It's already time to say the players are not good enough. Rodgers and Dalglish, Suarez aside, filled our entire team with B grade fodder and cemented are position as a mid table club. The year in which we eventually came second, we hit a run of form so insane that Suarez almost dragged us to the title, but it wasn't to be. Can we really name another stand out class player we've signed then thats been consistent enough to feature? I can't. Sturridge would be one, but he's often injured and cannot be relied on sadly.
I'll be patient with Klopp until he's brought his own players in, and implemented his way fully. However, the difference is, that Klopp's way is very similar to the Liverpool way. He likes to play football. Van Gaal's way is defensive and completely goes against the nature of Manchester United's attack and never say die attitude. I remember for years they would fight and scrap right until the end in every game and scored so many late goals because of it. Now, much like Liverpool, they've lost the urgency to create and attack.
When you have a manager at odds with the overall clubs philosophy you then have a conflict of interests and players often don't know what they're doing, or don't like what they're being asked to do, and become disinterested, which is quite evident at Manchester United.
Both clubs are now full of fairly average players in the grand scheme of things and it shows. Manchester United have that bit of magic in Martial or Memphis when they can get them free, we have it on Coutinho and Sturridge when we can get them free and fit. When Coutinho is marked out of the game, as he has been recently by smaller clubs like Watford, we are absolute shite because we are so average everywhere else.
The fact is, when you fill your side up with players like Clyne, Lallana, Firmino, Lovren, Mignolet and so on, you become a side of that level. You still need world class players around them to get them to up their game or you replace them, but we don't have those class players like Gerrard or Suarez anymore. Its absolutely painful to see to be honest so I can emphatically sympathise with Scholes here because I know the level of frustration that must be going through his head, because he cares.
Before this we were signing Suarez from Ajax who played in the Champions League, Torres who was something special and a known goalscoring machine in Spain for Atletico, who although were going through a rough patch at the time, are still regarded as one of the biggest Spanish clubs. Now we are signing fodder from Southampton, Villa, Hoffenheim just as United are signing players from Everton and Southampton. These players are average and are helping to turn our sides into average sides.
If you want class, you buy class, or unproven cheap talent and develop it yourself as Ferguson did, as Houllier did with Gerrard, but now we have this stupid policy, much like United, of splashing ridiculous sums (ours more ridiculous) on average players. If we want good players we should be going to Barcelona, Madrid, Bayern and co. and asking them 'do you need Gotze anymore?', 'do you need Kroos anymore?' and when they say 'no, we're looking to cash in on this player', thats when we go 'okay, lets do business'. Arsenal did it with Ozil. They went and signed a top player from a top club who was no longer wanted.
This is why Arsenal are consistently up there. A mixture of cheaper younger players, shrewd development and the signings of quality players when the time is right. Its shrewd business and they buy players like Ramsey for £5m with potential. They very rarely waste money or panic buy, yet ridiculously get criticised for not spending enough money. Their fans should be thankful they are not pissing £25-35m on domestic donkeys who are average at best. Cech is more proof of their ability to purchase unwanted quality players from top clubs, even rivals, and look how much that has benefited them this season.
The best thing Klopp can do is (a) rejuvenate Melwood, (b) continue purchasing cheap players like Grujic for modest sums and (c) buy quality when the time is right like Gotze or Reus. The worst thing he can do is, like his predecessors, piss ridiculous amounts of money up the wall on players who are not quality and only go to set us back even further by leaving us burdened with an expensive flop nobody wants.