Introduction

More so than any other Liverpool manager, Gérard Houllier’s stewardship is characterised by two distinct periods, divided by a single dramatic event: the building up of a very good side, and then failure as he dismantled it following a near-death experience as his aortic valve ruptured. Decisions made after that potentially fatal heart problem in October 2001 were no longer laced with a Midas touch, and while it may be merely coincidental, the After did not match up to the Before in any way.

Situation Inherited

In the summer of 1998 Gérard Houllier walked into a club beset with problems. Indeed, simply by taking the job he instantly became one of them. With Roy Evans having lost control of some of his players and with performances starting to stagnate, the club’s hierarchy, breaking away from all received wisdom, decided against sacking the affable manager and instead appointed yet another. If too many cooks spoil the broth, too many managers muddy the pitch. Things started well enough, as the Reds won three and drew another in the opening four games –– including an emphatic, hugely stylish 4-1 win at St James’ Park where the travelling Kop informed the new Newcastle manager Ruud Gullit that he could ‘stick his sexy football up his arse’. Michael Owen, fresh from his France ‘98 World Cup success, scored a superb hat-trick, and a revitalised Patrick Berger added another. But soon problems began to arise. The next five league games saw three draws and two defeats. Players began to question who they should turn to, with the English players more loyal to Evans and the overseas stars seeing Houllier as their man; meanwhile, everyone was questioning why a winning side had been changed ahead of defeat at West Ham. A 5-1 thumping of Nottingham Forest, with Owen bagging four, suggested the Reds were back on track, but they then lost the next three games, including home fixtures against Derby and Leicester — really dire stuff. Defeat at Anfield to Spurs in the League Cup was the final straw, and Evans walked out on November 11th.

So it wasn’t until mid-November that Houllier’s proper stint as manager began; clearly he cannot be judged on those early months, as the decisions weren’t solely his. However, unlike most managers he’d had several months working from within to assess the club and its players before taking full control. So he wasn’t coming at the task cold. He had time to see what was wrong, before moving to implement great change in the summer of 1999.

Looking back, it’s remarkable how many of the players Evans bequeathed to Houllier ended up in a lower division fairly quickly. Bjornebye, Harkness, Babb, Ruddock and McAteer were all in the First Division within a couple of years; either they’d lost their way, or, as was more likely, they were no longer good enough for the cutting edge of the top division as the English game began importing top foreign players at a greater pace. David James also ended up in the First Division with West Ham, but had enough ability to rise back to the top level and eventually proved himself one of the best in the land.

If the deadwood and journeymen were quickly offloaded, to make matters more difficult, three of the best players in Evans’ legacy never amounted to much under Houllier, for one reason or another. The first to fall was Rob Jones, whose career was curtailed by an injury to his left knee in February 1998. Houllier offloaded the player to West Ham in 1999 after almost 250 games for the club but none under him. Houllier was pretty damning about Jones, saying he was sick of seeing him in the gym all the time (alluding to a lack of desire to get back playing), but the true extent of Jones’ injury was apparent when, having only played one game for West Ham, he called time on his career, at the age of just 27. The finest British full-back of the ‘90s should have been at the peak of his powers under Houllier, but instead he was never able to feature.

Secondly, injuries in 1997 had robbed Robbie Fowler of his sharpness, and he barely played in Houllier’s early years. Perhaps if Fowler had looked after himself better in those early days, and been better guided, he’d have either been less susceptible to some of the injuries (although many were impact damage from collisions, which are a fact of football life) but –– more likely –– he’d have been able to recover from them more quickly. Houllier could get to Jamie Carragher at a young enough age to have the defender adopt more professional methods, but Fowler was perhaps too far down a certain route for the manager’s intervention. The two did not get along, even after Houllier made Fowler vice-captain, and eventually the striker was sold to then-rivals Leeds United in October 2001, in a shock deal, worth £11m.

Finally, Steve McManaman already had one eye on an exit before Houllier arrived, almost certainly because in 1997 Liverpool had agreed to sell him to Barcelona for a fee of £12m; when he turned up in Spain to talk over the move, he found that the Catalan giants had instead decided to sign Rivaldo, and that he was only a safeguard should the deal for the Brazilian fall through. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the player then running down his Liverpool contract to leave on a ‘Bosman’, you can see it from his perspective of having been made to feel like a piece of meat that was being traded; Liverpool could argue that in not having signed a new deal prior to the Barcelona approach, McManaman was already thinking of moving on. He would have his revenge on Barcelona by joining Real Madrid and twice winning the Champions League, even if he was a bit-part player by the time of the second success in 2002. That £12m — 80% of the English record — would have gone a long way towards helping Liverpool rebuild in 1997, but by 1999, following an injury-hit final season, the Scouser was on his way out of the club for nothing. “When the choice is between a hell of a lot of money and a hell of a lot of money,” McManaman said, “the difference between the two sums, in reality, is not enough to sway you one way or another. I wanted to play abroad, full stop.” With Paul Ince and David James two others in an England quintet destined for the exit, Houllier was almost starting from scratch when it came to building a Liverpool side that could challenge for honours.

Inheritance — Brains Trust*

[* An average taken from ratings out of 10 by a number of long-established Liverpool fans.]

In terms of Quality, Houllier inherited four players who scored 9 or higher, plus two more who scored more than 8: surely the nucleus of a great side? However, of the four ‘outstanding’ players, Fowler was never going to hit his very best form again, and Carragher was not an exceptional defender until after Houllier had been sacked — at the time he was more of a very steady full-back. But Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen were worthy of such high marks during Houllier’s time. Gerrard, excelling for years in the club’s youth ranks, was immediately given his debut and became the team’s go-to player, while Owen, despite some limitations, was voted European Footballer of the Year in 2001.

Of the two players to score between 8 and 9 — McManaman and Jones — one was already intent on leaving, while the other would never play for the club again, so neither was a true part of Houllier’s inheritance. As a squad, it was a fairly average collection of players. The poor quality of some of the other players made for a very unbalanced team, and the First XI scored the lowest mark out of 10 for Quality out of any of the teams inherited by a new manager (although only a fraction below the one Souness left to Evans, and the one Houllier himself passed on to Benítez). As an overall squad it was slightly stronger in terms of Quality, and considerably better than the one Houllier would leave for Benítez. Once adjusted for age, serious injuries and the desire to leave, the 1998 first XI dipped to an Inheritance average of 6.4. Houllier also inherited the 2nd-youngstest first XI, with an average age of 25.

State of Club

Despite hailing from a different country, Gérard Houllier had a very influential ally in the Liverpool boardroom in the key figure of Peter Robinson, the vice-chairman. Robinson forged a firm friendship with Houllier during the Frenchman’s spell as a teacher in Liverpool in the late ‘60s. “I had known Gérard for a long time,” Robinson said, “and we had established a friendship. We had kept in touch and I had followed his career and admired what he had done.” Robinson went to lengths to stress that Evans had been very much involved in bringing Houllier to Anfield.

The problem was that Evans –– and his players –– expected the new man to come in to replace the retiring Ronnie Moran. Houllier had been working behind the scenes with France, and had just helped his country land the World Cup. It was not immediately apparent to Evans that Houllier was returning to the front line. In further changes at the club that summer, Rick Parry was appointed as chief executive. Robinson eventually left to become an agent in 2000, and the club lost one of its greatest guiding forces.

