Liverpool vs Tottenham: Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino still seeking a silver lining

Reviewing the monochrome days of football past when stern-faced managers only removed their hat in church or the chairman’s office, it can seem like the famous names of the era made unflinching judgments about the game on a weekly basis.

“If you don’t win anything, you’ve had a bad season,” is one attributed to Bill Nicholson, although he was not to know that the words of he and other postwar giants of the game would be handed down for generations like scripture.

The context of that particular Nicholson quotation is unclear but it is listed on Tottenham Hotspur’s official website, and it goes without saying that there is a small library’s worth of work to chronicle his Liverpool equivalent’s views on football and beyond.

Bill Shankly had some pretty unflattering views on what it meant to finish second, and in times of uncertainty these things from the past can be comforting sentiments for...