Liverpool’s Salah-Mane-Firmino trio embody an early-season intensity which is so ominous for the rest

It was an element of uncertainty, ironically enough, that illustrated just how sure of themselves this Liverpool team are. Just how fully formed they are; how full-blooded they are.

Jurgen Klopp had been preparing for a specific Arsenal approach all week, only to be totally thrown when he saw their team-sheet an hour before kick-off.

“I had no clue about their tactics,” the German said. “The first I saw of the line-up was from the team sheet, and I thought it could be a diamond… but then I thought with [Nicolas] Pepe’s first game he would play a different position from where he usually plays.”

For all that Klopp was running the potential Arsenal formation over and over in his own mind, however, it says much that there was never even a millisecond where he considered changing his own team. They would continue as was, and just “have to adapt”.

“And the boys did,” Klopp beamed. They more than adapted. They still played at such a level that it made it difficult for Arsenal to adapt.

It did admittedly help that Unai Emery’s low-block system gave the two most productive wing-backs in the Premier League the freedom of the flanks, but one consequence of this was that it just made the area more congested for the targets of their crosses.

“The problem was our movements in the box were just not clear enough,” Klopp said. “That’s why we maybe couldn’t create enough chaos in the box, but with 80 per cent of the game I am completely happy.”

And this was what was really relevant to Klopp’s solution. It was not to change his team around, or try to get that team to go around Arsenal’s defence, but to get the same team to just keep going through; to break Emery’s defence down.

“The opponent of the quality of Arsenal today, you have to break somehow,” Klopp explained. “Break them physically, yes. Of course. So now, we play, here, pass the ball there, do what you have to…”

To break them. You could say that’s another Rocky reference, but it all fits into Klopp’s fundamental reference point for his team.

“Our identity is intensity,” he said, in another one of those lines he comes up with, that tend to echo through his career for how well they encapsulate his sides. “So we had to show it.”

And show it they did. There were periods of that first half when the pressure was such that it felt like Arsenal’s mass of defenders were really just flippers for Liverpool to pinball their attacks off. That’s what it amounted to. That’s why it was always going to end in goals.

“A fantastic team with so much rhythm,” David Luiz said afterwards, apparently exhausted. “They play with intensity. They never stop.”

Klopp sensed such feelings among the opposition at half-time, just after Joel Matip had finally headed Liverpool into the lead. Noticing his own players were literally feeling the heat on what was a genuinely hot Merseyside day at around 26 degrees, he gestured to the opposition dressing room. “How do you think they feel?”

And this is what is so marked about this Liverpool team right now, what has already elevated their start to the season. That is what is so ominous for everyone else, bar Manchester City. They already look so on it.

Liverpool may have only had “80 per cent of the game”, according to Klopp, but that was enough because they look 100% fit. The complications of the continental summer tournaments for the top stars don’t seem to have had any effect, other than maybe embolden them.

Hence there’s no slow-burn start to the season for Mohamed Salah this time. He’s already hit speed, as showed by so easily leaving David Luiz for dust with that third goal.

Hence Sadio Mane looking like he might break the net with every shot. Hence Roberto Firmino in the kind of verve where he’s trying things like flicking the ball over Dani Ceballos with such impudence.

Klopp once said his Borussia Dortmund side were “monsters of mentality” and, while that similarly applies to this Liverpool, they’re also beasts of physicality. He puts that down to the calculation of their training programme.

“We use every second of pre-season to be ready, that is why we were so tired in the pre-season. The human body doesn’t need eight weeks to come clear somehow, it’s not like this. Nobody knows how long you need for sure, but it’s not like that. You only still train two hours a day. In pre-season four or five hours a day is still possible, but it’s not training like you are always exhausted, it’s making you stronger, making you more resilient. Making you ready for all the stuff out there, so that’s not a problem. We have always enough time to recover from it, but it’s more mentally, to say, ‘OK, again’, everything really for our life – that’s really difficult.”

And the kicker. “If you win, you don’t feel it.”

It just makes you even more sure of yourself.