Why Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp believes Sadio Mane and co have what it takes to avoid burnout

For Sadio Mane, the 2018-19 season lasted 341 days, incorporated 57 appearances and only ended on July 19. His current campaign began three weeks later with a cameo against Norwich. If football seems the sport that never sleeps, that certainly feels the case for Liverpool’s front three.

Players whose games are defined by pace and relentlessness are the sprinters who double up as long-distance runners. It has prompted fears that Liverpool, having scorched Arsenal in trademark fashion, will suffer from burnout. Jurgen Klopp refuted that. After helping Senegal reach the African Cup of Nations final, Mane had a mere 16 days off in the summer and has already played 286 minutes this season, but his manager believes he will have a mini-break after next weekend.

“We try [to rest him],” he said. “I did [on Saturday] – I took him off, and if I am 100 per cent right then Sadio doesn’t have to go away on international duty with his national team after Burnley which will help him, and then after that we have a full week to prepare the next opponent.”

Saying Mane requires a rest is easier than omitting him, especially against elite opponents. Mane’s presence on the teamsheet was a given for Liverpool’s 3-1 win over Arsenal. Klopp noted that one of Liverpool’s favourite sons had voiced concerns about the winger’s workload. “I would love to hear Jamie Carragher if I had left Sadio out,” he responded. “The punditry is a world-class business – I have to think about if I do that after my [management] career, because you can say whatever you want and you always put a finger in something.”

But Carragher may have a broader point. Mane played 4,309 minutes for Liverpool alone last season. He is not even an outlier. Mohamed Salah, with 4,343 minutes, shouldered a still greater burden. Roberto Firmino’s incessant running means that he tends to be substituted before his striking sidekicks, but he would still have topped his eventual tally of 3,416 minutes except for injury. Only Raheem Sterling among Premier League attackers was anything like as busy as Salah and Mane last season. They have brought art and graft.

Rewind a few years and a manager on Merseyside talked about fatigue levels kicking in around 3,000 minutes. Roberto Martinez voiced those thoughts but Klopp does not seem a subscriber to that particular theory. Liverpool rely on energy, but are adamant that explosiveness will not be dulled. “No player should play 50 or 60 games a season, especially not in these intense positions,” said Klopp after last week’s win at Southampton, but he was referring to midfield, rather than the forwards or his workaholic full-backs.

Seven days later, he reflected on the importance of physicality after Arsenal were overrun and overwhelmed. “The tempo we put in the game from the beginning was incredible, really incredible,” Klopp said. “There was no time to breathe. The opponent of the quality of Arsenal, you have to break somehow: break them physically. I said at half-time to the boys, ‘how do you think they feel?’ because it was an intense first half, and they had to make all the runs as well.”

Klopp is confident that Liverpool have the combination of motivation and preparation required to sustain their efforts. “You have to ask the players,” he said. “As long I see in their eyes they really want [it] and I see the session in midweek. It’s not about having only two weeks’ break, it’s about having that intensity always.

“I think we will be fine. We use every second of pre-season to be ready, that is why we were so tired in the pre-season. The human body it doesn’t need eight weeks to come clear somehow, it’s not like this. We try to do the right things in the right moment, and now we have again a day or two off, and then the last time for a long, long time, and then we start again.”

Mane has served as something of a firestarter for Klopp’s Liverpool before. The transformation in his team gathered pace when they scored four goals in 18 minutes on his debut in 2016. The victims, blown away amid an intensity forged by incessant running, were Arsenal. “Our identity is intensity,” said Klopp. It has been the case throughout three years when Mane’s acceleration has propelled Liverpool forward, and their manager thinks his overworked attackers can retain that intensity.