Liverpool managers nowadays are burdened by a number of things - smaller resources than their rivals, the vaulting expectations of supporters, and Alberto Moreno - and must also try and operate in the shadow of the statue outside Anfield.
It is widely accepted that Shankly built Liverpool, and did so by unabashedly appealing to the city's working-class roots, given he was hewn of the similar culture of Scotland. He was unambiguous on his politics:
The socialism I believe in isn’t really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football and the way I see life.
His pronouncements on football were consistent with his political beliefs, and was always keen to stress that his players' responsibility was to the paying crowd, never demurring from his belief that they were playing football for the gaiety of the working class. His political beliefs would fuse with his rhetoric on football, too: "Chairman Mao has never seen a greater show of red strength" was how Shankly summed up one victory.
While Jurgen Klopp may not match Shankly's on-field success, it appears that he is politically consistent with the most legendary of his successors.
Rafa Honigstein has a new biography of Klopp out, and sections of it appear in the Liverpool Echo today. Most interesting is the section exploring Klopp's politics:
I'm on the left, of course. More left than middle. I believe in the welfare state. I'm not privately insured. I would never vote for a party because they promised to lower the top tax rate. My political understanding is this: if I am doing well, I want others to do well, too. If there's something I will never do in my life it is vote for the right.
Alex Ferguson, of course, also proclaimed himself a socialist, for which he was grilled rather uncomfortably by Jon Snow on the publication of his second autobiography. Ferguson chided Snow's assertion that his reign was "Stalinist" as "extreme".
