Now Klopp, contracted to Liverpool until 2022, looks less like a putative successor than one who got away from Arsenal. But as they prepare to meet on Saturday, contesting three points and a place in the top four, it is with distinct similarities, and not just because both have had dispiriting 2017s.

Perhaps more than any of their peers, the Arsenal and Liverpool managers object to the culture of the consumption that pervades in the Premier League. They reject the implication the answer automatically lies in added expenditure; it irritates them. They have what can seem an old-fashioned faith in coaching. They promote a culture of continuity that makes them exceptions in a world of constant change. Separately, they expressed their disapproval of Paul Pogba's world-record fee but not, seemingly, out of envy. They do not complain about what they cannot spend. They do not spend everything they can.

Arsenal's cash reserves stand at £100.4 million. Klopp has made a transfer market profit in each of the last two transfer windows; his Liverpool are unlikely to enter auctions for the game's superstars while, apart from signing Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, Arsenal have ignored them for years. Each can be accused of showing an excess of faith in the players at his disposal, but they are among the more forgivable failings.    

They have been conditioned by the context of economic realities. Wenger financed the building of a stadium. Klopp inherited a club, in Borussia Dortmund, that had been scarred by a brush with bankruptcy. For years, they were managers who sold star players on an annual basis, from Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry to Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie at Arsenal, and Shinji Kagawa, Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski at Dortmund. Wenger saw his footballing advantage removed when first Chelsea and Manchester City received artificial injections of hundreds of millions. Klopp lost his ascendancy in the Bundesliga when Bayern Munich flexed their financial muscle. But both brought sustainability in the circumstances. These are men who can be relied upon to run a club responsibly.

It is why, although large swathes of the Arsenal support may no longer endorse the messages on the old banners "Arsene Knows" and "In Arsene We Trust," the board do. There may be a similar sentiment at Anfield now: Jurgen Knows; In Jurgen They Trust. 

Klopp is 18 years Wenger's junior and came to England 19 years later, but with a similar purchasing policy: to raid his homeland for players others overlooked. Wenger had the French market to himself two decades ago. If Germany is not quite exactly uncharted territory for Premier League predators, Klopp seems to regard it as an underexploited market.

In their different ways, the understudy Ragnar Klavan, the excellent Joel Matip and the erratic Loris Karius are emblematic figures: comparatively low profile in England when recruited, with Klopp convinced last summer that Matip was a coup who would save millions. Klavan, an ageing backup, may be the Anfield Remi Garde. Karius could prove a case of investing in potential or end up being bracketed alongside some of Wenger's less-inspired raids on France.

Jurgen Klopp's and Arsene Wenger's clubs both produce attractive football, but it hasn't necessarily yielded recent silverware.

But the £4.7 million goalkeeper highlights another common denominator: a suspicion both managers have a slight blind spot when it comes to shot-stoppers, or at least to paying for them. Before buying Petr Cech, Wenger had never spent more than £3 million on a goalkeeper. Klopp's first choice in his Dortmund days was Roman Weidenfeller, who was uncapped until 2013 and only fourth or fifth in line for a place in the German side.   

They have shown a similar fondness for converting midfielders to play full-back, whether Lauren or James Milner, or turning wingers into strikers, whether Henry, Van Persie or Roberto Firmino. Their football is essentially progressive, and August's 4-3 meeting remains arguably the best Premier League game of the season.

Yet a shared question is if they are ruthless enough. Wenger is set to complete a 13th season without winning the league; he may end it with only two major trophies in the last 12. Klopp has finished a runner-up five times since his last significant silverware. They have offered cost-conscious entertainment, and the German has brought progress after taking over Liverpool when they were at a low ebb, but some of the honours have gone to more pragmatic figures, others to bigger buyers and one, in a historic anomaly, to Cinderella Leicester. Yet they have offered definitions of success that do not depend purely on silverware.

Wenger and Klopp were undistinguished players who are advertisements for the powers of learning -- as graduates in economics and sports science respectively -- and contrasting brands of enthusiasm. These imposingly tall, enduringly thin figures represent giants from different eras. Klopp's in-vogue pressing game suggests the German is more in touch with the zeitgeist. Yet the perennial Wenger occupies a top-four position. Instead of replacing him at the Emirates, the German's task is to supplant him in the Champions League places.