Jurgen Klopp’s big task at Liverpool is to get his talented but inconsistent players into form

Any hope that the ability to conjure miracles was part of Jurgen Klopp’s managerial repertoire has been extinguished in the opening four games of his Liverpool tenure. His new side was held to consecutive draws by Tottenham Hotspur, Rubin Kazan and Southampton before narrowly defeating Bournemouth in the League Cup on Wednesday.

Klopp is a superb manager who did an outstanding job in his seven years at Borussia Dortmund, but Liverpool’s underlying issues will take at least a few more weeks to address.

Inherited injuries have not made the German’s task any easier, nor the lack of confidence and self-belief running through the squad.

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The major problem at present, though, is the inconsistency of many of Liverpool’s key players.

Emre Can and James Milner have oscillated between excellent and ordinary in recent weeks, while Adam Lallana continues to be unable to put good performances together consecutively and Philippe Coutinho, too, often fails to influence games in the way that the league’s best playmakers do.

Mamadou Sakho is another who seems incapable of maintaining a steady level of performance from game to game.

When he is on form, the Frenchman is a dominant centre-half who offers strength, aggression and aerial ability in the heart of the backline.

But at other times Sakho, 25, appears clumsy and error-prone, uncomfortable when it comes to playing the ball out from the back and slow to spot danger.

Brendan Rodgers seemed to feel that his flaws outweighed his virtues, with Martin Skrtel and Dejan Lovren becoming his favoured partnership in the middle of the defence.

If Sakho can iron out some of his deficiencies, he has the ability to become a mainstay of Klopp’s XI and the club’s most important centre-back.

Like many of his teammates, though, the former Paris Saint-Germain man needs to produce on a more consistent basis.

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