We Owed Kenny Time – Now Who’s Going To Replace Him?

‘ROME wasn’t built in a day’ springs to mind among an abundance of other clichés which I won’t bore you with.

Kenny Dalglish. The man who inscribed so many pages of the Liverpool history books, yet one inconsistent season has seen his short-lived tenure at the club cut short. For me, Kenny deserved at least another year to try and improve on what was a very strange but somewhat successful season.

Two cups runs ending in one trophy and a runners-up medal is what some would call a good first season for a new manager back at the club after an 11-year absence from football management.

But these two cups runs were punctuated by poor league form ending the season with just 6 wins from our 19 home games and 14 losses in total both home and away, a record not good enough for a team with aspirations of Champions League football.

Kenny told us that if he didn’t think he was the right man for the job anymore he would stand down. This is testament to the man and why he deserved a little more time. If Liverpool didn’t achieve the coveted top-four spot by the end of the 2012/13 season I think Kenny would have acted upon his words, and stepped down from the club. I think we owed him a bit more than one year in charge.

In a unsentimental way it could be seen as a positive for the club in the long-term, as we know FSG are winners and strive to be the best, you only have to read the official statement from the club to see that they have huge aspirations for the club. Club chairman, Tom Werner said in this statement:

‘Results in the Premier League have been disappointing and we believe to build on the progress that has already been made, we need to make a change. We are committed to delivering success for our supporters and our ambition remains resolute to return this great club to the elite of England and Europe, where it belongs.’

Time in football is a funny, old thing. You only have to look at similar seasons in recent years. Cast your mind back to the 2004/05 season when Rafa Benitez won the Champions League in his first season at the club. In some ways you could say that Liverpool over-performed with the squad of players he had at his disposal and the pressure was mounted upon Rafa consequently after this unlikely triumph. This is similar scenario to that of Dalglish after his excellent record as interim manager at the back-end of last season where we sat in third in the form table after a string of impressive wins.

In the Champions League winning season we finished fifth in the Premier League, finishing the season with 58 points from 38 games, only beating this season haul by 6 points. It then took Rafa three years until the 2008/09 season to mount a serious title challenge when we finished just four points of Manchester United after too many draws which ultimately cost us the title.
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Time at a club like Liverpool is treated much more differently than at other clubs. We’ve had 19 managers in our illustrious 120-year history and the average reign each manager has been given is 6.5 years (it would be a lot higher if it were not for Hodgson and Kenny only getting one year a-piece in the last two years) which tells of how much time is crucial for a manager to be successful as we are still the most decorated club in England.

Yet now that the gut-wrenching decision has been made; who do we turn to now to ascend to the throne now the King has gone? Roberto Martinez? Is a rejuvenated Wigan side in the past few months enough for him to be one of the prime candidates?

True, Martinez has a good philosophy and plays attractive football with the limited tools he has at a relegation fighting side. But with an upturn in form a manager can be seen with a blurred outlook. I think we all remember too well what happened the last time we gambled on a man who last had a good few months with a club. The same man only lasted six months in the job after toying with relegation and calling a 2-0 defeat to Everton as our ‘best performance of the season’. It doesn’t need reiterating that it was these types of things that drove Hodgson out of the Anfield door.

Alternatively, should this type of wariness because of the Hodgson fiasco also mean that we should totally disregard the likes of Brendan Rodgers? I don’t think so.

There’s no doubting that Brendan Rodgers has an excellent football philosophy, we witnessed that first hand last weekend at the Liberty Stadium where we lost 1-0. They kept the ball for large periods, worming their way out of tight corners with excellent, intricate passing ability which has been wildly likened to zenith of world football, Barcelona.

Do we gamble on one of these two or go for a more high-profile selection like Deschamps, Bielsa, Klopp, Villas-Boas, Blanc, Löw or our former manager Rafael Benitez?

Let’s have a look at the odds for the favourites for the Liverpool job at the time of writing this article:

Roberto Martinez: 6/5

Benitez: 2/1

Brendan Rodgers: 11/4

Fabio Capello: 9/1

Frank Rijkaard: 10/1

Andre Villas-Boas: 12/1

Who would you select?

Of these possible candidates I’d be more inclined to go for the big names of Rijkaard or AVB. Villas-Boas had a tough time at Chelsea but at Porto he was one of the hottest properties available and his league form wasn’t as bad as people make out. He’s definitely worth considering for the job as he has the credentials and deserves to have a second chance to manage a top Premier League club after learning a lot about English football with his stint at Chelsea.

Rijkaard hasn’t managed a top club since his 5-year tenure at Barcelona where he won both the Champions League and La Liga. He now manages Saudi Arabia and would seemingly welcome a return to a huge domestic club after his drab tenure at Galatasaray.

On the flipside, is aiming for a ‘big name’ the wrong thing to do? AVB, Benitez and Klopp were untried rookies before their respective rise to popularity in their own countries. Is it too much of a gamble after the then popular selection of Roy Hodgson and his unsuitability for the club? I suppose any manager brought in will ultimately be a gamble and will be scrutinised thoroughly by fans and the press alike. The new manager must focus on improving the league form. It seems that many fans value league form over domestic cups nowadays as I continued to see views that the FA Cup and Carling Cup were merely a way of papering over the cracks of an inconsistent season, something I don’t agree with as we still had a good season, league-omitting.

As a result of the League form, the incoming manager must address this and focus on edging ourselves back to the top four of the Premier League first and foremost and getting ourselves back into those Champions League places before we begin to even think about challenging for the title once again.

I’ve thoroughly sat on the fence now it’s time for FSG to sort the clubs direction out after the manager and assistant manager have followed Damien Comolli, the former Director of Football, out of the club. It’s clear that whoever does succeed Kenny needs time and patience if he is to take up back into the top-four in the Premier League and bringing back those Champions League nights that we’ve all missed dearly. Come this time next season I hope we are not all wondering ‘what if Kenny hadn’t been sacked?

You can follow me on Twitter – m1cklfc

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