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Three years ago, Jürgen Klopp took Dortmund to Manchester City in the Champions League and the hosts were lucky to escape with a 1-1 draw, largely due to Joe Hart's heroics. The England goalkeeper did not have fond memories of the night:
"Dortmund were a big surprise. I remember them coming to our place in the Champions League and they battered us. They were like wasps in their yellow and black kit. I know that, when Klopp gets a team ticking, then they're really, really hard to play against."
Leading up to Saturday's clash with Manchester City, Klopp's Liverpool had shown some significant improvements on both sides of the ball, but no one would have compared this squad to the great Dortmund squads of the past several years. Even the come-from-behind win at Stamford Bridge had caveats--namely that Chelsea are historically bad this season.
This all changed on Saturday night (at least the Liverpool bit, Chelsea are still very bad). Jamie Carragher was duly impressed during his analysis on Monday Night Football, proclaiming it as one of the great Liverpool performances of the Premier League era.
"The first 30 or 35 minutes was as good as anything I can remember, not from Klopp or any Liverpool team, but in the Premier League - at least when going away to a big team like Manchester City, who are one of the top sides.
"You could see the work that had been done during the week. There was talk about why [Christian] Benteke wasn't playing and Klopp said: ‘Well I've been using the same players for the last 10 days in training'. And you can see how that's worked.
The performance marked the first time Liverpool scored 4 goals in nearly 11 months (the last coming in a 4-1 victory over Swansea in late December), and represents a serious uptick in chances created and converted under the new boss.
"We've spoken about the work of Klopp in terms of being organised and pressing," Carragher continued, "I think that was the first time we've seen the work of him offensively, what he can do and maybe the damage he can cause with his teams, and that's from working with those players for 10 days during the international break."
There's no doubt this match was won long before the first whistle blew on Saturday, and that the Jürgen Klopp Era has officially begun.