LONDON • Liverpool could be just beginning an era of domestic domination after sealing their first English title for three decades on Thursday, according to former striker Robbie Fowler.

Jurgen Klopp's side have won the Premier League with a record seven matches to spare and stand 23 points ahead of Manchester City, champions for the past two years.

"Last year we finished second with 97 points and we knew we were on the periphery of something great," Fowler told Sky Sports. "One of the problems was Manchester City, they have a brilliant side and it shows how good Liverpool are to be so far ahead.

"The club has grown and this squad is capable of going on and doing this again, it really is."

He said the arrival of Klopp in 2015 was the turning point, as was the emphasis on strengthening Liverpool's rearguard.

"The players he has brought in have been world class," he said.

"You can sign forwards who will score you 20 or 30 goals, but if you concede a lot you have a problem. The addition of Virgil van Dijk and goalkeeper Alisson has strengthened the team."

Liverpool chairman Tom Werner also said on the club website yesterday that he is hoping for "another period of sustained success" under Klopp.

He added: "We want to undersell and overdeliver. (But) The competition is fierce and I know our rivals are working tirelessly to upend us."

Liverpool's success, however, goes beyond Klopp alone. The club's rise has been a triumph of planning, of science, of reason.

Under owners Fenway Sports Group's (FSG) aegis, it has been transformed from a club uneasy in the modern world to one at the cutting edge of it.

Its commercial arm is slick and dynamic, enabling the club to turn in a record profit last year, and to maintain a US$350 million (S$487 million) wage bill.

It navigates the transfer market easily enough that, for two years straight, it has had the deeply dubious honour of paying more in agents' fees than any other Premier League team.

But it is on the field that the transformation has been most remarkable. A team that have spent 30 years trying to follow is now in a position to lead.

In its success, there are lessons not only for other members of football's elite, but also for clubs much further down the food chain.

In those early days, when FSG first arrived on Merseyside, it was widely assumed that the group intended to try to apply to Liverpool the data-driven approach that had led the Boston Red Sox to glory.

This would be, it was thought, the grand Moneyball experiment that football, with an eyebrow raised, had been expecting. Elements of that approach have survived. Liverpool remains, arguably, the most effective user of data in football.

Much of that is down to Michael Edwards, the club's sporting director, and the cadre of academics and statisticians and quants who work alongside him.

Data is incorporated into almost every decision the club make, a central plank of not only a recruitment record that has, in recent years, been so fine-tuned it is almost flawless, but in the team's style of play, too.

How Liverpool attack, how they control space, how they defend: all of them have a basis in information, in analytics, in numbers. But that, in truth, is just one part of it.

To interpret Liverpool's approach as a mere facsimile of Moneyball is a misrepresentation. It is, instead, a successor of it, an upgrade to it: Merseyball, perhaps.

The club have internalised a philosophy of marginal gains, of seeking out any small thing to give them an edge. It has, in Thomas Gronnemark, a full-time throw-in coach.

Klopp is also always quick to credit Mona Nemmer, the team's nutritionist, as a vital colleague.

When, two years ago, he became convinced Liverpool were not scoring enough from free kicks and corners, he tasked his assistants with drawing up specific set-piece schemes.

It is Klopp, of course, who binds all of those distinct strands together. The edifice only works because he is happy to delegate, because he is a fervent believer in the idea that he does not need to know everything, he just needs to know the people who do.

Klopp, with his megawatt smile and his easy demeanour and his touchline fervour, is no autocrat.

In many ways, that is the greatest evidence of how FSG has dragged Liverpool into the 21st century: It has taken a place predisposed to building a cult of personality and - with Klopp's blessing - turned it into a democracy.

Klopp signed Mohamed Salah on Edwards' insistence. John Achterberg, the goalkeeping coach, is the one who pushed for the acquisition of Alisson Becker.

Klopp also empowers his players to think for themselves: the iconic winning goal against Barcelona in last year's Champions League semi-final came from the squad's observation that the opponent was dallying during set pieces.

That is not to say that Klopp has not been the central figure, of course. It is the German who has, in his own phrase, turned "doubters into believers", and in the space of four short years taken Liverpool from mediocrity to glory: two Champions League finals, one Champions League victory, a world club title and, now, a Premier League title.

No less significantly, he has given Liverpool an identity again. Though the most natural frame of reference would be one of his predecessors at Anfield - Bill Shankly or Bob Paisley - the most compelling is Arsene Wenger at Arsenal.

Like Wenger, Klopp has modernised an archaic club. Like Wenger, Klopp's legacy will resonate beyond his own crowd, his own stadium. And like Wenger, Klopp has bestowed on Liverpool a style and a reputation that will outlast him.

Liverpool will, for years to come, be synonymous with the intensity, the desire and the speed that has helped this team burn away the rest of the Premier League.

They will search the data to sign players who can fit into that blueprint. They will hire coaches who can maintain the tradition. Thanks to Klopp, after 30 long years, Liverpool knows what they want to be once more.

REUTERS, NYTIMES