It’s unlikely that too many elite-level managers – or too many human beings in general – would especially relish being compared with Alan Pardew. Yet the longer this season goes on, the more it seems like Jurgen Klopp has more in common with England's most famous touchline two-stepper than Liverpool fans might like to think. Pardew’s career has become defined by an inherent streakiness; Klopp’s teams also seem especially liable to hit a brick wall.





All teams, of course, rely on momentum to some extent. It is sport’s great unquantifiable and arguably football’s most important factor: Chelsea, for instance, have it right now; Leicester don’t. A year ago the opposite was true, and the difference between then and now – the importance of momentum – is there for all to see.



Like Leicester, Liverpool have lost their momentum horribly of late and, given that it was only a month ago that their win over Manchester City appeared to confirm their status as title challengers, it’s fair to ask what it is about Klopp’s management that lends itself to such wildly oscillating – or, whisper it, Pardewesque – runs of form?



This season’s cliff-jump is no isolated event. Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund went into the 2014/15 season having not finished outside the Bundesliga’s top two for four years, but by December 1st were rock bottom of the division. Four wins from their first 19 games that year turned into nine from their final 15, their eventual seventh-place finish the upshot of a bizarrely bipolar campaign.

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Similar instances happened on a smaller scale in 2011/12, when Dortmund lost three of their first six league games and then none for the remainder of the season, and in 2013/14, when two extended spells of title-worthy form at either end of the campaign sandwiched a bleak midwinter stretch that yielded five points from a possible 21. In 2005, his FC Mainz side followed up the most successful season of the club’s history with a run of five straight defeats.

Crystal Palace's English manager Alan Pardew shouts instructions to his players from the touchline during the FA Cup third-round football match between Southampton and Crystal Palace at St Mary's Stadium in southern England on January 9, 2016 Image credit: AFP



But if these patterns can look somewhat Pardewesque in nature, that’s where the parallels end. Because while the received wisdom behind Pardew’s seesawing teams is an abrupt loss of motivation, Klopp’s players are never in a rut for lack of trying. When his Dortmund side were propping up the Bundesliga, they had covered the most ground of any squad in the division; similarly, no one can accuse this Liverpool team of a scarcity of input. There is a difference between motivation and confidence, and it’s the latter which Liverpool are desperately short of.





Nonetheless, there seems to be something distinct about Klopp’s style of football that lends itself to these spiralling losses of form. Some of this is likely psychological – you sense that Klopp’s methods depend more than most on his players’ self-belief – and some is physical, with Liverpool’s lack of a winter break and shallow squad compounding the effects of his wearying pressing game.



But more broadly, watching the Liverpool of now compared with the side of six weeks ago, there is the feeling that Klopp’s set-up hinges on football being played with absolute conviction, especially in the final third. The speed with which an in-form Liverpool side attack, both in terms of off-the-ball movement and the way the ball is circulated between players, means that even the smallest degree of hesitancy can have a hugely destabilising impact. It makes sense, then, that the most conspicuous change in recent weeks has been less a deteriorating defence than a malcoordinated attack.



Perhaps most troublingly, his team seem to have inverted the old cliche about title winners: this Liverpool side almost never win without playing well.

The ultimate point here is that Klopp is not flawless and nor are his teams. But just as history demonstrates his sides are prone to these dismal ruts, so he has proven that they are rarely terminal. There should be little doubt that the current spate of misery will end sooner rather than later, that breakneck momentum will be re-established, and the team will continue to improve – albeit with no silverware to show for it come May.

Liverpool's Brazilian midfielder Roberto Firmino (L) celebrates with team-mates including Liverpool's English midfielder Jordan Henderson (R) and Liverpool's English midfielder Adam Lallana (floor) after scoring their second goal during the English Premie Image credit: AFP



Klopp’s relinquishing of the expansive middle ground between dream-inducing winning sequences and extended runs of dire form is certainly odd, and clearly his teams tend to occupy weird extremes: Liverpool are unbeaten against the rest of the top six this season and yet have lost to Burnley, Bournemouth, Swansea and Hull. But just because it all seems illogical doesn't mean there isn't a tried-and-tested method behind the madness.



To chuck away a thrill-a-minute title challenge in the space of one short month is a miserable business. And yet Liverpool had little right to be in that position in the first place. Zoom out a bit, and Klopp’s team remain on an upward trajectory, just a bizarrely jagged one.



And anyway, if you’re going to have a manager take you to about par – which is where Liverpool, in fifth place, arguably are right now – wouldn’t you rather take the roller-coaster route?

Alex Hess - on Twitter: @A_Hess

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