Kloppage time: Late winners are increasingly common… particularly for Liverpool

GEOFF Hurst, Michael Thomas, David Platt, Steve Bruce, Roy Essandoh, Steven Gerrard, Sergio Aguero. English football’s love affair with the late goal is both a testament to the nation’s love of the game but also its reliance on last minute solutions to problems that a better prepared people would have solved much earlier.

Still, there’s nothing that drives a narrative more than a result sealed just before the referee purses his lips and Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool have become the new banner carriers for the late rescue.

In many ways, Klopp’s team square the Premier League thematic circle. Each dominant side in the division’s history have some sort of unique DNA that marks them out as special. Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal could see a player sent off and become only stronger, while Jose Mourinho’s original Chelsea could go a month without letting in a goal.

The strongest brand example though, is Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United who, according to lore, built an entire dynasty on the late goal. Fergie Time™ was born in April 1993 when Steve Bruce’s late double against Sheffield Wednesday handed United a decisive advantage in the race for the championship.

Over the years, this essentially random pair of events became the basis of a philosophy of adventure, of never-say-die pluck in the face of adversity, boosted by the 1999 Champions League final when a largely lacklustre United scored twice to land the trophy their manager craved more than any other. “Manchester United never get beaten. We may occasionally run out of time but we never believe we can be beaten,” Ferguson once said. That’s not really how the sport works, but you get his point.

Liverpool are clutch specialists in the Premier League pic.twitter.com/h3qfWFfLOz

— B/R Football (@brfootball) November 3, 2019

Fergie-time (purists will correctly opine that it is actually the period after the stated injury time has elapsed, but no-one records that, not even in 2019) was rarely needed by United as they dominated the 1990s, however. Between Bruce’s winner against Sheffield Wednesday and the 1999 Champions League victory, United did not score a single 90th winner in the Premier League. It wasn’t until Paul Scholes popped up at Sunderland on New Year’s Day 2003, almost a decade after Bruce’s heroics, that United added a second Fergie-time winner to their Premier League palmares.

Liverpool, in contrast, have had to resort the last minute decider far more than any other team (Sadio Mane’s against Aston Villa was their 35th), and their total of five against Everton is the most by a single team versus a specific opponent in Premier League history, Divock Origi’s memorable interaction with Jordan Pickford last season the most recent. Steven Gerrard, almost inevitably, holds the individual record with four. That, along with his also-a-record total of five goals at Old Trafford (for a visiting player, obviously) is a small but perfectly formed glimpse of Liverpool’s Premier League history. Lots of drama but no league titles.

That could all be about to end, though, with Liverpool still well clear at the top of the table as we move into December. Kloppage time, if you choose to call it that, has already played a much bigger part in his time at Anfield than Fergie-time did at Old Trafford. Klopp has already had had nine 90th minute winners in his four years in the Premier League, only seven short of the total Ferguson racked up in two decades.

And while some of that will be down to the self-styled mentality monsters Klopp has developed at Anfield, late goals are increasingly part of modern football. The 2018 World Cup contained more than 20% of the 90th minute goals scored in the competition’s history while earlier that season Watford scored result-changing 90th minute goals in three successive Premier League games, the first time that had happened.

It keeps happening, and it keeps happening late on. To paraphrase Radiohead: the teams are fitter, the managers are happier, and the players are more productive.