I think Klopp can be criticised here. Firmino is consistently poor off the wing, Lallana is almost toothless out wide. With both of them central we're a menace, and with them out wide, we have no penetration whatsoever. Losing Mane and Coutinho should have resulted in like for like swaps, or at the very least, bringing in a striker and keeping Lallana in his best position. Which other wide attackers do we have, you ask? I'm fine with Klopp not pushing youth into the team, but he should have at least tried Divock out wide. And if that wasn't good enough, then a two striker formation with Firmino as a 10 and Lallana as an 8 seemed pretty straightforward too.
It doesn't help that Klopp's nominated 12th man, Emre, has had an atrocious season, and shown himself clearly unsuitable for the #8 role. At some stage, Klopp needs to accept that Can can't keep getting game time. I generally appreciate Klopp's ideals of trusting his players (leading to both long term and short term gain), but we have needed more tactical flexibility for the here and now, and Emre has been a huge negative.
On November 6th, we put 6 past Watford. Since then, we've produced one 90 minutes where both the result and the performance has been something to be proud of (away to Boro). That Watford win was the last time we started Coutinho, Firmino, Lallana and Mane together. We could definitely do with another wide attacker, but ultimately, Klopp has decided his targets, Klopp has the final say on all transfers, and Klopp would have done something about it in January, if he wanted to. I don't think a weak squad is something that goes in his favour here. We are breathtaking with our best players, but we've not had them all together for a while now, and I don't think Klopp has responded brilliantly.
I'm not criticising his transfer strategy btw, I completely agree with him on waiting for the right player. But should he decide to take that course of action, and he has (both last summer* and in January) he can't be devoid of the criticism. Put it in the context of Liverpool being a long term project and it's understandable, but it will be damning if we miss out on the top 4 this year because of that.
*he was interested in Pulisic last summer, showing that clearly he believed that there was space for another wide attacker in our squad.
edit: I would also rather that nobody responds with 'our defence is a bigger issue', which it blatantly is, but I can't attach much blame to Klopp on that front. There isn't just one issue with the team, and Klopp's approach to not having his full front four available is one of those issues.
