On Second Thoughts: Graeme Souness's managerial career

[blacky]

he inherited a team that was ageing and it had to be rebuilt. that was a task kenny couldnt face up to.

True but he tried to do too much too quick. Sold players that were still in their prime and replaced with mainly dross. He single handedly dismantled a dynasty that took decades to built and we still have not fully recovered. Great player, disaster of a manager.

[Darth Marty]

Personally I like the guy, my reasons are, I do remember him as a player, albeit towards the end of his career and he was immense, truly immense. I loved his passion and the way he wasnt scared to make changes in order to make us great again. I have no doubt, none at all, that he was doing what he thought was necessary to make us champions again. If only his management skills matched his passion.

[Elvoz]

True but he tried to do too much too quick. Sold players that were still in their prime and replaced with mainly dross. He single handedly dismantled a dynasty that took decades to built and we still have not fully recovered. Great player, disaster of a manager.

i can see what he was trying to do he just ****ed it up completely

like the mrs cooking a sunday roast

[bobbyfallon]

i can see what he was trying to do he just ****ed it up completely

like the mrs cooking a sunday roast

better hope she doesnt read this lad

[Elvoz]

better hope she doesnt read this lad

READ

[bobbyfallon]

READ

ta ****

[pondus]

better hope she doesnt read this, lad

[bobbyfallon]

pedantic cunt

[pondus]

pedantic cunt

just so that elvoz understood the meaning of it

[Parm]

he inherited a team that was ageing and it had to be rebuilt. that was a task kenny couldnt face up to.

that is true, he saw the problem, addressed it as fast he could, but made bad purchases and it all went to pot thereafter.
I dont really think that planting the Gala flag in fener's stdium, or beating Aresnal home and away in 02/03 or buying Andy cole justifies him being bracketed as up there with the rest. The article is somewhat ****e.

[dww]

that is true, he saw the problem, addressed it as fast he could, but made bad purchases and it all went to pot thereafter.
I dont really think that planting the Gala flag in fener's stdium, or beating Aresnal home and away in 02/03 or buying Andy cole justifies him being bracketed as up there with the rest. The article is somewhat ****e.

I'm not sure that he's that good but he is better than many people make out. He did very well with Blackburn and his career isn't the catalogue of disasters people make out. I would say that he was somewhat left behind by developments in coaching and had far less insight into the coaches and players he needed to succeed in the new environments.

For us he was a disaster and you say he addressed the problems as fast as he could but his failure to use the top quality (if aging) resources he had was the core of the problem. He did need to rejuvenate the club but Fergie has shown that the process is best done slowly using the experience you have to hand and making few top quality replacements rather than rushing out to bring in people who are simply younger than those you already have.

[Rich]

I'm not sure that he's that good but he is better than many people make out. He did very well with Blackburn and his career isn't the catalogue of disasters people make out. I would say that he was somewhat left behind by developments in coaching and had far less insight into the coaches and players he needed to succeed in the new environments.

For us he was a disaster and you say he addressed the problems as fast as he could but his failure to use the top quality (if aging) resources he had was the core of the problem. He did need to rejuvenate the club but Fergie has shown that the process is best done slowly using the experience you have to hand and making few top quality replacements rather than rushing out to bring in people who are simply younger than those you already have.

Selling Beardsley and Staunton was criminal.

[Slim]

Selling Beardsley and Staunton was criminal.

And Houghton, although I think he fell out with Houghton IIRC. He fell out with a lot of people!


Awesome player though.

[zimbo]

Selling Beardsley and Staunton was criminal.

And Houghton, although I think he fell out with Houghton IIRC. He fell out with a lot of people!

Awesome player though.

See, I wouldn’t necessarily go along with that. There was some kind of logic at play, at the time, for all of the players Souness got rid of. It’s just that, given that the players brought in as replacements were almost universally of inferior quality (and this, media misjudgments aside, was his biggest failing) hindsight inevitably makes us take a harsher view.

Staunton was a victim of the newly-introduced ‘foreigner quota’ ruling, whereby only four (I think) non-UK players could appear in European competition. Given that we already had Burrows covering the left-back position, and that Staunton’s development had perhaps not been as pronounced as was initially hoped, the decision to sell could easily be rationalised. Although I think Souness himself has since admitted that it was a mistake.

If I remember correctly Houghton had been offered a substantial pay rise by Villa which, given his age (he’d certainly passed 30), Liverpool refused to match. He then went out of his way to engineer the move. It’s understandable in the circumstances that a new manager would choose to take the money and get his own player in instead. It’s just a shame that player turned out to be Mark Walters.

McMahon was, in my opinion, sold too soon, as his presence could have acted as a steadying influence on a team in transition, as we clearly were. But I’m fairly sure that there was a personality clash with Souness and Michael Thomas had already been earmarked as his natural replacement. There were also obvious signs at the time that McMahon had passed his best.