One of Houllier’s main problems was not the club itself, but those ex-players who were by now filling up every vacant media position. “There are some players who get upset about what is said,” he explained. “They just can’t understand how a former player can be so critical of his own club. It always seems to be Liverpool under fire because, of course, so many former Liverpool players are employed by TV and radio. There are 22 currently working in the media as pundits — that’s a whole squad. Sometimes I envy Everton because they seem to get support from their ex-players even through the hard times.”

Assistance/Backroom Staff

When Gérard Houllier wanted an assistant with Liverpool connections, Phil Thompson’s name was suggested to him by director Tom Saunders. At the time, not having an Englishman –– and preferably a Scouser –– in a key coaching position was almost unthinkable. It had been 39 years since the club appointed a manager with no previous Liverpool playing or coaching experience. The original aim to keep Roy Evans in tandem with Houllier highlighted the desire for continuity.

By the time he was ousted along with Houllier, and returned to his job as a Sky Sports pundit, Thompson’s reputation was mixed. Clearly he was not as limited as many onlookers suggested — he wasn’t merely a ranter and raver. He had amassed a wealth of experience as a player, and played under two of the greatest ever managers. However, there is also little evidence to suggest Thompson was a really great thinker on the game. It was clear that he was not particularly popular with many players — particularly the youngsters, who weren’t used to such treatment — but then again, his role was the bad cop to Houllier’s bon flic. Thompson fell out publicly with Robbie Fowler, the Kop’s idol, and as such, the fans naturally sided with Fowler, even if where the blame lay wasn’t clear. Ronnie Moran had previously been the archetypal bad cop, but success makes it easier to forge harmony. Or maybe Moran was just a more skilled and respected coach.

Thompson did lead the team for a number of months following Houllier’s illness. But his performance is hard to judge for a number of reasons. There was the ‘let’s do it for the boss’ reaction, when the team responded positively to the drama. Even then, Houllier was soon picking the team from his hospital bed and, later on during his recuperation, signing Nicolas Anelka on loan. By then the team had started to wobble badly, and it was only really when the manager returned that impetus was regained and the Reds ended the season strongly.

Sammy Lee seemed to be a more gifted coach. He was also there to motivate, but in a very positive sense; ebullient and infectious, he lifted the players. Lee chose to leave when Benítez arrived with his own assistant, and mixed a role on the England coaching staff with being second in command at Bolton. Lee eventually became manager at the Reebok at the start of 2007/08, but in trying to switch from direct to pass-and-move football, the Trotters struggled and he quickly lost his job. In retrospect, he might have wished to have stuck to being a top-class assistant, which more suits his talents; in 2008 he was appointed Benítez’s no.2, and the pairing appears to offer a nice blend.

Patrice Bergues was perhaps the most important person behind the scenes during Houllier’s time at Anfield. Bergues was a hugely popular and highly respected figure — Robbie Fowler, who doesn’t have too many positive things to say about the staff from that era, described him as a “fantastic man”. His departure in 2001, to become Director of Football at his old club Lens, came just a year before a big decline in the Reds’ fortunes, and only one trophy — the League Cup — was won after he left. Ian Rush, who also had a minor coaching role at the club, felt that Bergues leaving was as much a turning point as Houllier’s ruptured aorta a few months later. “When Patrice Bergues left in 2001, Gérard Houllier replaced him with Jacques Crevoisier and then Christiano Damiano, neither of whom commanded the same respect from players and other members of staff. That created extra problems for Gérard he didn’t need. An assistant is supposed to handle some of the difficulties, not create new ones. It’s impossible for a manager to be a friend of the players. He needs to keep a distance, and that’s where assistants play a crucial role. Quite often, if they’re not providing this link or are simply causing more irritation, they’re having a counter-productive role and making life even tougher for the manager than it already is. I’m sure this happened in the last few years of Gérard’s reign after Bergues left.”

In 1999, fomer Hibernian boss Alex Miller was appointed as director of scouting, working with chief scout Ron Yeats. Yeats explained the process in early 2004: “I haven’t got the last say who Gérard signs or doesn’t. I go see them [the targets] and recommend them. Alec Miller, who was a manager at Aberdeen and Hibernian, does all the European tactics and looks at all the European players, thank goodness. I can’t do two jobs. I’ve got 20 scouts in England and have to make sure they do their jobs. Alec also looks at all the European teams we’re playing. A very, very technical man who does all the team reports on the opposition. Gérard trusts him.” Miller would be promoted under Rafa Benítez to first team coach, although he left the club in the summer of 2008.

Management Style

Somewhat pertinently, Michael Owen described Houllier as a “manager in the wider sense” — a man, he felt, who could spot what was wrong in any organisation, but who was not a great tactical thinker. Houllier was less a training ground, hands-on boss, and more a general manager with philosophies that enabled success to be planned for; he tried to provide the players with what he hoped was the right environment for them to succeed. He was a disciplinarian, but without the hysterics of someone like Graeme Souness.

While Liverpool was not a totally unprofessional club under Roy Evans, teams elsewhere were raising the standards of fitness, athleticism and abstinence required to be successful. Houllier described the difficulties he encountered upon arriving in England. “The problem here is that players think they can drink. Maybe they could once, but the game demands so much more now, not just physically but mentally because of greater tactical awareness. If you drink, you lose half an inch, then an inch, then half a yard, then a yard [ –– of pace; he didn’t mean the players all ended up resembling Sammy Lee]. Your brain also becomes gradually slower to react. And in the process you lose the chance to progress from being a Premiership player to a top-class player. I compare top-class players to racing cars. Drinking alcohol is as silly as putting diesel in a racing car.”

Houllier also felt that the younger players in England were susceptible to bad influences. “What stuns me here: a young player comes into the game, looks the part. He’s not a drinker, looks after himself. Then, as soon as he gets into the first team, he thinks that to show he’s a man he has to drink. In probably every other country, the young player actually becomes more serious about the game. He’ll do anything he can to improve and stay in the team.”

Jamie Carragher was seen as something of a tearaway in the late ‘90s, although this was almost certainly something of an exaggeration. But he still needed guidance with regards to acting with the utmost professionalism –– which came after the 1998 Christmas party, at which his drunken antics made the front pages of the Sunday tabloids. Some 500+ games later, Houllier’s direction looks justified. Carragher has every chance of moving ahead of every other Liverpool player in the appearance table, with the possible exception of Ian Callaghan.

Jason McAteer, who didn’t last long under the new regime, later detailed his experiences with Houllier: “Obviously the board thought discipline was lacking and Gérard came in. We never saw eye to eye. I wanted to play football, week in, week out, and he wasn’t prepared to give me that. He didn’t like the Spice Boys thing, and I think he was under pressure to change all that. If you look at Liverpool now, there’s none of my old team left. Sometimes I lie in bed at night thinking, ‘I bet he wishes he had half that team now’.” This last point is debatable — it’s hard to see Houllier craving some of those players at any point in time, even as things fell apart towards the end.

