We want to believe our football clubs, our football managers are capable and constantly able to plan grandly. That they have a big, unique idea and work towards it ceaselessly. We want to believe that of the one we support, but then there are 92 clubs in the pyramid. Therefore it's the other 91 who are making it up as they go along, or the ones at the bottom of the table, or the ones who are far underperforming their budgets.

We want to believe it all the more once success has landed. Success was the schedule, no one has ever done it like us before and we planned better than all those other losers, we are the champions my friend.

There will be even more truth in that too but sometimes sport throws open pathways, sometimes there are accidents which suit the values of coaches and managers. And most of the time, there are influences. Most of the time you are standing on somebody's shoulders. There is nothing truly new under the sun.

Sometimes your transfer team talk you into buying Mo Salah; sometimes your attack improves after selling Phil Coutinho earlier than you planned to. We have spoken an awful lot about the shape and approach which has led Liverpool to consecutive Champions League finals, for the purposes of this we will just call it 4-3-3 and get on with our lives. It is worth pointing out that 4-3-3 was not what Jurgen Klopp played in Dortmund or Mainz, not what built his reputation. The 4-3-3 at Liverpool was the shape of choice before Salah arrived or Coutinho left but those two things further crystallised it as Liverpool's first choice approach under Klopp to date.

Because there has been an awful lot of high stakes football since he arrived it has become difficult to remember his first few months. The most difficult thing to remember is how surprised he was by almost everything, as he now seems so at home. By the idea of two-legged League Cup semi finals. By the weather and by how much we care about who is captain. By the intense winter schedule. He was open about what he didn't know. He knew footballers and how to build football teams, how to set pressing traps; not where Bournemouth was, not every last detail of Liverpudlian history.

One would have thought he would know but that's because we presume everyone is as focused on what we focus on; every club is the centre of its own footballing universe and the bigger the club the bigger the self-obsession. The parochialism can know no bounds. Klopp turned up into English football after having gone straight from playing for Mainz into coaching them, from coaching them into coaching Dortmund and had his sabbatical interrupted by Liverpool's needs. He'd been building planes, flying planes, landing planes. Knowing Klopp as we now know him we can say with certainty he lives either in the moment or the plans for the moment 12 months hence. What he hadn't been doing is studying the history of planes around the world. Metaphorically speaking.

But he is a thinker, a man who loves to plan and problem solve, a man who had also given himself a very clear brief. He knew before anyone else that his job was to build a squad and an approach which could challenge Pep Guardiola's Manchester City, knew the reality of this having lived it against Guardiola's Bayern, knew before Guardiola had even arrived in English football the size and scope of the challenge.

What would be your first approach? The first thing you would do? Me, I'd look to what has worked in the past. What has last worked here? Not worked a bit but really, truly worked well. And does it fit my values? Did I admire it from afar?

(Image: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

And we may not like it on these pages but the facts were that the last truly dominant English club home and abroad before Klopp's arrival were Manchester United from 2006 to 2009. There are many parallels in selection and approach between Liverpool now and Manchester United then.

In November 2005 Roy Keane left Manchester United. In December 2005 Manchester United lost to Benfica consigning them to bottom place in their Champions League group. In February 2006 Ruud van Nistelrooy was left out of Manchester United's league cup final. In July he was sold to Real Madrid. The only permanent arrival of note in the summer of 2006 was Michael Carrick. Alex Ferguson's reign was shaking and Chelsea's dominance looked like it would never end.

In the next three seasons Manchester United won the next three league titles and made two Champions League finals, winning one and were semi-finalists in 2007.

Cristiano Ronaldo is an answer to how this happened but while his brilliance is and was unarguable, it is what happened around him which is fascinating from a Liverpool 2019 perspective. United bought Ronaldo as a major talent but as he grew and improved, it was Ferguson and Carlos Queiroz who embraced the player he was going to be along with the tactical knock on effects it would have. In 2006 United shifted to 4-3-3 to get the very best out of Ronaldo. They sold Van Nistelrooy to get the best out of Ronaldo. They shifted their whole approach to get the best out of Ronaldo and made him the main man ahead of Wayne Rooney.

It worked immediately. Champions 2006/07. Semi finals of the Champions League. And then they improved it in the summer of 2007. Eschewing the idea of signing a midfield saviour to replace Roy Keane (although investing very smartly in Owen Hargreaves), Ferguson's big move was Carlos Tevez to create a truly flexible three in attack. The 2007/08 side did the double, forcing Chelsea into the runners-up spot for both major honours. This is the side United We Stand's Steve Armstrong called the "Greatest side I’ve ever seen".

In 2008/09 Manchester United added Dimitar Berbatov, got to another Champions League final, got 90 points which could have been 92 had they needed it to be (United played out a dull 0-0 home draw against Arsenal to ensure the title would be theirs) but with Ronaldo and Tevez moving on the approach couldn't endure.