Hansen had retired, Hysen wasn’t good enough, Gillespie was unreliable, Speedie and Carter were never going to be Liverpool players in a million years, and the likes of Whelan, Rush, Grobbelaar, Molby and Nicol were all beyond 30 and clearly in decline. Whoever took over was on a hiding to nothing really.

Which leaves Beardsley, possibly the most controversial decision of all. It may not be the party line, but I was never a massive Beardsley fan. By then he’d had four seasons at the club and had really only performed well for about 18 months in that time. That last season, although he started it in outstanding form, as time went on his contribution became increasingly negligible, and Dalglish became more and more inclined to leave him out of the starting line-up (hence the bizarre, though perhaps logical decision to buy Speedie). Beardsley was always a great ‘highlights’ player and seemed to respond best when he felt he had something to prove (such as in the 4-4 cup game with Everton or when he played us after joining them). For me, again the problem wasn’t so much the selling of Beardsley (although it wasn’t the smartest move to let Everton have him) as much as the decision to purchase Saunders as a replacement.

None of this is to say that Souness was an effective manager for us. As I’ve said, his eye for a player was ridiculously impaired. He brought to the club some of the worst players ever to be associated with it. He chose to adopt a kind of intimidatory anti-football, emphasising aggression and competitiveness at the expense of deftness and imagination, as symbolised by such artless hod-carriers as Ruddock, Dicks and Stewart.

But in the circumstances, given that an era had obviously closed and that changes were essential if Liverpool were to continue to compete, Souness had no option but to act fast. That he ultimately failed is as understandable as it is undeniable.

[Slim]

See, I wouldn’t necessarily go along with that. There was some kind of logic at play, at the time, for all of the players Souness got rid of. It’s just that, given that the players brought in as replacements were almost universally of inferior quality (and this, media misjudgments aside, was his biggest failing) hindsight inevitably makes us take a harsher view.

Staunton was a victim of the newly-introduced ‘foreigner quota’ ruling, whereby only four (I think) non-UK players could appear in European competition. Given that we already had Burrows covering the left-back position, and that Staunton’s development had perhaps not been as pronounced as was initially hoped, the decision to sell could easily be rationalised. Although I think Souness himself has since admitted that it was a mistake.

If I remember correctly Houghton had been offered a substantial pay rise by Villa which, given his age (he’d certainly passed 30), Liverpool refused to match. He then went out of his way to engineer the move. It’s understandable in the circumstances that a new manager would choose to take the money and get his own player in instead. It’s just a shame that player turned out to be Mark Walters.

McMahon was, in my opinion, sold too soon, as his presence could have acted as a steadying influence on a team in transition, as we clearly were. But I’m fairly sure that there was a personality clash with Souness and Michael Thomas had already been earmarked as his natural replacement. There were also obvious signs at the time that McMahon had passed his best.

Hansen had retired, Hysen wasn’t good enough, Gillespie was unreliable, Speedie and Carter were never going to be Liverpool players in a million years, and the likes of Whelan, Rush, Grobbelaar, Molby and Nicol were all beyond 30 and clearly in decline. Whoever took over was on a hiding to nothing really.

Which leaves Beardsley, possibly the most controversial decision of all. It may not be the party line, but I was never a massive Beardsley fan. By then he’d had four seasons at the club and had really only performed well for about 18 months in that time. That last season, although he started it in outstanding form, as time went on his contribution became increasingly negligible, and Dalglish became more and more inclined to leave him out of the starting line-up (hence the bizarre, though perhaps logical decision to buy Speedie). Beardsley was always a great ‘highlights’ player and seemed to respond best when he felt he had something to prove (such as in the 4-4 cup game with Everton or when he played us after joining them). For me, again the problem wasn’t so much the selling of Beardsley (although it wasn’t the smartest move to let Everton have him) as much as the decision to purchase Saunders as a replacement.

None of this is to say that Souness was an effective manager for us. As I’ve said, his eye for a player was ridiculously impaired. He brought to the club some of the worst players ever to be associated with it. He chose to adopt a kind of intimidatory anti-football, emphasising aggression and competitiveness at the expense of deftness and imagination, as symbolised by such artless hod-carriers as Ruddock, Dicks and Stewart.

But in the circumstances, given that an era had obviously closed and that changes were essential if Liverpool were to continue to compete, Souness had no option but to act fast. That he ultimately failed is as understandable as it is undeniable.

Quality post.

You are right about the Houghton transfer - I was pretty sure he and Souness fell out over it. I recall Souness going on Football Focus to lay into Houghton for going to Villa, and basically accusing him of engineering the move.

I dont entirely agree with you on the Beardsley thing. I thought Kenny had gone bonkers when he was starting him on the bench more and more. As regards Staunton, well I must admit I had forgotten about the "foreigners" rule, and I think that was at the heart of a lot of Souness' thinking regarding transfers at the time.

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