis. The old idea that Liverpool could not see out sides or break down opponents who sit in deep has been blown away. Liverpool now pass and move at a rate matched only by Pep Guardiola's Man City, who the football purists fetishize for their long stretches of tippy-tap play.

From September to early December, Klopp's team were a little more direct. They averaged just 2.33 passes per possession (sixth in the Premier League) and spent as little as nine seconds on the ball on average, attempting a tick over 500 passes per game.

Since the team played Bournemouth on December 7, though, there's been a shift to a more controlled style. In their last 10 Premier League games, Klopp's team have been averaging an extra pass per possession — up to 3.38, good for second in the league. They've added more than two seconds to their average time of possession, and are attempting almost 150 (!) more passes per game, a fairly meteoric jump.

It's Liverpool's highest rate of passes per possession over a 10-game sample size since Klopp joined the club.

There's a bunch of reasons for the change. Opposing teams have shifted into deeper, more defensive looks, most playing with an extremely low block. Their hope: to condense the space behind their backline so that Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah cannot zoom in-behind. It hasn't worked. This Liverpool side is much more than a counter-pressing, counter-attacking juggernaut. They have been so singularly dominant this campaign because they can morph into any style necessary, often toggling between a couple during agame.

Those passages of holy-moly, what-are-we-witnessing play, where the it feels less like watching a team and more a footballing tsunami, where the speed of movement, thought and the ball are so mind-bendingly fats that no team on earth can cope, are still there. But those moments are have become more carefully orchestrated, when the team needs to jolt into action or, more common, they smell blood in the water.

Instead, the Liverpool now spend long stretches suffocating the life out of a game and their opponents. While opponents likely thought they could frustrate the side and force them into forcing things in final-third, Liverpool have remained patient, shifting the ball here then there as they prod for openings.

It's been helpful, too, in allowing Klopp to adopt the idea of resting while playing. Players may see the ball more and play the same number of minutes, but those minutes have become less intensive. January has always been a dodgy period for Klopp's side. His record prior to this season: played 12, won four, drawn four, lost four.

Part of that was due to the calibre of opponents they played in each January, but it was also because Klopp's relentless style was hard to maintain when there were two or three games in a week over and over again. So, the manager adapted. He encouraged his fullbacks to sit a little deeper, for the players to take their time on the ball, to become more resilient and dogged, to grind out results rather than blow teams away with wide-open, expansive play.

It worked. Liverpool ripped off five-straight league wins, beating opponents by a combined score of 8-1.

The more controlled style has coincided with Joe Gomez returning to the starting line-up as a full-time starter. From September 21 to December 4, Gomez played just four percent of Liverpool's league minutes, while Dejan Lovren featured in 75 percent. That's flipped completely on its head since: Gomez has played 100 percent of the minutes since December 6m with Lovren featuring in just four percent of minutes. Gomez has become a principle architect in Liverpool's build-up playing: spraying passes out from the back, initiating quick-transitions, and carrying the ball out of defence like an old-school libero. It's become common place these days to see either he or Van Dijk step out of the backline to form a kind of morphing double pivot with whoever lines up at the base of midfield, helping to form a central overload before the ball skips down the field.

That kind of instinctive, quality passing from each of your back-five has a compound effect on the rest of the team. Everybody is more willing to share the ball, to spread it among all eleven starters, to head backwards or sideways if necessary, safe in the knowledge it's not surrendering an attacking chance but actually enhancing the odds of finding a gap in the defence.

At times, watching Liverpool this season feels like they've figured this whole football thing out: the balance between defence and attack; the world's best goalkeeper; the world's best centre-back; an impossible to deal with front-three; a midfield full of engines; two out-and-out playmakers at full-back. It's a testament to Klopp and the squad that they've been so overwhelmingly successful in two contrasting styles.