Jürgen Klopp is playing an imaginary violin for ­Arsenal. “I think Arsène Wenger likes having the ball, playing football, passes, like an orchestra,” the ­Borussia Dortmund coach says, making a ham-fisted fiddling gesture. “But it’s a silent song, yeah? I like heavy metal more.”

Your instinct, when one of European football’s most sought-after coaches says something like this, is that it is all part of the “Kloppo” persona — the floppy hair, the stubble, the designer frames, the wicked sense of humour and the hugely engaging manner that makes an hour in his company fly by.

It is more than just a throwaway line, though. For all the efforts in some quarters to paint him as the next Pep Guardiola, or indeed the next Wenger,