Liverpool 5-2 Norwich: Jurgen Klopp leads Reds into the FA Cup fifth round in first game since announcing he will leave the club at the end of the season

For Jurgen Klopp this was the start of the long farewell. For his Liverpool team, it was the first step in ensuring their manager leaves in the only appropriate way at the end of the season.

There will be no shortage of emotion and melancholy in these parts between now and the end of May. It’s inevitable, whether Klopp wants it or not. But what Liverpool’s season should really deliver are trophies.

Klopp’s eight and a half years at Anfield were perhaps about glamour, excitement, energy and identity. But they were also about winning.

So if his current Liverpool side owe anything to the outgoing manager over the next four months, it’s more wins, more success and more silverware.

As it stands, Liverpool are alive in every competition that was thrown at them last August.

Top of the Premier League, in the final of the Carabao Cup, in the knockout stages of the Europa League and then also in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Had we not known what we know, that Klopp will leave Liverpool this summer, there would have been nothing unusual about this occasion or even this dismissal of a spirited but defensively flawed Norwich team.

Norwich once ruined a great day at Anfield, winning 1-0 here on the occasion of the last match before the old Kop terrace was demolished in 1994. There was never a chance of a repeat here.

But no, there was nothing particularly moving or emotional about this game, at least not that was visible.

Nothing in the match programme. No banners. No new songs.

Rather, it was just another example of Liverpool doing what they do and in its own way it was the greatest tribute to Klopp and all he has brought to this great institution.

Liverpool ran hard, passed quickly, rushed for possession when they didn’t have it and ended up scoring five goals when they probably could have scored double that.

There was also a return to the field as substitutes for the previously injured trio of Andrew Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dominink Szoboszlai.

When Robertson appeared after so many weeks away, the reception almost lifted the roof off this fantastically renovated old stadium.

So with Liverpool’s squad replenished and with young players like full-back Conor Bradley and midfielder James McConnell emerging at a rapid pace – both were excellent here – there is rapidly growing momentum that threatens to carry this season forward.

Chelsea visits the competition on Wednesday and Klopp will take his players to Arsenal next Sunday.

No one would want to play them right now and if the news of Klopp’s plans is to energize his players – rather than have the opposite effect – then these 90 minutes of football could one day be seen as the start of it all.

For Liverpool supporters, all this should encourage but also frustrate. After last season’s transition issues, this is a Liverpool side that now looks primed to grow and develop into something to love and enjoy in the years to come.

How difficult it must be to accept that the man best able to guide them and lead them where they need to go is preparing himself to walk off into the sunset before summer even arrives.

Here, under a spotlight that no one expected when the cup draw took place, Klopp fielded an understrength side that was still strong enough. Norwich, managed by Klopp’s old friend David Wagner, were committed and organised, but continually failed due to individual mistakes.

Liverpool threatened from the start and Darwin Nunez hit a post from twenty yards. They then scored in the 16th minute when McConnell hit a cross onto the head of Curtis Jones on his first start.

The finish, opposite Norwich’s stand-in goalkeeper George Long, was neat and well angled.

Norwich had no possession and no territory at the time, but they still equalised. Joe Gomez managed to avoid a break by blocking a cross, but when the resulting corner was whipped towards the near post, Ben Gibson’s backward header found the far corner.

Anfield was more annoyed than bewildered. This version of Liverpool sometimes concedes a poor goal and this was one.

But the memory was soon swept away by a Liverpool goal that perhaps more than anything we saw here, encapsulated much of what was traditionally good about Klopp’s team.

Bradley – the 20-year-old Northern Ireland full-back – chased an opponent out of possession on the far touchline with tiger-like energy and this lit up the touchpaper.

Because Norwich were short-handed and out of balance, Bradley was able to advance and then play Darwin Nunez through the middle. Liverpool’s raw but talented striker still had a lot to do and he has certainly missed clearer opportunities over the past season and a half.

But this time his low right-foot shot was spot on and found the bottom right corner of the Norwich goal, where goalkeeper Long could do nothing about it.

Liverpool missed other chances before half-time – Cody Gakpo and Ryan Gravenberch were the culprits – but when Gibson made a mess of things seven minutes into the second period by heading a long ball away, Diogo Jota volleyed it with that familiar calm of his inside to make sure there were no surprises.

Ten substitutes arrived in the last half hour – what nonsense that is all – and one of Liverpool’s scored almost immediately, Virgil van Dijk heading in from a corner.

A stunning right-foot shot from 25 yards from Borja Sainz at least gave the Norwich supporters something better to think about on the way home, but some familiarly poor defending allowed Gravenberch to head Liverpool’s fifth lead deep to add time and that was the end of it.

Previously it had taken just 57 seconds of the match for the first Klopp number to fall from the Kop. As he left the field at the end, they sang one of their favorites.

‘I’m so happy that Jurgen is red…’ that’s how it goes and he is. At least for now.