Houllier was obsessed with the small details of running a club. Gary McAllister explained his take on the manager’s methods: “At Liverpool I sometimes wondered why, oh why, Gérard was so pernickety, but over time I realised that taking care of so many small things in training and preparation carries through into games. If you’ve been focused and disciplined all week you’re more likely to stay disciplined when you’re hanging on in the final few minutes of a vital match.”

Despite his image as a taskmaster, Houllier hated confrontation. During their ill-fated partnership, Houllier left the delivery of bad news to Evans. The pair had agreed to jointly inform McAteer that he was being dropped. “I went to tell Jason the news and had to do it by myself because Gérard was nowhere to be seen,” Evans said. “It’s a shitty job at the best of times.” Evans subsequently found Houllier having a cosy chat with some of the club’s hierarchy, and when asked why he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, the Frenchman claimed to have forgotten. For a man who focused on every small detail, it was a strange excuse.

Also, players were not allowed to show their disappointment in front of the new manager. “He didn’t like having to deal with players expressing anger or frustration,” Evans explained. “He thought it showed a lack of respect for management and he had to be the dominant character. My own view is that you want to see players hurt when they’re dropped or when they’re substituted. Any self-respecting professional should be.”

Clearly it’s about getting a balance. A manager needs to be the boss, in total control. And players need to know their place. But there has to be some kind of dialogue, a willingness to hear ideas. And a manager needs to understand that disappointment at being omitted from the team, or at being substituted, is normal. There is of course an unacceptable level of dissent that any player can show towards his manager, but that’s not the same as merely expressing frustration. Good players should be keyed up, wanting to play. Robbie Fowler accused Houllier of buying meek characters who would gladly accept his decisions, but again this is about getting a balance. If players disrespect the manager and undermine his decisions, then that is working against the team. However, you need players with some kind of character and backbone.

Unique Methods

Gérard Houllier was the first Liverpool manager to employ rotation with fitness in mind, although in his case it was limited mainly to the strikers. Before Houllier arrived, team selection was based on form, and fitness, on the day. Now it was about trying to plan for a long season. In particular, Robbie Fowler suffered with the notion of rotation, given that he was dropped — or ‘rested’ — after scoring goals, and tended to sit out more matches than he started. But maybe that was more about him coming to terms with no longer being the first choice striker at the club; any manager will always have in his mind the identities of his preferred players, and Fowler was now third-choice.

Houllier’s main ethos was about the team, and equality. His philosophy on this was sound: “To me, the team is more important than any individual member of the squad, and the players have to realise that and accept that my priority is to pick a side with the best possible chance of winning each match.”

He wanted the players to bond: “I want camaraderie. Players have to get on well, be friends.” But that was clearly not the case — at least in his later years at the club. “I won’t let anybody raise a finger against the togetherness of the team otherwise I chop it immediately,” he said. El Hadji Diouf had another take on it. “The squad was not close-knit. The French were on one side, the English on the other and the Czechs on the other. [It must have been a triangular room he was referring to...] The players had enemies among themselves and Houllier never got the respect of any of them.” French defender Djimi Traoré had a slightly different view on Houllier: “He was much appreciated by the Englishmen and I can see why. But a lot of the French players didn’t have a chance to play and express themselves. We had to work twice as hard to play.” Of course, a number of English players resented Houllier too. Even allowing for the grudges that can build up at a club when disgruntled players are out of the first team, it doesn’t paint the picture of a unified club.

Strengths

Having never been a top-class player himself — merely a non-league forward in France — Houllier’s methods were not about passing on his genius or experience of high-pressure situations on the pitch, but rather creating the right environment for the players to thrive in. He used his acumen and common sense to work on players’ weaknesses, to give them the best chance of succeeding.

Take the example of Michael Owen’s left foot — or lack of it. Quite why it took so long for someone to notice this glaring weakness in an otherwise superb finisher’s armoury is a little baffling, but Houllier seriously addressed it. Owen was always effective, but a predictability about which foot he would use gave defenders a chance to snuff out his threat. Even if a player is never going to be anywhere near as good with his weaker foot, no matter how hard he practices, a willingness to use it when it’s the only foot that can naturally strike the ball from a certain position is such an advantage, particularly as it gives defenders doubts. By the end of 2001, Liverpool were winning the FA Cup because Owen was confident enough to take on Tony Adams on a side that the defender wasn’t expecting and finish with inch-perfect precision with his weaker foot.

There was also Houllier’s physical work with the players. Another problem with Michael Owen was his weak hamstrings, emanating from a problem in his lower back; in 1999 he missed five months of football after a serious tear appeared at Elland Road. The injury had been treated, but not the cause. Houllier sent Owen to Germany to see Hans Müller-Wolfhart, Bayern Munich’s club doctor, and a man who’d treated Jürgen Klinsmann and Brazil’s Ronaldo, as well as sporting stars José María Olazábal, Paula Radcliffe, Kelly Holmes and Maurice Greene. Owen was still dogged by various injuries after leaving Liverpool in 2004, but Müller-Wolfhart’s work meant that his hamstrings were rarely a problem.

Meanwhile, it’s easy to forget how injury prone Steven Gerrard was as a youngster, before Houllier sent him to France to see osteopath Philippe Boixel. Maybe Houllier wasn’t the best tactician and was an imperfect judge of players, but he ensured Gerrard would be free of problems for years to come with methods that would not have been sought by many other managers at the time. So many players get into a destructive cycle of injuries, and some never recover; whatever happens after 2008, Gerrard was able to enjoy at least six years of almost constant football thanks to the osteopath.

“Boixel changed my back into a better shape,” Gerrard explained. “I was struggling to repeat games because it was making other parts of my body get niggling injuries. When I know I’m not going to get injured, that’s when I play my best stuff. Before, I was going on to the pitch and just thinking about what minute I was going to come off, and not that I was going to finish the game.” In January 2002, Boixel, who also treated Zinedine Zidane, gave Gerrard a clean bill of health — one that was presciently accurate. “You can say he is cured of that trouble. He can now play as often as Liverpool wish him to. These players are like Formula One cars. They need constant attention to ensure they deliver peak performance. The repetition and high intensity of matches means their bodies must always be under review.”

Weaknesses

At first, Houllier seemed a canny operator. He made Liverpool harder to beat, and masterminded numerous victories against Everton and Manchester United, with the latter often achieved through defending deep and hitting on the break. The ball was moved swiftly from back to front, at times bypassing the midfield. When the ball was kept on the ground, the counter-attacking was fast and effective, although a tendency to hit too many long balls placed a big onus on the front two.

But as time wore on, it became apparent that there was no Plan B. There was no real development of other strategies, no variations to the play. Liverpool’s new style had initially surprised teams used to setting up against a possession-based outfit, but in time it became predictable. The aim was to get Michael Owen in on goal, and what had been an excellent weapon became, to all intents and purposes, the only weapon. The tactics were limited; there wasn’t enough flair in the final third, not enough movement between defence and midfield, or midfield and attack. It all got very one-dimensional. If Owen didn’t score, often only Heskey was well-placed on the pitch to chip in with goals, but aside from the treble season, that was something he failed to do often enough.

