Benny The Noon wrote:There have been many fathers to Liverpool’s failures this season. Ill fortune, untimely slip-ups, missed opportunities. The woodwork has repeatedly produced man-of-the-match performances, and opposing goalkeepers have been so inspired by the sight of the Reds that they have grown extra arms for the occasion. But this wasn’t the case at the Reebok Stadium on Saturday. Nope, Liverpool were beaten by Bolton, not because of cosmic forces, ley lines or rank bad luck, but because they were rubbish. Their supporters are right to be frustrated, they’re right to be angry. This kind of nonsense clearly isn’t good enough. But if anyone thinks that Kenny Dalglish should pay for these performances with his job, they’re way off the mark. Far from being the sole cause of their ineptitude, the Scotsman is their best hope of redemption.
The problem is Liverpool’s players and, yes, I’m very aware that Dalglish bought most of them. He signed off on Andy Carroll, the striker whose skin looks as clammy as cheese at the end of a picnic and who currently has all the zip of a car with a broken handbrake, trundling down a gentle slope. He bought Jordan Henderson who, as we’ve already discussed, is a Tom Clancy novel; good, but not great. He bought Charlie Adam, and if that man is 26 then his paper round must have been on Elm Street. And then, of course, he snapped up Stewart Downing, a winger who has, this season, boasted the cutting edge of a wet flannel. No wonder Liverpool fans are fuming.
Unfortunately, this is a club with so much support both in the UK and around the world that its lunatic fringe has become more of a lunatic side parting. There are many thousands whose howls for instant vicarious glory drown out the sensible, quieter voices, of which there are more. Don’t believe me? Scroll to the comments section now and I bet you that someone has read the first paragraph, snorted with rage and let fly with some abuse without even getting to the conciliatory bit. Yes, Dalglish has made mistakes, but his biggest one was certainly not in the transfer market.
I don’t care how much tinfoil you’ve got wrapped around your head, acknowledging that Patrice Evra was upset, apologising profusely and taking the John Mackie ‘eight-match ban with five suspended’ route would have been far wiser than starting a fight with the Football Association that the club couldn’t, and arguably shouldn’t, have been able to win. When the club’s official website appeared to imply Manchester United had made the whole thing up just to get Luis Suarez banned, it was proof that Dalglish’s poor judgement had created a misbegotten and self-destructive siege mentality at the club. You can say whatever you like about South Amercian cultural nuances, and who knows, you might find someone out there still willing to listen, but if Dalglish had thought his actions through, Suarez would have been in the starting line-up last weekend.
But that doesn’t mean that Dalglish should be sacked, either. While the argument that he has spent more than was sensible on his recruits holds water, the view that they are bad players unworthy of the shirt does not. I have seen Carroll tear up backlines like a toddler with the Sunday papers. I have seen Henderson play through-balls so ambitious that they applied for Cambridge and Oxford and refused to select back-up universities. I still maintain that Adam is actually 43 and works in an iffy garage underneath a railway arch, but as I recall he was on the six-man PFA shortlist last season. As for Downing, he has 32 England caps from three different managers and was a constant source of assists for Aston Villa. These are not bad players. These are good players playing badly.
When Dalglish took over from Roy Hodgson he inherited a club that was destined for a relegation battle. Their home defeat to Wolves in December 2010 was as grim a performance as anyone has seen since the darkest days of the Graeme Souness era. Dalglish saved the club, he lifted it up the table. He brought passing football and patient, intelligent play. He forged a defence that has conceded just 21 league goals all season, a record bettered only by Manchester City. In a season that was only ever going to be transitional, no matter what the side parting told you in the summer, Liverpool are just six points off the Champions League with 16 games to play. Those fans who are calling for Rafa Benitez’s return are backing a man who managed just one title challenge in six seasons over a man who won three actual titles in that time.
Ironically, Dalglish’s motivation for blindly backing Suarez is what makes him so valuable to Liverpool right now. He knows this club, he knows what makes it tick. He values loyalty, he fosters togetherness. He knows that this isn’t just a job, that it isn’t just another stop on the career path, but that with this great red shirt comes great responsibility. He just needs to let the players know it. He’s tried being nice, he’s tried backing them to the very limits of his credibility. Now it’s time to be nasty and perhaps the stinging public criticism he dished out at the weekend will send the message home. The players don’t seem to realise what a privilege it is to play for Liverpool. I can think of no better man to teach them than Dalglish.
http://www.lifesapitch.co.uk/opinion....f-glory
Good article that. Unfortunately the people complaining probably wont have the patience to read it.
- so that confirms it.
