Alex Miller: Garry Monk and Sheffield Wednesday can learn from Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool

It was his very first interview as the manager of his new club and after years of disappointment for the red-tinted half of Merseyside – remember, disappointment in football is all relative – it was his rallying cry to kick off a new, unified and together future for the club.

In the faraway settling dust of a sixth European title and that long, long-awaited Premier League win, it’s easy to forget that when the bespectacled German arrived in England, Liverpool FC was a little bit broken; fans warring, feeling around the club low, debate around the suitability of its ownership passionate and divisive.

“We have to change from doubters to believers. Now,” Klopp said, risking the wrath of a fanbase that may not have appreciated the new kid on the block telling them how to support their football club.

“At this moment all the LFC family is a little bit too nervous, a little bit too pessimistic, a little bit too much in doubt.

“They all celebrate the game and there is a fantastic atmosphere in the stadium. But they don’t believe at the moment. They only see five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

“History is great. But only to remember. Now we have the possibility to write a new story if we want. but we have to clear a few things and maybe we can do this and be as successful as we can be.”

Some 300 words into a Sheffield Wednesday column and without a mention of, well, Sheffield Wednesday, you may have spotted one or two parallels with where the Owls find themselves today.

Two ‘massive’ clubs, both a generation or more from where they feel they should be and with a fanbase growing more and more tired of failed attempts to facilitate that return.

And while Klopp’s Liverpool revolution was lined with the purchase of £67m goalkeepers, £75m Dutchmen and Mohamed Salah, there’s something free of charge that Garry Monk and Wednesday can take from that five-year Klopp journey; that cultivation of spirit.

There is a sense of good feeling about Wednesday, a positivity and a freshness that after years of trudging similarities only a turnover in players and staff could have delivered.

The club’s media team have offered up some incredible in-house content in what feels like a concerted effort to bring fans and players closer together and there is a feeling among those supporters that this points deduction can be used to build an ‘us against the world’ mentality sorely lost from S6 for too long.

For much of last season, due in the main to results and performances, the buzz went dull at Hillsborough. This Star writer commented on a stadium full of optimism after a first home win over Barnsley all that time ago, but when it came to be that supporters were not allowed in it felt like blessing for all involved; frustration was the overriding emotion.

When Manchester City came to town in the FA Cup, vast sections of empty terraces stared out onto Sergio Aguero and co in a polar opposite manner to the hulking Hillsborough that took down Arsenal at the same ground a few years earlier.

That evening firing at the Gunners served as a launching pad for the Carlos dream, the City match a sad reflection of a fanbase scorned. Garry Monk wasn’t concerned by those that stayed away that night, he said, but he could hardly have said anything else.

The fact is that Wednesday supporters had every right to do so. It’s an expensive existence, being a Wednesdayite, and things looked a mess.

Fast-forward a few months and Wednesday have performed well in the transfer market with more to come in the coming days and weeks, taking a new road with younger, hungrier, more dynamic ideals.

They were buzzwords at first, ridiculed by a vocal minority, but it feels as those Monkisms are being acted on. It feels as if the club are backing their man to build something in his vision and that there are the sketchings of a roadmap forward, one that supporters can follow and maybe dare to get excited about. Even with that 12-point elephant in the room.

“One thing I can promise is there will be a team to be proud of at the end of this journey,” the Owls boss said in July.

They were bold words similar to those of a certain German when in his first full press conference at Liverpool he promised a league title within four years. He ended up a year out, by the way. While he polished a sixth European Cup, few pulled him up on it.

Now this column does not stand to say the signing of Fisayo Dele-Bashiru and a couple of new coaches will take Sheffield Wednesday to the promised land. What it does suggest is that while there’s a little something building here, it needs to be built on patience and positivity.

The rhetoric of those both inside and outside the camp, including and lead by Garry Monk, should reflect that. Only then can Wednesdayites begin to go from doubters to believers.

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