Despite not often moving from his rigid tactics, Houllier did employ a good system against teams who played with three centre-backs, often putting Danny Murphy, Vladimir Smicer or Jari Litmanen in a free role behind two strikers; but in like-for-like 4-4-2 match-ups — which was most games — there was a lack of playing ‘between the lines’.

A big problem with Houllier’s 4-4-2 was the defence sat deep and the midfield were positioned almost on top of it. The reliance on direct forward balls made it was harder for midfielders to get goals from open play. Gary McAllister scored six times in the treble season, but three were penalties and the other three were direct free-kicks. Steven Gerrard scored ten, but it was far and away his best season for goals under Houllier; he tended to average around six, compared with the 18 he has averaged since 2004. Danny Murphy also scraped into double figures on a couple of occasions, but again, his best season came when McAllister had moved on and he took direct free-kicks and penalties; almost 20% of his Liverpool goals came from spot-kicks.

At times Houllier tried to change the personnel and add flair players, introducing first El Hadji Diouf and Bruno Cheyrou, and then Harry Kewell. But the team failed to flourish, with Kewell fading after a bright start, and the other two offering nothing of any note. Smicer was another flair player who impressed only in fits and starts.

Perhaps another failing of Houllier’s was placing too much blame on players making mistakes; famously, David Ginola still feels Houllier called him a ‘criminal’ after his sloppy pass ended up costing Houllier’s France a place at the 1994 World Cup; Houllier had said making such a pass was criminal, which is clearly different, but perhaps as a result of that night, he became famed for a safety-first style. Getting the balance between cutting out mistakes by playing ‘percentages’ and trying to keep possession — and taking risks in the final third, in order to unlock defences — is key to success. Any defender can find Row Z, but while that’s appropriate at times, at others it’s not — ultimately, it’s conceding possession. Liverpool simply stopped playing the ball out from defence in any way, shape or form; Hyypia and Biscan made attempts early in their days at centre-back, but both soon cut out the dribbling. Everything started going long, even though neither Hyypia nor Henchoz were passers of the calibre of Ruddock and Agger. Players stopped leaving their set positions, making play more rigid and predictable. For instance, when Emile Heskey played on the wing — something he’d done at Leicester and with England — he tended to still be out wide when the ball was with Liverpool on the opposite flank. It was as if, rather than get into the box and gamble as any wide player should, he was staying in position for when the move broke down. Maybe this was a failing of the player, in that he was never the most proactive, but compare it with how Dirk Kuyt, a less naturally gifted player, would bust a gut to get into the box to become an additional striker.

Historical Context — Strength of Rivals and League

Gérard Houllier arrived in England when Arsenal were starting to emerge as a force under Arsène Wenger, and Manchester United were still in a position to challenge for the league title. Wenger had arrived in 1996, and by the time Houllier was appointed, Arsenal had just won the league and FA Cup double.

But Wenger’s path to a first league title was in part down to the weakness of the opposition. The managers of the day were Gianluca Vialli, an unproven player-manager, who had replaced another unproven manager, Ruud Gullit, at Chelsea halfway through the 1997/98 season; and at Liverpool, Roy Evans, a great servant for the club, but a rookie manager who was perhaps better suited to a support role. None of these managers went on to have successful careers. Meanwhile, two powerful teams of the mid-’90s, Newcastle and Blackburn, had lost important managers and swiftly imploded.

Leeds United started to emerge as a force in 1998/99, managed by another rookie, David O’Leary, whose managerial career now looks more of an illusion based around Leeds’ chronic overspending. The Yorkshire club began to spend massively at the turn of the millennium, but within a handful of years would find themselves in the lower divisions. Newcastle were revived under the canny leadership of Bobby Robson, as some experience returned to the pack challenging Manchester United and Arsenal. United, meanwhile, grew incredibly strong in Houllier’s first season in charge, as Ferguson won the treble with his expensively-assembled new team.

Chelsea, who gained strength from the mid-’90s onwards, only emerged as an über-force in 2003 with the arrival of Roman Abramovich as the new owner; before that, Claudio Ranieri had been doing a fairly decent job as manager since his appointment in 2000. But Ranieri had always been a bit of a ‘nearly man’; someone who won the occasional cup and got teams to 4th in the table, but never beyond. In 2003/04 he finally took a team higher, but was promptly replaced after Chelsea finished 2nd; in the years since, he has managed one 3rd-placed finish, with Juventus, but failed spectacularly after succeeding Rafa Benítez at Valencia.

Bête Noire

Unlike other Liverpool managers, Houllier’s bête noire was not a rival manager. He had a good record against most other clubs, winning his fair share of games against Everton, Arsenal, Manchester United and, at home at least, Chelsea. Houllier’s bête noire was one of his own players.

His relationship with Robbie Fowler started on a rocky footing, and deteriorated rapidly from there. Fowler helped Houllier land the treble of 2001, scoring in two finals, two semi-finals and bagging a brace in the final ‘final’ at The Valley to belatedly end the Reds’ Champions League exile, and the manager had earlier made him the club’s vice-captain. But the two became staunch enemies. Fowler was absolutely stinging in his attacks on Houllier in his autobiography, detailing the story of a man he saw as forcing him out of his beloved Anfield. It had been known well before its publication that Houllier used young local journalist Chris Bascombe, new to a role covering the club for the Liverpool Echo, as a way to publicly criticise the player. Bascombe was forbidden from praising Fowler, even when he played brilliantly; more bizarrely, Houllier adopted the same tactic with Michael Owen years later, by which time Bascombe had wised up to the manager’s motives.

The most controversial of all Houllier’s moves was the sale of Fowler in October 2001. At the time it was a shock to all Kopites; Fowler was unquestionably the player they most adored, despite the fact that Owen had been more effective and prolific for four years and Gerrard was emerging as a world-class midfield force. It was even harder to take as ‘God’ was sold to Leeds United, at the time one of Liverpool’s closest rivals in the league. The £11m fee was pretty sizeable for a player plagued by injuries in the previous half-decade, but Kopites wanted the player, not the cash. Hindsight proves Houllier right in certain aspects of the sale; Fowler, while still possessing massive natural talent, was past his best due to the curse of injuries, and it was a good price for a player who had become third-choice at Anfield. The problem was that the manager spent virtually every penny on El Hadji Diouf –– which was like getting a large cheque for your ageing BMW, which could still get you from A to B in at least some style, and buying an overpriced, faulty Fiat Uno, complete with wobbly wheels and more than a few loose screws.

The problem Houllier faced was that Fowler was ‘untouchable’ in the eyes of the fans, and that’s always dangerous for the man who has to decide who plays. It seems pretty certain that Fowler was not an easy character to deal with, and one who made mistakes, but at the same time his account of Houllier’s behaviour paints the picture of a man who couldn’t cope with confrontation or deal with players on the straightest of levels.

Pedigree/Previous Experience

At the point when he joined Liverpool, Houllier had been away from the club scene for ten years. He had suffered a torrid time as the manager of the French for their 1994 World Cup qualifying campaign, having joined the national set-up in 1988 as technical director and assistant-manager. He took over from Michel Platini as team manager in 1992, but with qualification for USA ‘94 looking assured — France needed just one point from matches against Bulgaria and Israel — the wheels fell off. Drawing in the final minute against Israel, David Ginola lost the ball, and Les Bleus lost a goal. Houllier resigned, and returned to a technical role with the French FA; he was later commended for his contribution to the country’s success at the 1998 World Cup.

