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Jurgen Klopp has been criticised for looking to implement his high-intensity pressing philosophy too quickly at Liverpool .

Outspoken fitness coach Raymond Verheijen believes the Reds boss made a “classic mistake” by looking to impose what is accepted to be a physically demanding style of football at Anfield.

Klopp, of course, had significant success with such a style at Borussia Dortmund, but found the early months of his reign on Merseyside blighted by a succession of muscular injuries, which have gone some way to preventing Liverpool reaching a consistently high level of performance.

Verheijen has worked as a fitness coach for Bayern Munich, Manchester City and the Welsh national team in the past, and is deemed an expert in the field of 'periodisation' – the systematic planning of sports training.

He is known for his strong criticism of managers such as Louis Van Gaal and Arsene Wenger via Twitter, and Klopp is another to come into his sights of late.

He told Omnisport: "Jurgen Klopp has hopefully learned a valuable lesson at Liverpool. They implemented the style they were successful with in the first few years at Dortmund. In the last few years they had a lot of injuries and little success, so you have to put their achievement into perspective. But he's a top coach, you can't deny that.

"But they made the classic mistake, like Louis van Gaal [at Manchester United] – they implemented their approach irrespective of the circumstances.

"Liverpool used to play a passing game with Brendan Rodgers. When you have possession, you spend less energy. So the playing style was less demanding and the players adapted to that.

"When you implement a more demanding pressing game, the bodies of the players need time to adapt. But if Jurgen Klopp had analysed the situation when he started, he'd have realised they were about to play the most games of anyone in Europe. He implemented a more demanding pressing game in a period when players had less time to recover.

"What you ask from the players is to recover from more fatigue in a shorter space of time. You don't have to be Einstein to work out that that's impossible."

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