Karius would've still had his butter hands in the CL final. If you're good enough, you're good enough. Having a winner's mentality certainly helps but disagree that it plays a major factor. We could've beaten Real on another day if fortune went our way, i.e. Karius was just decent and Salah didn't get injured. That's regardless of any League Cup success beforehand.
If Klopp gets fired tomorrow, people who think he's been a failure at Liverpool would still think he's been a failure at Liverpool even if he had won the League Cup, that was what I'm trying to say.
I think if you win the League Cup in 2016, you win the Europa League, particularly having been in the lead at half time. You're then in the CL a season earlier, and who knows what happens from there.
Take this as offensively as you want, but it's really easy for you, as a Liverpool fan, to disregard the importance of winning even minor trophies, because the only silverware you've had to celebrate over the last twelve years has been one minor trophy. If you disregard the importance of winning things, it disregards the failure of Liverpool to win something. It's exactly what Arsenal fans did for years with Wenger, and got roundly ridiculed for.
It's not about whether Klopp gets fired tomorrow, because he isn't getting fired tomorrow. The point is that the line we hear, time and time again, is how Klopp is the one to take Liverpool to the next level. Now, he's done part of the job getting you back in the CL picture, but it's not progress if year in, year out, you're securing fourth on the last day and not winning anything. It's stagnation.
He's got a big couple of months ahead of him. Two massive CL games to contend with, while trying to maintain the results you've been having in the league. Get through the CL games and secure a place in the knockout stages, and keep pace with City/Chelsea at the top of the league, and he's looking rosy. Crash out of the CL in the group stage and stumble through a busy winter period, and the pressure is very much on.