Believe in the project – Jurgen Klopp can return Liverpool to Premier League perch

As the heavens opened above the Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon, Liverpool’s clash with Manchester City did plenty to confirm the notion that any events taking place in driving rain take on an inescapably epic quality – call it ‘Shawshank syndrome’.

Like that film, Sunday's match also resulted in some over-the top-fawning from people who should know better – Pep Guardiola chief among them – but the fact of the matter was that, despite some hapless finishing, it was a game that delivered sensational entertainment as well as serious quality.

A high-intensity slugging match between two uber-adventurous outfits that demonstrated precisely how football, at its elite level, has evolved over the past decade: whatever the opposite of s*** on a stick is, this was it. It was 12 years ago that Liverpool’s cagey clash with the moneyed arrivistes of the day, Chelsea, drew that appraisal from Jorge Valdano, and the slew of meetings between the two sides over the next few seasons did little to dispel the idea that top-level football was becoming something of a slow-burner, far more Michael Haneke than Michael Bay.

By that token, Sunday’s game was Armageddon and Bad Boys II rolled into one, a pulsating end-to-end affair that left both sets of players dead on their feet after 80 minutes (and Yaya Toure dead on his after 40). It was a blockbusting departure from the model honed by Benitez and Mourinho, one that left the impression of a black-and-white sport being remade in dazzling technicolour.

None of this is to say it was perfect, or even anything close. But if the key shift at the top end of the game over the last decade has been the compulsion to press and harangue rather that to sit and wait – to be proactive rather than reactive – then Sunday’s game was a sound enough demonstration of the modern blueprint, overseen by the two leading figures of the time.

That Liverpool happen to employ one of them is a privilege for which the club, with just a League Cup to show for their last decade, can count themselves lucky. But as Jurgen Klopp’s work in progress stood toe to toe, yet again, with high-end opposition and didn’t blink, there is now no shortage of evidence that his Anfield project has the potential, in time, to reclaim a certain perch.

Sunday’s match was the 10th and final time this season that Liverpool will face another member of the league’s top six. It’s a collection of games in which they are unbeaten, having won six – a faintly staggering record for a side who are 13 points off top and who could plausibly finish bottom of that league-within-a-league come the season’s end.

The fact that Liverpool have managed that while also losing to five games to teams in the bottom half presents its own problem but it’s fair to say that some problems are preferable to others. The step up would look far more daunting if Liverpool’s form this season had taken the inverse pattern.

A solution still needs to be sought, of course, and given that Liverpool’s remaining nine games are all against sides outside the elite, and their run-in is comprised entirely of formidably low-calibre opponents, it would make all the difference if it was found before the summer rather than after.

In this sense, there should still be hope that Daniel Sturridge can make a decisive impact on the season. For the most part he has spent this campaign as a bystander, either not fit or not favoured, and when faced with the massed ranks of deep-lying underdogs, Liverpool have lacked the exact sort of mercurial, risk-taking flair that an in-form Sturridge brings.

He could yet provide that edge, a star cameo to provide a Hollywood ending. Sunday’s game showed that Liverpool are quite capable of amounting to more than the sum of their parts: an ensemble cast who, when they click, do so with cinematic spectacle. The one thing they’re missing, perhaps, is a real star turn.

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