Author of a new book on Jurgen Klopp, Melissa Reddy joined the Football Show on Off The Ball on Wednesday.
Reddy wrote 'Believe Us: How Jürgen Klopp transformed Liverpool into title winners' and shared some of the insight she gained on the German manager.
Very early in his Liverpool tenure, Klopp was rewarded with a six-year contract, a decision that raised many eyebrows even among fans of the club.
The club had done their homework on Klopp, Reddy recounted just how much reconnaissance the club did to ensure the recruitment was never a gamble.
"The owners of Liverpool, before they had even met him in New York had a 60-page dossier on him, " Reddy revealed.
"It extended beyond his training sessions, they spoke to people who worked with him at Mainz at Borussia Dortmund.
"They spoke to former players, just about what he is like as a person. The biggest thing for them was how he handles the difficult moments.
"Liverpool at that stage needed to go through many difficult moments in order to get out the other side of it."
Klopp: super-cool
Liverpool went beyond the obvious in gathering the information around their future manager, even paying the closest attention to one of his most disappointing periods in management - according to Reddy.
"Everyone had watched his Borussia Dortmund team, they were exciting, they were energetic," she said.
"As a neutral you always wanted Dortmund to win, he made them super-cool, but they were also a super-serious football side.
"They [Liverpool] didn't want all of the information that was readily available, they went really deep.
"The season at Dortmund, they paid most attention to was his last one. Which was obviously his most disappointing one.
"They were flirting with relegation before the winter break, but what they had actually seen was the underlying numbers showed the results and the performances were not correlating.
"It was unfortunate, but even how Klopp handled that season where pretty much everything went against Dortmund, results, injuries."
"Every single season they used to lose their best players to football's apex predators and to have to continuously rebirth, "Reddy said of the vicious cycle at Dortmund.
"You can do it for two or three seasons but after a buildup, it gets quite taxing, but how he handled that really impressed them [Liverpool's owners].
"That contract extension eight months in giving Klopp a six-year deal, it was heavily criticised at the time, even by Liverpool fans. They were wondering why was the club rushing to this decision.
"Behind the scenes, [...] in those early months, it wasn't that they could see the games like City, Chelsea away, the Europa League run. They could also see how staff were all pulling in the same direction.
"They could see how the vision was so clear, in terms of recruitment, what's going to happen with the academy, in terms of identity on the pitch.
"One of the things Klopp did early on was to make social gatherings regular and also open to all staff.
"Previously if you were very important you would get invited, but under Klopp, it was everyone, janitor, driver, whatever, if you were staff working at Melwood, you were invited.
"So behind the scenes, lots of good things were brewing and that's why they gave him that deal."
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