Football's accelerated culture of forging tomorrow's opinions before today is over is perfectly exemplified by Jurgen Klopp facing similar accusations in his second season at Liverpool as Arsene Wenger is in his 21st at Arsenal.
Wenger has variously been described as too stubborn, too loyal, too frugal, too one-dimensional, not ruthless enough, out of touch, having a blind spot when it comes to the back end of his team and lacking a plan B for the best part of a decade. Klopp is being called out for similar limitations 87 games into his Liverpool tenure (42 wins, 25 draws and 20 losses). A win percentage of 48.3 is worse than David Moyes' 52.9 was at Manchester United.
Klopp has been a runner-up five times since he last won a trophy, while Wenger has picked up just two pieces of major silverware in the past 11 seasons. There's an argument to say bridesmaids have better fun at a wedding than the bride (just ask Leicester City), but then just as often they finish the evening trying to avert the attentions of an over amorous uncle.Perhaps as telling as any perceived shortcomings is that the stock of both managers is high enough for them to purportedly be on the radar of Barcelona. Luis Enrique's decision not to renew his contract when it expires in the summer because he needs a rest says much about the pressures of modern day management. Enrique is 46, Wenger is 67.
Many don't perceive Enrique to be a first class coach, despite winning seven trophies in his previous two seasons in charge, including a treble in the first. Tough crowd.
Claudio Ranieri losing his job at Leicester City just 26 Premier League games after guiding them to arguably the unlikeliest title in sporting history, has essentially rendered any claims a manager might be under pressure to be less fanciful than may previously have been presumed.
The old-age argument is football is a results business, and as such managers getting the sack shouldn't elicit much more than a shrug from the neutral. Thinking about it, though, it's hard to think of too many occupations where results are wholly immaterial. It's rare bricklaying is described as a results business, but if a wall fell down it is likely whoever laid it would lose their job. Maybe if you see one crying in their pint just tell them it's a result business. See how you get on.
Since Sir Alex Ferguson won his final Premier League with Manchester United in 2012/13, each of the next three title-winning bosses that followed were all politely asked to leave their respective clubs in subsequent seasons. Likewise in the two campaigns prior to Ferguson's swansong, fellow title-winners Roberto Mancini and Jose Mourinho, for the first time at Chelsea, were also deemed surplus to requirements.
Longevity in management will be buried with Wenger, even if Klopp is contracted to Liverpool until 2022. Giving a manager such a long-term deal in today's climate seems about as premature as remortgaging your home to put a kid through space school, because they showed a passing interest in looking through a telescope.
It would be overwrought to the point of being plain wrong to suggest Klopp is facing an uncertain future in the same vein as Wenger. The overwhelming majority of Liverpool supporters seem to back him unequivocally. That's not the case at the Emirates.
However, there's little doubt this is the most trying period of the German's time at Anfield to date.
But are Liverpool under Klopp not just about where they should be? The last time they won the title was in 1990. First and foremost Klopp is a coach. He needs to time to coach. In his first two seasons at Borussia Dortmund he finished sixth and fifth, before leading them to back-to-back Bundesliga titles. As Aristotle proffered: "Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet."
As mutual admirers of one another's work, expect the pre-match embrace between the two managers before Saturday's meeting of Liverpool and Arsenal to linger just a few seconds longer than usual. Solace can be found among the like-minded.
Their football principles may be polar opposites from an aesthetic perspective, but what they share is a set of values that somehow seem out of time with football's zeitgeist, favouring as it does revolution over evolution. In a digital age, Wenger and Klopp continue to champion analogue. Even if they wanted to, it's hard to download instant success. Particularly if at the same time breaking even or making a profit, as Klopp has done in the last two transfer windows, is expected.
Wenger and Klopp are guided by ideals of running a football club prudently, which can seem antiquated. Wenger is painted as a hybrid of Shylock and Scrooge McDuck for not treating Arsenal's famed cash reserve as a pot of gold to be ran down in the manner of Brewster's Millions. Klopp's failure to stamp his feet at Liverpool's relative lack of spending power, in comparison with rival clubs, is deemed by some as acceptance of a lack of ambition on the part of myopic owners, the Fenway Sports Group.
Both were vocal in worrying about where football is heading after Paul Pogba's world record transfer to Manchester United. Mourinho cried jealously. It really wasn't. It's about understanding the game beyond the sphere of their own situation.
Few doubt Mourinho will win more trophies over the next few years though, as he probably would at either Arsenal or Liverpool. No one ever said dancing with the devil isn't fun.
In Amy Lawrence's excellent interview with Jordi Cruyff for the Guardian this week, the now sporting director of Maccabi Tel Aviv spoke of adhering to principles bestowed on him by his late father, Johan.
"My father was a man of principles and one thing he always told me is if you have a doubt between a human decision or a professional decision, always follow the human decision.
"If you take the right human decision in the end everything will be OK. He always pushed me towards that. I have always stuck by that if I have any doubts."
Similarly both Wenger and Klopp have an intelligence stretching beyond the parameter of the training field. They think first as a human, then as a football manager. That in itself can be quite rare.
Football seems split at the minute. The romantics have cried a river over Ranieri's departure from Leicester, while the modernists have sneered at an outdated view of the manager as some kind of all-important deity. Ranieri has gone from being a shoo-in for a statue to being lucky if he gets a figurine made of him in plasticine.
According to some revisionists, quiet on the topic to pretty much the point of his dismissal, the players, Craig Shakespeare, Steve Walsh, data analysts and the tea lady, all matched the Italian's influence last season. That Ranieri miraculously managed to deflect any sense of pressure away from his team right up to the point of captain Wes Morgan lifting the trophy, in an act of near perfect man-management of both his players and the media, presumably could have been handled by Filbert Fox if required.
