Originally posted by JHP
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This from the Times tomorrow
“If the fans don’t want it then it’s a non starter,” John W Henry, Monday 12 December 2010.
John W Henry was distancing himself from talk of a ground share with Everton when he made the above comment but he may as well have been commenting on the ill fated six month reign of Roy Hodgson as manager.
Hodgson wasn’t wanted by the overwhelming majority of Liverpool fans from the day when it was first mooted that he could be the successor to Rafael Benitez.
They saw a decent man who had taken Fulham from the relegation zone to mid-table mediocrity but they saw nothing in his curriculum vitae to fill them with any great hope that he could lead mighty Liverpool.
Unfortunately for them, and unfortunately for Hodgson who was forced to carry the can for the club’s chronic lack of ambition at the time of his appointment, one man did view the 63-year-old as a logical choice to follow in the footsteps of Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish.
That man was Christian Purslow, who will forever be remembered as the kingmaker who failed to appoint the king.
One of Purslow’s many mistakes was belatedly put right today but there are still countless others still to be rectified as Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool’s owners, are discovering to their cost since their takeover in October. Chief among them are the release clauses that Purslow inserted in the contracts of Pepe Reina and Fernando Torres which will allow the star duo to leave this summer should rival clubs match the conditions inserted in their current deals.
It has been suggested by Purslow’s allies, a steadily dwindling group at Anfield, that the clauses were inserted to protect the club. Such logic bears no scrutiny, not when the decisive manner that Arsenal dealt with serious interest in Cesc Fabregas following the World Cup. “Not for sale at any price” was Arsenal’s reaction to interest in their best player from Barcelona. No fee was suggested, no price placed on his head and no weakness shown.
Liverpool, by contrast, watered down the contracts of two of their best players to such an extent that it would be no surprise if both left this summer. That is Purslow’s legacy and it is one that FSG are now struggling to deal with. The time bomb is ticking and they are yet to find a way of defusing it.
At least they have now found the fuse, though. Removing Hodgson from a post that he should never have been offered in the first place is a crucial step in the right direction. It sends out a message that mediocrity will no longer be tolerated and it gives hope to players and supporters alike that the club’s owners are willing and able to make the big decisions that Liverpool have cowered away from for far too long as a result of endemic dysfunctionality in the boardroom.
Dalglish’s appointment is a populist choice, of that there is no question. His name has been chanted by the Liverpool fans on more than enough occasions for his status as Kop Idol to be established in the eyes of Henry and his colleagues at FSG.
But the most important element of Dalglish’s return to the Anfield throne he occupied between 1985-91 is his potential to act as the unifying force that Liverpool have been crying out for ever since Tom Hicks and George Gillett spread division like a plague through sheer mismanagement.
Hodgson had united the supporters, but only in the most negative sense imaginable as even the small number who had initially welcomed his arrival eventually accepted that he was not the right man for the job. Dalglish will immediately bring everyone together in the most positive fashion imaginable, something that will become audibly clear when the 9,000 Liverpool fans who will pack into the away end at Old Trafford tomorrow chant his name, this time in joy at his return rather than in protest at his exclusion.
There are still those at Anfield who maintain that Dalglish is out of touch with the modern game with the Scot having been away from management for more than a decade. That was the reasoning that was made public last summer when his hopes of replacing Benitez were dashed. The joke doing the rounds on Merseyside today was that Dalglish had dismissed suggestions that he was out of touch by insisting that Liverpool could topple Nottingham Forest but while the humour may have been cutting the logic did not add up.
Dalglish may not have been in the dugout wearing his trademark Adidas manager’s coat for quite some time but nor has he been in hibernation. His knowledge of the game he served with distinction as both player and manager remains as extensive as ever and his eye for a player has not diminished, as anyone who has enjoyed his company can readily testify. For all the talk of tactical innovation and advancement, football remains a basic game in which the team that can sign the best players and provide them with sufficient motivation tends to be the most successful.
It was the same in the mid to late 1980s when Dalglish put together arguably the finest Liverpool team ever seen. Three league titles and two FA Cups bear testimony to his genius, a trophy haul in six seasons that Hodgson could not even come close to matching in 36 years. In many ways it was fitting that Hodgson’s reign came to an end following defeat to Blackburn Rovers because the unfashionable Lancashire club will always serve as a reminder that Dalglish, who guided them to the league title in 1995, has an uncanny knack of turning water into wine.
Whenever Liverpool were in trouble on the pitch during Dalglish’s playing days the shout would go up from the terraces “Give it to Kenny”. A generation of decline later and FSG have done exactly that. It is a romantic move but coming on FA Cup third round day there is no better time for romance and Dalglish is once again the man that Liverpool have turned to in a time of crisis.
He has been here before, of course. In 1985, he took the player manager’s job in the wake of the Heysel Stadium disaster, a time when the club’s image was at an all time low. Within a year he had guided Liverpool to their first ever double. In 1989 he was the man that an entire city looked to for spiritual leadership following the Hillsborough tragedy. He somehow provided it and still managed to guide his team to glory in the FA Cup in that same season and the league championship 12 months later.
Success is unlikely to be on the horizon this time, Liverpool have fallen too far for trophies to be a particularly realistic proposition, but through his unequalled understanding of the club and its fans, Dalglish can guide them away from the troubled waters that have threatened to engulf them before making way for his successor at the end of the season. A wrong has been righted and the only shame is that Liverpool, through Purslow’s inexplicable blunder, have wasted six months before finally appointing the right man for the job
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