It is the morning after the titanic struggle with Arsenal and Zeljko Buvac, whom the Liverpool manager credits with being one of the tenets of his success, is among the first to arrive at the training ground.

“I think that there are titles which are not as positive as this one,” says Buvac with a smile. “If anyone says you are ‘the brain’ then you take that, but I am not someone who gets into the public and says, ‘I am this’.”

Clutching a coffee in a plastic cup there has already been an initial discussion with Klopp, but the analysis of the 3-3 draw comes later, together with Peter Krawietz (‘The Eyes’), and it is then that the deliberating begins for the visit of Manchester United.

Buvac will speak his mind. He and ‘Kloppo,’ as he invariably calls him, were team-mates at German club Mainz where they struck an agreement that their careers would forever remain interwoven.

The pecking order says manager and assistant, yet Klopp regards Buvac as an equal. They truly are inseparable.