Never a professional player, Houllier had served a thorough apprenticeship in the dugout, starting at the age of 26, in 1973, as player-manager of Le Touquet. It was with Noeux-les-Mines, whom he joined three years later, that he started making waves, taking the small northern club into the French Second Division with two consecutive promotions. He moved to Lens in 1982, again winning promotion, and sealing qualification for the UEFA Cup. Paris Saint-Germain was his next destination in 1985, and PSG won the French title the following year — his only league championship prior to 2006.

Subsequent Career

After a year out of the game, Houllier took charge of Lyon in 2005, succeeding Paul Le Guen. The club had been French champions for the previous four seasons, so Houllier’s two further titles in his 24-month spell at the club are hard to judge; he added nothing new to the equation, but at the same time he maintained success. His brief was to make the club a European force, so strong were they domestically when he arrived. The club had been threatening to take the Champions League by storm, but never quite made that final step. Houllier failed to change that, although Lyon made it to the quarter-finals in 2007, losing to AC Milan; a year later they were defeated in the last 16 by Roma. Lyon won the league yet again after Houllier resigned, which either proves that Houllier did a good job in helping things along, or that the club were far too dominant in a league where no real challengers existed.

Defining Moment

The ruptured aorta suffered by Houllier during a home match against Leeds United can be used to define a ‘before’ and ‘after’. He was able to cleverly manage the situation at first, so that his return several months later was a boost to the team and the fans as he unexpectedly made his way to the dugout for the crucial Champions League game against Roma. But a handful of months later, when the season was over, things began to go very wrong. It may all be coincidental, but the team hit a swift decline, dropping from 2nd place in 2001/02 to 5th a year later.

Then there was the substitution of Didi Hamann in the Champions League quarter-final against Bayer Leverkusen in April 2002, replacing the defensive midfielder with Vladimir Smicer. Liverpool were being overrun in midfield, and replacing the man protecting the back four was an odd move; however, there can sometimes be merit in bringing on a more attacking player who can keep hold of the ball and take the game to the opposition. Liverpool needed to hang on to an away goal advantage, but the German team continued to flood forward, and the Reds lost 4-3 on aggregate. This is often seen as a key moment in Houllier’s reign, and while that’s undeniable, it also gets overplayed, as does the performance of Hamann — it wasn’t one of his better nights, yet his display has been retrospectively described as “masterful” by one newspaper, as the myth of Houllier’s grand folly expands. It should not be forgotten that it was just one moment in one game when the Reds, despite leading the tie, were under the cosh.

The summer of 2002 was almost certainly a more defining moment in the history of modern Liverpool –– a crossroads where the right path had to be taken. Houllier spent fairly big, as he had in 1999, but this time the quality of his signings was woefully lacking. This is illustrated by the decision not to permanently sign the on-loan Nicolas Anelka, and instead buy El-Hadji Diouf. To compound matters, Houllier had shown interest in Cristiano Ronaldo, but a deal could not be struck. It’s easy to think that Ronaldo and Anelka would have given Liverpool the necessary pace, skill and cutting edge, while handling the pressure, but it wasn’t to be.

Subsequent history suggests that this was the summer in which there was no margin for error. Spending reasonably big in 2002 also left insufficient funds in 2003, at which point the Frenchman’s budget for 2004 was also partly allocated, with the prearranged deal to bring in Djibril Cissé from France. Houllier might have called time on the trio of Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou in 2003, but he was intent on sticking with his failing crop of Ligue Une imports. Between the summers of 2002 and 2004, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea added the following players: Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Gael Clichy, Kolo Toure, Joe Cole, Luis Saha, Damien Duff, Claude Makelele, Didier Drogba, Arjen Robben and Petr Cech.

Liverpool added only one successful player: Steve Finnan, a very reliable full-back, but not a match-winner.

Crowning Glory

The treble achieved by Houllier’s men in 2001 means it will always remain one of the better seasons in Liverpool’s history, although its true value as an achievement is hard to ascertain. Do people remember Arsenal’s 1993 vintage, when the FA and League cups were won, or 1989, when ‘just’ the league trophy was secured? Clearly it’s the latter. Can you combine a number of cups to equal the feat of one league campaign? After all, Liverpool played two-thirds of the amount of games that the Premiership entails — so almost a season in itself — and didn’t lose a single tie across those 25 games (although some individual matches were lost). On the other hand, plenty of teams — Stoke, Slovan Liberec, Rapid Bucharest, Rotherham, Crystal Palace, Tranmere, Wycombe and Birmingham — were not on a par with top-division teams from England or from Europe’s other major leagues. Those inferior teams counted for eleven of the cup games that season. For all the weak teams faced, the remainder of the games involved some high-level opposition: Roma, Barcelona, Chelsea, Leeds United and Arsenal, spread across all three competitions.

Ultimately, it will always fall short of the greatest achievements in the club’s history. But it was still a very unique success: the Reds becoming the first English club to play every single cup game possible in a season. After the lean years of the ‘90s, it felt extra-special, as three trophies were won in the space of three months, when the previous three were attained over a period of eleven years. For that, Houllier deserves credit and respect.

Legacy

In Houllier’s eyes, he was heavily responsible for the Reds’ success in Istanbul in 2005. From his perspective, it’s easy to see why: seven of those starting against AC Milan were players he had purchased, and a further two he’d helped nurture; not to mention squad players like Biscan and Sinama-Pongolle, who had made telling contributions en route to the final, and, of course, Didi Hamann, who came on to help change the game. However, some of them were playing far better by then than they had under the Frenchman’s guidance. Clearly the experience gained through the treble of 2001 benefited some of those who played in Istanbul four years later; but from that success, only Gerrard, Carragher, Hyypia and Traoré were in the starting line up in 2005, while Smicer and Hamann came on as subs. So while there was an element of Benítez benefiting from the three trophies won in that landmark season, it was a team that included several players with no great experience of cup finals. Furthermore, two of the most important players had been Benítez signings: Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia.

Above all else, it was the tactical acumen of Benítez that saw the team through to the final, as he set up the limited players at his disposal in a way that would allow them to stop the opposition, and provide a platform for the better Liverpool players to flourish. Once Benítez had cleared out many of those players, they found themselves struggling to hold down first-team places at far inferior clubs.

Transfers In

As with his overall record –– and therefore perhaps it is no coincidence –– Houllier’s transfers can be broadly split into two sections. It’s fair to say that his dealings as sole manager had an inauspicious start, with the £1.5m capture of 30-year-old former French international, Jean Michel Ferri, from Turkish football. Rumoured to be Houllier’s ‘mole’ because he was almost never seen on the pitch (perhaps because he was tunnelling under it?), the midfielder was sold to Sochaux for the same fee soon after, following just two substitute appearances.