(Image: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

There are so many parallels between United's approach from 2006 to 2009 to Liverpool under Klopp since his first summer. Pace allied with workrate, tactical acumen and counter attacking brilliance. All of these are values integral to Klopp approach regardless of shape. But like Klopp since 2016 the shape was predominantly 4-3-3. And like Klopp since the arrival of Virgil van Dijk, they had real consistency of selection in defence and attack but constantly reshaped the midfield.

In 2007/08 no Manchester United midfielder made more than 25 league starts, Michael Carrick made 39 starts and 10 substitute appearances in all competitions with only Giggs (33) and Scholes (30) making 30 or more starts in all competitions. In comparison Rio Ferdinand started 51 games, Patrice Evra 48 and Nemanja Vidic 45. In attack Ronaldo started 48 - with 4 substitute appearances - and Rooney and Tevez both got 39. It wasn't as though that front three took it easy. Steve Armstrong: "That midfield was heavily helped out by the fact that Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez did more midfield work than any front three I’ve ever seen."

The pattern continues in 2008/9 - Darren Fletcher and Carrick make 37 starts all competitions with five other midfield players between 23 and 31 starts. It was a workload shared, an approach made bespoke game to game.

In the season just gone Gini Wijnaldum started 43 games for Liverpool. James Milner is the next midfielder in the list with 31, Fabinho 30 and Jordan Henderson 29. In contrast, Van Dijk started 50, Andy Robertson 48 and Trent Alexander Arnold 38. Salah and Sadio Mane both started 49 with Roberto Firmino starting 39. And, again, Liverpool's attack isn't workshy. Far from it. Firmino's ability to win the ball back from the front is second to none in world football and both Mane and Salah are more than happy to put the opposition under massive pressure. And all three are, like Rooney, Tevez and Ronaldo, brilliant footballers and great in front of goal.

The role of both midfields was to create the platform to play rather than to make the play. It's a subtle difference but one we have seen this season with Liverpool. By this stage in their careers Giggs and Scholes very much kept the ball ticking over rather than forcing the issue. No United midfielder in 2007/08 or 2008/09 scored more than 4 goals in all competitions except for Nani's 6 in 08/09.

Nani managed 9 league assists in 2007/08 but no other midfielder got more than 4. Giggs and Carrick got 7 and 5 respectively in 2008/09.

(Image: Mike Egerton/PA Wire)

The parallels are clear with Liverpool across the last two season - Milner and Wijnaldum to a degree troubling the scorers charts; Xherdan Shaqiri transposes nicely for Nani; Oxlade-Chamberlain is very creative 2017/18 but on the whole the midfield exists to serve. A difference is that Liverpool's midfield also serves its fullbacks in a way United's never did.

At central defence we can see two centre backs backed by their managers to play man to man. Both United in this period and Liverpool now are happy to back their centre backs especially against the bottom 13 in the division. And both goalkeepers emit calm.

There was a constant media clamour for United to improve their midfield, to replace Roy Keane, to have a totemic midfield figure in the Bryan Robson tradition. Indeed what could be the greatest United side ever had significant contributions from players too easily written off as ordinary. Carrick remains underrated through his career. Darren Fletcher and Anderson played a lot of games. Elsewhere on the pitch John O'Shea made 54 appearances - 42 starts - in 2008/09, including 12 starts in Europe. United's squad players were diligent, committed and intelligent.

Liverpool are arguably at the summer of 2007/08 phase of the comparison, two years of high achievement under their belts with the second season truly brilliant, denied a double by a remarkable Manchester City side. Will there be an 2008/09?

An intriguing question here is Berbatov; Ferguson added him and very much worked him hard in the middle part of 2008/09, getting points on the board in the winter before reverting to what had worked in the run in. So much of what is underrated around Ferguson is how ahead of the game he was around questions of fitness and readyness. He was brilliant at peaking a player's season around his side's needs rather than according to convention or the idea that players had to be at their best for nine months.

Berbatov was also his next move, his player to get in succession planning around Ronaldo's imminent departure; he knew the high tempo 4-3-3 couldn't continue indefinitely.

Will Klopp feel the need to do something similar? Berbatov was a special player, a unique talent. United needed the right player, not any player and Klopp is as ever thinking similarly where transfers are concerned.

Ferguson was brilliant at riding a wave, at spotting it before it even emerged. It marks each of his great sides out and none more so than committing to Ronaldo to the extent it saw him sacrifice what he had been - United crowds were chanting 4-4-2 at him. But he was confident in what was coming next. We've seen that riding of the wave from Klopp too - planning meticulously but then backing Jordan Henderson shifting his own role or Joel Matip grabbing his shirt and perhaps this was where his 4-3-3 began, something working and him running with it.

There isn't an answer, a solution to football. In each of their 4-3-3s Klopp and Ferguson got sides very close to their core values and both abandoned what they had done before. Within a few years Ferguson ended up back closer to that. It's a highwire approach and perhaps more than any other you need the right players in the right condition and they may not always be there. Then you plan again, revisit what has gone before and find a new wave to ride.

Neil Atkinson is the host of award-winning The Anfield Wrap - download their free app on IOS and Android.