Standing apart: Why Jurgen Klopp and Maurico Pochettino are bucking English transfer trend

Jurgen Klopp is an Anglophile who can recognise the imperfections in his adopted country’s culture. "I really wait for the day when finally the transfer window closes, because I can't believe how obsessed you all are with this,” he said this week. The sentiments may have been borrowed from Arsene Wenger, whose two decades in England have been notable for the way talking transfers has become a national pastime he dislikes.

Klopp might be in a minority in a country eagerly anticipating the idiocy of deadline day but he should find a kindred spirit on Saturday, and not just because Mauricio Pochettino is a similarly fervent advocate of the pressing game. The Liverpool and Tottenham managers may spearhead a tactical revolution but they are curiously old-fashioned figures in another respect.

They have a shared ethos: the team is the star, that improvement comes on the training ground and that a formidable level of fitness is the first requirement. They do not look for an artificial injection of glamour. They recognise the answer to defeat is not necessarily to spend. They are the anti-Ed Woodwards, men immune to the seductive powers big fees exercise. The German’s scepticism is underpinned by a certain logic. “If you bring one player in for £100 million and he gets injured, then it all goes through the chimney," he argued last month.

Neither Liverpool nor Tottenham entered the auction for Paul Pogba. Beyond Klopp’s unsuccessful attempt to be reunited with his former Borussia Dortmund charge Mario Gotze, neither targeted anyone who could remotely be considered a superstar. Reputations and price tags are not the issue. “The big price of a player on his back makes you more confident? I don't believe in it,” Klopp told a group of us a couple of weeks ago. Validation does not come from flashing the cash.

So, with an apology to Klopp for focusing on his signings rather than his collective of new and old, Liverpool and Tottenham stand apart from Manchester United and, in recent years, Manchester City and Chelsea. They are deploying different policies in the transfer market.

Perhaps, in different ways, they are able to. Tottenham have less pressure to make a marquee signing. Klopp has the charisma and the credit in the bank to pursue his own path. He is spared the hysteria that exists in sections of the Arsenal support to buy big.

And truth be told, he has, but in a budget-friendly way. Liverpool have broken even, spending £69 million and recouping as much. Pochettino, the man who took Tottenham to third while boasting a transfer-market profit in his reign, has only spent £28m. Assuming Ryan Mason is sold and if attempts to buy another winger fail, his net spend this summer may be barely £10m.

Each has financed his own upgrade. They have looked to fill out the squad. They have tried to add options. Rather than the top-down method of bringing in footballers who, in the style of Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, may be the best at the club, they have added those of a similar standard in a belief it will raise the overall level.

Klopp explained it two weeks ago. “We brought in different quality, we had quality but different skills with Sadio [Mane], with Gini [Wjinaldum], with Joel [Matip] and with Ragnar [Klavan],” he said. Matip is the giant centre-back Liverpool lacked. Mane is the wide man with greater pace than the others and the fondness to go outside the full-back that Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino do not possess. Wijnaldum may play in a position that Coutinho, Firmino, Adam Lallana, James Milner and Jordan Henderson can, but he is no replica of any. Klopp outlined his striking options that day. False nine: Firmino. “Small dribbler”: Danny Ings. “Fast player”: Divock Origi. “Genius player:” Daniel Sturridge. None necessarily better, in his eyes. All definitely different.

The situation is perhaps still clearer at Tottenham, with their two recruits, compared to Liverpool’s seven, suggesting their buying is still more targeted at remedying shortfalls in the squad. Victor Wanyama is neither a duplicate of Eric Dier or Mousa Dembele. Instead, he is designed to be able to partner either, to be the more defensive or more energetic of the pair. Or, when the Belgian is back from his ban for gouging Diego Costa in the eye, to be on the bench.

Vincent Janssen represents a different kind of front man to Harry Kane, one whose ability to hold up the ball makes him a more conventional target man and who is likelier to run in behind defences. That offers the possibility they can pair up, as they did against Crystal Palace last week and in the closing stages against Everton.

But the Dutchman is also an indication of the way Spurs eschewed stars. His arrival had the feel of a deliberate attempt to not buy a main centre-forward, while nevertheless finding someone who was not an out-and-out reserve. It is a difficult, delicate balancing act, given Kane’s propensity to play every game, to find a second striker for a club who seem to need one and a half.

It places an emphasis on Pochettino to use Janssen at the right moments and select the right team when the key to a challenge on four fronts could rest with how, and when, he uses the alternatives outside the nominal first 11. As Klopp arguably has a bigger squad and, with no European football, fewer fixtures and less chance of fatigue, he may have a still greater significance. His task is to perm from players of roughly equal levels of ability, picking the right ones for the right game. He did at Arsenal, rather less so at Burnley.

Man for man, neither Tottenham nor Liverpool have the strongest side in the league yet, in spring Spurs seemed the best, partly because of a philosophy whereby a team is greater than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps, though, seeming radicals are actually merely following their employers’ recent traditions of seeing strength in depth, not in an elite few. They manage clubs who were bywords for bad spending, who were condemned for squandering the windfalls they received for Gareth Bale and Luis Suarez by splitting them several ways and signing a host of players rather than breaking the bank for their Galactico.

Hindsight should prompt a reappraisal: Spurs’ class of 2013 included Erik Lamela and Christian Eriksen, two key components in Pochettino’s side, and Liverpool’s 2014 arrivals featured Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Emre Can, who have all improved with time. None was a Suarez or a Bale; nor will they ever be, but nor was any priced as such. Liverpool and Tottenham did not enter the auction for this summer’s Suarez or Bale, Pogba. It is not the Klopp way, not the Pochettino way. The team is their obsession, not the transfers.