ELEVEN Important Lessons from the Reds’ 10/11 Campaign

Things Can Only Get Better – The affable and well-respected Roy Hodgson took over at the helm at the beginning of last season with an eye on steadying a sinking ship – oh, what a wonderful thing hindsight is. He was expected to be a steady hand on the tiller, a full-time caretaker if you will, but everything Hodgson did during his short stay on Merseyside couldn’t help but portray a man simply not cut out for the big occasion. Initially his honest approach found favour among embittered fans, but after a while it simply began to grate. A rudimentary failure to inspire his players, outdated tactics and terrible performances on the pitch helped turn Liverpool into the nation’s laughing stock and after the insipid derby day display in their defeat to Everton, the club plummeted as low as 19th place. The entire side looked bereft of confidence and that comes from the manager downwards. The long-ball tactics were an eyesore. Hodgson failed to back his players in public and even critically and crucially turned on the fans after a lacklustre home defeat against Wolves. Liverpool are well-known throughout the footballing world for not being a sacking club, but the thought of going through the entire season witnessing the complete and utter dross on display week-in, week-out simply proved too much for the club’s new owners to bare and Hodgson was quite rightly sent packing in January. Sometimes moves just don’t work out – the club’s star players failed to perform and Hodgson endured some pretty rotten luck during his time at the club, but with concerns to his appointment, it was very much a case of great man, wrong club and very much at the wrong time. Brought in to steady the ship, Hodgson’s short and disastrous tenure did anything but and he left the club in absolute disarray.

A fallen giant? – With Hodgson’s spell at the club coinciding with the lowest ebb in the club’s recent history, there were very real concerns that the club could ‘do a Leeds’ and even go as far as to plummet out of the top flight. Game’s that used to be bankable on paper began to look extremely dangerous. This season the club were beaten by the likes of Blackpool, Newcastle, Wolves, Blackburn and Northampton Town – all games that you’d expect a club the size of Liverpool to at least get something from. By the turn of the year, all signs were pointing to an unexpected and yet at the same time heartbreaking relegation dogfight. While the playing staff was uneven, there was still enough quality around the dressing room to have put up more of a challenge in the first half of the campaign. The football was absolutely abject. The results were even worse. The club went into the season expecting inconsistency and their fair share of poor performances, but in the first half of the season, Liverpool were god awful and even mid-table obscurity seemed like a comforting thought.

Better luck next year – With all hope seemingly abandoned of redeeming even a semblance of credibility from their increasingly dire league campaign, a cup run could have provided a welcome retreat from the troubles of the day-to-day rigmarole of league action. However, they humiliatingly crashed out at the first hurdle in both the FA and in particular, the Carling Cup. The shock result of the season saw an under-strength but not completely terrible line-up including the likes of Daniel Agger, Lucas, Ryan Babel and Martin Kelly beaten at Anfield to lowly League 2 outfit Northampton Town on penalties in what well and truly proved the nadir of Hodgson’s ill-fated spell at the club. Diabolical is the word that best springs to mind. Kenny Dalglish’s first game back in charge of the club, albeit on an interim basis, was to take charge of an away trip in the FA Cup to rivals Man Utd – not a daunting task in the slightest then. A penalty in the first minute and a Steven Gerrard red card on the half hour put paid to any hopes fans may have retained of a decent domestic cup run this term. While the performance against Man Utd could be said to have been sprightly, everyone involved with the club will have every right to look back on the deeply embarrassing defeat to Northampton in September as a truly dark day for Liverpool FC.

The Prodigal Son Returns – The man every Liverpool fan wanted to return to the helm in the summer was brought back in January to much fanfare – Kenny Dalglish’s much-vaunted second-coming has delivered tangible results both on and off the pitch and with the great man’s help, the cloud that has hung over Anfield for the past 18 months began to slowly dissipate. In a season of shocks for the club, Dalglish cut short a well-timed family holiday to take charge after Roy Hodgon’s dismissal. With his dry, caustic wit and ability to motivate his charges, Dalglish began to have an immediate effect on not only results, but the side’s playing style too, with positive noises also beginning to emanate from the dressing room about how enjoyable training had become under their new boss. In a season where Peter Odemwingie’s goals kept West Brom out of a relegation fight and Javier Hernandez’s goals all but secured Man Utd their historic 19th league title, Dalglish’s impact would have to rank right up there alongside them and he’d have to go down as one of the signings of the season. With the club languishing in 12th upon his arrival and short of confidence, Dalglish, with the help of First Team Coach Steve Clarke, began to implant his pass and move philosophy upon the squad and to noticeably positive effect, with the side finishing 6th in the league, just a whisker away from securing European football once more – something which if you had asked was possible around January would have been met routinely with either howls of laughter or a justified sectioning. With Dalglish at the helm, Liverpool began playing a brand of exciting attacking football. There were big wins and great performances against the likes of Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City as well as displays of authority and conviction in the victories against Fulham, Birmingham and Newcastle that all helped point to a brighter future. Liverpool fans can once again dare to hope and dream. Dalglish averaged 1.83 points a game this season in charge, a record that would have rendered 69 points over the course of an entire league campaign and a total good enough for 4th place; a huge turnaround in performance. There will still be bad days at the office and the side will still be marred by spells of inconsistency, but with Dalglish in charge, Liverpool can once again begin to look up and forward as opposed to down and back. He remains the epitome of the spirit of this great and historic club; he understands the very core of what drives the club and where many managerial returns are destined to failure from the off, Dalglish at present only looks destined to destroy the status quo established at the top over the last two seasons.

We Used To Be Good At These – Well it never really got going did it? The dour football wasn’t solely consigned to the domestic game, oh no, it was taken all around the continent too. The fact that the side drew six times in 14 games tells its own story. They also managed to score just 6 goals, 7 of which came prior to the start of the group stages against Rabotnicki and Trabzonspor and you get the picture of an extremely negative European campaign hampered by an overriding need not to lose games rather than a desire go out and win them. They limped out of the Europa League – a competition that Hodgson always appeared to treat with a degree of disdain while at Liverpool, in stark contrast to his Fulham days – with a 0-0 draw at home to eventual finalists Braga seemed to sum up their campaign. The tradition of great European nights at Anfield have never felt so far away.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility – Yes, that is Spiderman’s motto; let’s get that out of the way straight away shall we? But Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s tenure at Liverpool co-Chairman would have gone a hell of a lot more smoothly hade they attempted to stick a little closer to that rule. As ugly court case, over-inflated estimations of the club’s value, more retaliatory court cases and some bruised egos followed, but finally the two men from across the pond have been bought out – only to be replaced by another group of men from across the pond. But it’s okay, these are the good guys, or so it seems so far anyway. NESV haven’t put a foot wrong yet and they seem to have their heart in the right place. The stadium issue remains a bone of contention among many sections of the support, but since taking over they’ve managed to help bring a degree of stability both on and off the pitch to a club that seemed to lurch from disaster to catastrophe on an almost bi-weekly basis under Hicks and Gillette’s poisonous and tyrannical rule. The debt is gone and the club looks to be in extremely healthy shape with a new recruitment team brought in – the main obstacle to the club’s progression was always the ownership issue, but now that it has been resolved, the club looks a darn sight better for it and there is genuine hope around the club now that something of note can be achieved in the future.