Frode Kippe, a £700,000 signing in January 1999 from Lillestrøm, was a 21-year-old defender with promise, but more of a gamble for the future than a sure thing. He returned to Lillestrøm in 2002 after two substitute appearances, and won the Norwegian league’s Defender of the Year award in 2007. More successful was the signing of Djimi Traoré, for £550,000 in February 1999. Traoré never developed into the Thuram-like centre-back hoped for, but the investment was still shrewd. Prone to errors, he was still a very handy squad player over a number of seasons –– quick, good in the air, and with the best recovery tackle in the league (due to his extra-long legs), but he caused a lot of problems for himself with his poor control and lack of concentration. Benítez sold him to Charlton for £2m in 2006, meaning a nice profit was chalked up on a player who never quite made the grade.

Houllier’s raft of investment in 1999 was significant, as he set about putting his stamp on the club by signing a number of players. Two of those to arrive in 1999 –– Sami Hyypia and Didi Hamann –– went on to reach a kind of legend status at the club and win every trophy available with the exception of the Premiership, while two more –– Vladimir Smicer and Traoré –– would win as many medals as the more celebrated duo, and also feature in Istanbul in 2005.

Hyypia, who had been on trial at Newcastle in 1995, proved the imposing centre-back the Reds had lacked since 1990, as he spent the next decade shoring up the defence. Lacking any real pace, his game was about anticipation and positioning, while he instantly cured what had been a weak point in the Liverpool team for a number of years –– a lack of aerial ability. Composed on the ball, his passing from the back was usually good, unless forced to look long. His days in Dutch football as a holding midfielder with Willem II had ensured he was calm in possession, something often seen when at the other end of the pitch.

Didi Hamann, already regarded as an impressive talent after stints with Bayern Munich and Newcastle, matured into one of the world’s top midfield shielders, with only Claude Makelele, of Real Madrid and subsequently Chelsea, arguably more respected in the role during the German’s peak years. It took Hamann, who cost £8m in July, a while to make his influence felt at Liverpool, where his lack of goals and all-action style failed to catch the eye in the manner that might be expected from such an expensive player. But in time his simple but hugely effective style would come to be greatly appreciated during his seven years at the club. Hamann scored eleven goals in 283 games, but it will be his defensive work that lives longest in the memory. He was released in 2006, whereby he joined Bolton but, sensing he’d made a mistake, was transferred to Manchester City just 24 hours later. Where Liverpool had handed him a free transfer, Bolton were able to make a £400,000 profit; but Liverpool had already got good value for money from the German.

In July, Vladimir Smicer was signed for £3.75m from Lens in France. A clever player who specialised in playing behind the main striker –– a role in which he ultimately scored 27 international goals –– he spent much of his Liverpool career on the wings or on the bench. The fact that the Czech midfielder-cum-striker holds the record for highest number of substitute appearances for Liverpool, totalling 74, tells the story of his time at the club: a nearly player, with lots of ability, but not a lot of consistency, no doubt hindered by a proneness to injury. However, the Czech saved his best for last: helping Liverpool win the 2005 Champions League as an early substitute, popping up with a stunning goal (his 19th in 184 games) to bring the score back to 3-2, followed later by a coolly taken penalty. It had been a largely frustrating time for Smicer at Liverpool, and he was already set to leave on a free transfer, but the popular player ended with the biggest smile possible as he smoked a fat cigar in Taksim Square following the game.

Of the six remaining signings from 1999, Stephane Henchoz was the most successful, performing very well as a mainstay of Houllier’s back-line. There were few better players at defending their own box than the Swiss centre-back, who would throw himself in front of any shot and excel at desperate lunging tackles when the cause looked lost. But lacking pace, he was far less assured defending a higher line, and aware of this, he was prone to dropping too deep. This made it harder to play good football from the back, and invited the opposition to play in front of the Reds’ box. After 205 appearances, Henchoz was released by Rafa Benítez in 2005, for whom he never played a competitive game.

At times Sander Westerveld and Titi Camara looked like good signings during their brief times at the club, but neither lasted as long at Liverpool as expected. Westerveld, the promising young Dutch keeper who joined from Vitesse Arnhem for £4m, had just played his part in the winning of five trophies (three ‘proper’, two ceremonial), and been Man of the Match when defeating Manchester United in the recent Community Shield when, at the start of September 2001, his future was made clear as Houllier signed two goalkeepers on the same day. Westerveld, who played 103 times for the Reds, was an excellent shot-stopper, but also prone to a few too many mistakes, most memorably punching an own-goal at Stamford Bridge and fumbling a Dean Holdsworth shot at the Reebok Stadium –– an error that, as far as Houllier was concerned, was the final straw. Westerveld also tended to stay rooted to his line at corners and free-kicks, perhaps in order to avoid making obvious errors (such as, say, punching a cross into his own net), but this meant he stopped commanding his area.

Meanwhile Camara, a maverick figure signed for £2.6m, had scored a few goals in his first season (nine in 33 league games) and looked a clever player capable of breaking down defences with his skill and movement. He famously played for Liverpool just hours after his father died, scoring the winning goal against West Ham (the team he’d soon join), before sinking to his knees in tears at the Anfield Road end. But he fell out with Houllier at the start of the following season, after slipping down the pecking order, and ended up at Upton Park with Liverpool recouping their money.

Another African, Rigobert Song, was, like Camara, bought in 1999 and sold a year later to West Ham for a fee in the region of £2.6m. Song had some fine moments, without ever being totally convincing in his 38 appearances. He came back from the 2000 African Nations Cup with a poor attitude, and played like his mind was still back on his native continent, and as such was promptly offloaded.

There’s not a lot that can be said about Erik Meijer, a free signing from Bayer Leverkusen, other than, in true rhyming fashion, he was a trier. Better at rousing the crowd than scoring goals (none in the league in 24 outings, with his only two strikes coming at lowly Hull City in the League Cup), he gave his all in his hugely limited fashion, and was warmly appreciated for his efforts. The fact that he cost nothing, and didn’t outstay his welcome, meant he could be loved in a cult-idol kind of way, rather than become an annoyance.

Much more was expected of Emile Heskey following his arrival in March 2000. The Leicester City striker was seen as a key signing, as attested to by his £10.5m fee, a new club record. Having linked well with Michael Owen for the England U21 team in a game against Greece, Houllier, a spectator that night, sought to reunite the pair. The immediate effect wasn’t as expected: the Reds failed to score a single goal in the final five league games, and missed out on the Champions League to Leeds as a result. But the following season the pair combined to excellent effect, as the club landed a trio of cups and finally qualified for the Champions League. Heskey’s goals dried up somewhat towards the end of the season, but he still bagged 22, to go with Owen’s 24. Heskey’s form was inconsistent from then on — at times unplayable, at others unbearable — and he was sold by Houllier for £6.5m in 2004, after scoring 60 goals in 223 games.

One very exciting and controversial signing was that of Christian Ziege, brought in from Middlesborough for £5.5m, but with the Reds accused of tapping up the German. Liverpool were fined £20,000 by The Football Association for making an illegal approach. It was reported that as a result of the ruling the eventual fee was closer to the £8m ‘Boro had been holding out for. Ziege had ability in abundance, but he was most accustomed to being a wing-back. He was marginalised after a mistake at Elland Road cost the Reds victory, and only started 20 games in his one season at Anfield, before being sold to Spurs in 2001 for £4m.

