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You know what they say about all good things – and Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson’s imminent departure will bring that home to Liverpool this summer.
It has been a slow disassembly, but come the summer, when Robertson and Salah leave, there will only be a handful of holdovers from Jurgen Klopp’s peak Liverpool side.
Liverpool given pause for thought as Mo Salah and Andy Robertson set to depart
But things have a way of creeping up on you, and this is the summer when the end of that era really will be most keenly felt – especially after last season’s title win gave several key members of Klopp-era Liverpool something of a final hurrah.
Robertson and Salah leaving Liverpool feels more profound and momentous than Trent Alexander-Arnold’s poorly-received exit for Real Madrid. A player looking for a new adventure at his peak is one thing. For Salah and Robertson, though, it simply feels like the natural tailing off for two enormously popular and influential members of a decorated squad. They are simply not the players they once were.
That doesn’t just prompt a bit of reflection on how much Liverpool have changed, but also forces an assessment of the four remaining players who were present for those golden years under Klopp.
Alisson Becker is still Liverpool’s first-choice goalkeeper, but increasingly injury-prone; more to the point, his long-term successor is already at the club and just waiting to take the gloves off him.
Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk both only have one year left on their contracts, with one of them, again, still frustratingly injury-prone, and the other facing increasing scrutiny about his ability at the very highest level.
Curtis Jones made a handful of appearances in the 2019/20 title win, but was still only a teenager then and is not a particularly regular starter now; nearly half of his appearances in all competitions this season (20 out of 41) have come from the bench, with his numbers somewhat padded by his having started all six of Liverpool’s games in the domestic cups.
Given everything that happened last season, you can’t help but wonder if Salah and Robertson wish they had taken the opportunity to go out on a high last year. There were certainly offers on the table for them to do so, and Robertson, in particular, had plenty of indication that his powers were beginning to wane.
That title triumph may have given the pair the same impression as the fans were misled into, though: that Liverpool had future-proofed themselves sufficiently that they might avoid the dreaded and seemingly inevitable transitional period altogether after Klopp’s big farewell.
As it turns out, romping to that title with such ease was not all down to that, but had as much to do with the fact that Manchester City were undergoing a transition of their own, and Arsenal were just not ready to step up and take their place yet.
It would do a huge disservice to Liverpool to suggest they won last season’s league title by default when they had such a brilliantly consistent midfield and the division’s top scorer in their side. But it’s also fine and fair to say they also benefited from that power vacuum at the top of the Premier League.
The picture is different now. City are still not fully stable in their next phase of Pep Guardiola’s evolution, but demonstrably better than they were last season; while Arsenal, for all their critics, are currently on course for the title by virtue of having the fewest flaws of any side in England - albeit still being far from infallible.
There’s a reason that nostalgia is such a comfort to many people: the future is always uncertain.
Seeing the final few pieces of Klopp’s side float away from Anfield stands as a reminder of that at a time when Liverpool fans are increasingly desperate to find some reassurance that this is just a bad season, rather than the beginning of a longer-term decline.
They should be better set up than most clubs to make that the case; but it’s clear now that the good thing they had going on under Klopp has well and truly come to an end.
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