It was October 2021 and Jürgen Klopp was in a knife-twisting mood. “United never look happy when they play us,” he told his Liverpool squad in their final team meeting before their visit to Old Trafford. “They always want to use this game to sort out everything. We are different. We want to squeeze everything out of this amazing situation we have here.” The subtext was clear enough: this was a team liable to shatter on first contact. In for the kill.
Before the game, as Liverpool coach Pep Lijnders recounts in his book Intensity, Klopp and his staff homed in on United’s pressure…