Nick Barmby was another controversial signing, the first Evertonian since 1959 to make the Blue-to-Red switch across Stanley Park, as Liverpool agreed a £5.75m fee with their neighbours in July 2000. Barmby duly obliged with a goal against his former club in the first Mersey derby of the season, and hit eight in total in his first year. He lost his way in his second season –– a problem which started at the end of the first, when he missed the final ten games due to injury, during which Danny Murphy came to the fore. In 2001/02, with Murphy continuing to do well and Barmby struggling with injuries, the former Evertonian, whose busy, clever style was never really seen to its best effect at Anfield, was sold to Leeds United for £2.75 million.

Still, at least something was seen of Barmby; something that can barely be said of Bernard Diomède, a World Cup winner with France just two years earlier. In his three seasons at the club, the £3m signing from Auxerre played just four times. Perhaps things might have been different had his spectacular overhead kick on his debut at home to Sunderland been allowed to stand; the ball crossed the line, but the officials did not award the goal. Had the French winger got off to a flying start, he might have been able to build on it; instead, he disappeared into virtual anonymity.

In September 2000 19-year-old French full-back Gregory Vignal was signed from Montpellier for £500,000. The youngster was soon in the first team, impressing on his league debut at home to West Ham. Perhaps he felt he had ‘made it’, and got cocky –– but clearly he had not. He promised so much, but as with Houllier’s other young French signings, he didn’t amount to what was expected at Anfield; to a degree this is natural, with precious few promising teenagers developing into top-class first team pros at any club, but the law of averages suggests maybe one or two should go on to thrive. He was released by Liverpool upon Benítez’s arrival, after 20 games.

Two of the very best bits of business undertaken by Houllier came that summer, and as Bosman deals, neither cost a penny. Both Gary McAllister and Markus Babbel helped take Liverpool up a level the following season, and had a large impact on the winning of three trophies in 2001. Alas, neither player would last long in the first team, for very different reasons. Babbel had a superb first season after arriving from Bayern Munich at the age of 28. Although he could play at centre-back, he spent the season in the right-back position. A fine overlapping full-back, he wasn’t especially gifted on the ball in technical terms, but had enough intelligence to use it wisely. He popped up with six goals, and really thrived as the season reached the business end. But then things quickly changed, as the right-back slot started to look cursed. Like Rob Jones and Vegard Heggem before him, Babbel’s career was under threat before he was 30. The German defender fell ill with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a potentially deadly neurological condition, which left him completely debilitated. He spent the rest of the next season having to learn to walk again. While he made what could be termed a full recovery with regard to the illness itself, he was never able to find the levels of fitness needed to be a top-class Premiership player. He then fell out with Houllier, who was angry at the player’s attitude in the reserves; in fairness to Babbel, he appeared to be frustrated at a lack of his old strength and stamina. He went on loan to Blackburn in 2003/04 and played 25 league games at centre-back, and ended up breaking Milan Baros’ ankle in an accidental collision. After that moderately successful loan spell he was released by Liverpool in 2004, and ended his career with Stuttgart in the Bundesliga.

If the early demise of Babbel was unforeseen, no-one could argue the same of Gary McAllister, given that he was already 35 when he arrived. Houllier said Liverpool would have won a lot more trophies had the Scottish central midfielder arrived at Anfield a decade earlier. It was something of a shock when he signed, having been at lowly Coventry City, a side he would help condemn to relegation in his first season at Liverpool with a trademark precision free-kick. McAllister had scored 13 goals in his final season at Highfield Road, and was a consummate professional; as such, there was life in the old dog yet. While he didn’t start his Liverpool career too impressively, he improved as the season went on, and just when things began to reach boiling point in a remarkable campaign, he came into his own. The following campaign saw McAllister’s influence wane, but having turned 37 on 25th December 2001, his decline was inevitable. He returned to Coventry after 87 appearances for the Reds, playing a further 55 times in the First Division, before retiring. Few players have been as warmly appreciated in such a short spell at Anfield.

Having had great success with two free transfers, Houllier showed that he found it harder when the fees got bigger; very few of his expensive signings paid off, and certainly not to the degree expected. Many of his best signings –– McAllister, Hyypia, Babbel, Finnan and Nicolas Anelka (on loan) –- were either cheap or free. Only Didi Hamann bucked the trend.

Central midfielder Igor Biscan arrived at the tail end of 2000, costing a fairly hefty £5.5m from Dinamo Zagreb. The tall Croatian had been compared with Ruud Gullit by Osvaldo Ardiles; alas, at times he played more like Rudy Giuliani. After a disappointing first three years at the club, Biscan managed a rebirth of sorts, as a centre-back –– offering the pace that neither Hyypia or Henchoz possessed, but not the consistency. Following the arrival of Rafa Benítez, Biscan cemented his cult-hero status. Getting to play in his favoured central midfield berth, where his ability to run with the ball was more evident than had been seen under Houllier, he was a very handy option for the Spaniard, particularly when Xabi Alonso was out with a broken ankle. Ultimately, Biscan’s future, after a very mixed time on Merseyside, was always going to lie elsewhere. With his contract up he was released, having played 118 games and scored three goals.

Having already done exceptionally well with two free transfers, Houllier went for the hat-trick in the 2000/01 season when, in January 2001, he signed Jari Litmanen, a world-class talent in his pomp, from Barcelona. It was shortly before the Finnish forward’s 30th birthday, but his game had always been about intelligence, not pace or hard running. The recent doubts about Litmanen had always been with regard to fitness, and he was soon injured at Liverpool too, resulting in him missing the crucial run-in to the season. There’s no doubt he was a disappointment of sorts, in that he never produced his old Ajax form, but all the same he scored nine goals in 43 games for the Reds, finding some good form in his only full season at the club in 2001/02, particularly in Liverpool’s inaugural Champions League campaign –– a competition he’d won seven years earlier. His arrival was perhaps indicative of Houllier trying to go for more technical strikers, but in the end Owen and Heskey were still the preferred choices.

One of the most stunning days of transfer activity in Liverpool’s history took place on Friday August 31st 2001, when, with the deadline hours away, Jerzy Dudek and Chris Kirkland were signed from Feyenoord and Coventry City respectively. Dudek, a 28-year-old Polish international described by legendary Dutch coach Leo Beenhakker as the best keeper he’d seen in 30 years, cost £4.85m, while the 20-year-old rookie Englishman cost £6m, with the potential to rise to £9m. There were rumours that one of the keepers was signed by mistake; that, in a game of brinkmanship, Houllier had wanted either one or the other, but inadvertently ended up with both. Clearly, this is a little hard to believe, given that the raw Kirkland had yet to prove he was ready for the pressure of being a first-team regular at a big club. As a result of the new arrivals, Sander Westerveld quickly went from first choice to sitting in the stands, and five months later was sold to Real Sociedad, who, with a certain young Xabi Alonso in their ranks, finished 2nd in La Liga in 2003. Kirkland promised much, but played only 45 times in four years, and left as a disappointment of sorts. He was 6’ 6” as a teenager, but was far from athletic and slow off his line. A great shot stopper, and imposing when commanding his area, his main problem was an inability to stay fit for longer than a few matches at a time. At the age of 24, he was sold to Wigan Athletic for £3m.