Forensic reporting of Ranieri's perceived shortcomings in the aftermath of his sacking all seems a little churlish. Apparently he had a messy desk as well.
It's been argued the majority of Leicester supporters are accepting of the decision, with the hysteria around the sacking largely generated by people with no connection to the club. All that is probably true, though whether it's a good thing is open to debate. That as supporters we've all become mini-CEOs seems a touch depressing. Stabbing someone from the front is preferable than from behind, but the end result is ultimately the same.
Whether Wenger joins Ranieri at job club could well be determined by whether he maintains an immaculate record of qualifying Arsenal for the UEFA Champions League in each season he has been in charge. Games like Saturday's against Liverpool will go a long way to deciding his fate.
It's been a wretched 2017 for both clubs. Arsenal have been Arsenal to the point of caricature, while Liverpool have been even worse.
Since beating Manchester City 2-0 on New Year's Eve in what was a fourth league victory on the spin, Liverpool have won just two of 12 matches. In the space of seven Premier League games since the turn of the year they have gone from being six points off Chelsea in second place, to being 14 points shy of the leaders in fifth. An FA Cup campaign that needed a replay to dispense with Plymouth Argyle was curtailed by a home defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers. League Cup aspirations were shot down by Southampton at the semi-final stage.
A 2-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur at Anfield in early February was a sliver of truffle floating on the surface of soup made from decomposing vegetables found at the back of the fridge. Liverpool have been rank from back to front, and all points in between.
What frustrates Liverpool supporters, in a manner all-too familiar to their Arsenal counterparts, is Klopp's predilection to come up with overcomplicated solutions for what seem like eminently solvable problems. Monday's defeat to Leicester saw Klopp set up his side in a manner heaven sent for interim Foxes boss Shakespeare. Few expected him at the first attempt to prove Ranieri's exit may be much ado about nothing after all.
A 16-day break between the win over Spurs and Monday's game encompassed a spot of warm-weather training in La Manga and should have left Liverpool feeling fresh. Primed to heap more misery on a Leicester side facing up to the very real prospect of becoming only the second club since Manchester City, in 1937/38, to be relegated the season after winning the title. Instead, Liverpool played as though they had collective sunstroke, and last season had never happened. Maybe it was heat-induced amnesia.
Klopp's decision to field a high line and Lucas Leiva at centre-half against Jamie Vardy was like trying to tackle soup with a fork. The only side this season to adopt a similar approach to Liverpool's against Leicester was Manchester City in December. Pep Guardiola's men left the King Power Stadium with a chastising 4-2 defeat, so it's not as though Liverpool weren't forewarned.
Just as City's manager has been widely criticized for playing an outfield player, Claudio Bravo, in goal instead of a specialist in the position, Klopp deeming midfielder Lucas to be a better fit at centre-half than the popular Mamadou Sakho, sent out on-loan to Crystal Palace, has manifest similar levels of head-scratching. Leaving Ragnar Klavan on the substitutes' bench suggests he's already become Liverpool's version of Pascal Cygan or Igors Stepanovs.
It takes just a cursory glance at Liverpool's defeats this season to understand why Klopp, like Wenger, has been accused of lacking a plan B.
Liverpool's only league losses have come against Burnley, Hull City, Bournemouth, Swansea City and Leicester. They have yet to lose against any of the top ten, with Burnley in 11th the highest-placed side to have beaten them. Even in diabolical form since the turn of the year they have managed to avoid defeat against Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham.
Essentially they're Arsenal in reverse. Between them they could probably mount a half-serious title challenge.
Liverpool are at their worse when allowed to dominate possession. Invariably, this is what "lesser" sides allow them to do, whether through luck or design. Klopp's famous gegenpressing doesn't work when there's nothing to press. Against sides happy to cede possession, sit and soak and then strike on the counter-attack themselves, trying to press is like letting the dogs out at burglars who are sat at home robbing you blind via Internet fraud.
Wenger would do well on Saturday to adopt Leicester's mindset, but then the Frenchman is to pragmatism what Hugh Hefner is to feminism. Considering he's unquestionably one of football's most erudite and bright managers, he can't half be dim when setting his side up against fellow top six sides.
In Arsenal's six games against the top six this term they have won just once. Liverpool can boast four wins and as many draws from their eight matches against the pacesetters. There's no little irony that Arsenal's win against Chelsea in September subsequently proved transformative, for Antonio Conte's champions-elect. Chelsea have been like a bullet train ever since, while Arsenal have pootled on by just like before. It's worth remembering how in September betting was suspended on the Italian leaving Chelsea, after he had overseen two losses.
It's now ten games since Arsenal last won away at any of Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham, Manchester United or Manchester City. A 2-0 win at the Etihad in January 2015 was heralded as a eureka moment. Arsenal were tight at the back, disciplined over all the pitch and happy to play on the counter-attack. In short, they played like all the best sides do away from home at their rivals.
This was one of those rare occasions when Wenger shifted his side's tactical approach in an attempt to quell the opposition. Just like Ferguson used to do all the time away from Old Trafford, without anyone ever saying the Scot could be a defensive coach when it suited.
It worked a treat for Arsenal at City. And has rarely, if ever, been seen since.
You can imagine Wenger mistaking cheers for jeers at the Etihad. In his head he's Bob Dylan swapping his acoustic guitar for an electric one at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, to the strains of "Judas!" heckling from the crowd. It's impossible anyone in the away end would have complained about a 2-0 win at City, but Wenger has nonetheless seemingly made a vow never again to ere from his purist principles.
Like Klopp, plan B doesn't really exist.