Dudek had been pretty much impeccable in his inaugural season, making his first mistake in the final weeks of the season at home to Blackburn. Not the tallest or broadest, his agility was that of a gymnast –– cat-like seems to be the usual goalkeeping epithet. But no goalkeeper can be judged until he comes through his first really tough period. The key is how they deal with costly mistakes, which are sooner or later made by even the very best. And in Dudek’s case, it was not good. In his second season he started to drop a few clangers, which escalated into howlers. While Dudek’s fate was sealed when Benítez moved to sign Pepe Reina in the summer of 2005, the Pole at least got to savour one great high. Winning a Champions League medal is one thing, but to do so as the hero is something special. Dudek made one absolutely incredible point-blank double save from AC Milan’s Andrei Shevchenko, and then denied him, and his team-mates, in the penalty shootout that ensued. He moved to Real Madrid on a free transfer in 2007, after 186 games, to continue life as a bench-warmer.

Another signing from the summer of 2001 was John Arne Riise, the promising young left-sided Norwegian. Riise, who cost £3.7m from Monaco, had been deployed as a central midfielder in France, but it was on the flank where he made his mark at Liverpool. His tenacity, indefatigable stamina and thunderous shooting initially made him a firm favourite with fans. Despite his limitations –– anatomists have yet to confirm the existence of his right foot, while he has no trickery whatsoever when it comes to beating a man –– he managed to remain in Benítez’s plans for four years, despite his style being more suited to Houllier’s counter-attacking approach. Possibly one of the most one-footed players ever to play the game, he did however score a stunning goal with his right foot in the Nou Camp to consign Barcelona to a home defeat; however, he will also be remembered for a last-minute own-goal in the semi-final against Chelsea in April 2008, that ultimately cost Liverpool a place in the final, when he refused to use his right foot to clear. Two months later he was sold to Roma for £4m, after 31 goals in 348 games.

The young Czech striker Milan Baros arrived in December 2001 from Banik Ostrava for £3.2m. At first considered overweight and out of shape, not a great deal was seen of the new talent for the remainder of that season. But eventually he forced his way into the first team picture, starting 22 times in ‘02/03, and making a further 20 substitute appearances, registering 12 goals in the process. The year between June 2004 and 2005 was an absolute dream for the striker. In Euro ‘2004 he won the Golden Boot as top scorer, although his side crashed out at the semi-final stage. He started the new season — Benítez’s first –– in fine fettle, and while his league form fell away in the new year, and he failed to score in all but one of the post-group Champions League games, he ended the season as a European Cup winner. Ultimately a lack of goals, and a tendency to play with his head down, running into blind alleys with little awareness of team-mates, meant that Benítez was inclined to look elsewhere. Baros started the following season at Anfield, but was soon sold to Aston Villa for £6.5m, as Liverpool doubled their money. He left having scored 27 goals in 109 games, but only 66 of which were starts.

Another shock signing was that of French enfant terrible Nicolas Anelka, in a loan deal from Paris Saint-Germain that included the option of the Reds making it permanent at the end of the season. It didn’t help that he was in no way match fit when he arrived, having been frozen out in Paris, and it took him ten games to break his duck –– albeit against Everton, which is always worth more in the eyes of the fans. He gradually improved as he found his sharpness, and produced a quite glorious display as the Reds routed Newcastle 3-0 at Anfield in a game delayed by floodlight failure. It seemed he’d done enough to make the move permanent. But just as Anelka’s arrival was a shock, so too was Houllier’s decision to instead opt for the less-proven El Hadji Diouf.

Defender Abel Xavier arrived in January 2002 from Everton, costing £800,000. He scored on his debut, in a 6-0 win at Ipswich, but only played a further 20 times for the Reds, with very mixed results. With a white beard, the Portuguese international possessed more than a passing resemblance to King Neptune, and at times played like a 2,000-year-old man who had just dragged himself from the bottom of the sea.

Which brings us to the point where Houllier really started to mess up; the summer where it all went horribly wrong. In what he would later admit to being his biggest mistake, Houllier signed El Hadji Diouf from Lens for £10m. If Anelka was tarred with a bad reputation, Diouf’s was arguably worse, after a tearaway teenage existence; something which, on top of inferior ability, made the signing all the more baffling when hindsight is applied. While he’d end up having some good games on the wing at Liverpool, most notably in the 2003 League Cup Final victory over Manchester United, he was ultimately a big failure, particularly in his time as a striker; three league goals in almost 60 games tells its own story. Snarling, spitting and pouting, Diouf quickly became an embarrassment to the club. He never played for the first team under Benítez, and after a successful loan spell at Bolton, where he scored nine times in 27 league games, the Trotters made the deal permanent, for a fee of around £4m.

With Diouf arrived another Senegalese who’d done well at the 2002 World Cup, 25-year-old Salif Diao. The tall midfielder cost £5m when signing from Sedan; after a decent start, the word sedan summed up his later years: sat on the bench, getting splinters. If Diouf was skilful but possessed of a bad attitude, Diao was the opposite: a solid, likeable character and fine athlete, but not a great footballer. At the time it was remarked from a high-ranking French coach that Diao was the ‘new Vieira’, but in truth he was little more than the new Robbie Savage. The £5m investment dwindled away to nothing when he was released at the end of his contract, to play his football in the lower divisions with Stoke City.

Having got the new Savage instead of the new Vieira, Houllier swiftly captured not the ‘new Zidane’ he promised but, rather painfully, the new Bernard Diomède. In truth, the comparison with the greatest player in the world at the time did nothing to help Bruno Cheyrou, although fans at Anfield for the pre-season game against Lazio, in getting their first proper glimpse, thought the comparison might have been valid. Cheyrou, a goalscoring midfielder who cost £4.5m from Lille, had talent, but absolutely no conviction in the rough and tumble of Premiership life. A propensity towards injuries didn’t help him either. He is a prime example of a young player doing well in an environment where he has had time and space to blossom and develop, but who cannot cope once thrust into a new arena with the burden of a relatively large price tag (and in his case, a needless comparison). He moved back to France after 48 games for the Reds, having scored five goals.

One interesting signing was that of Bayern Munich’s French teenage midfielder, Alou Diarra, on a free transfer. While Diarra was totally unsuccessful at Liverpool in playing terms –– he spent his entire three years out on loan, even becoming a French international in the process –– he was sold for £2m in 2005 by Benítez when the superior Sissoko was lined up. As a bit of business, and that alone, it was successful.

Back in 2001, Liverpool had announced they would be signing young French duo, Anthony Le Tallec and Florent Sinama-Pongolle, from Le Havre. The pair had excelled at the World Under-17 Championships that year. Le Tallec was awarded the Silver Ball as the second-best player, while Sinama-Pongolle, his cousin, won the Gold Ball as France won the tournament. Both players, aged only 16 at the time, would stay at Le Harve until 2003, when they were deemed ready to bring over to England, for a combined fee of £6m. Le Tallec played some steady games in his inaugural season, but as a thinking striker in the Teddy Sheringham mould, he was always likely to blossom later in life; by contrast, Sinama-Pongolle, who was also skilful and clever, had the pace to make more of an immediate impact, something he did in the final months of 2003. Neither was totally convincing, but given their age and the fact that they’d just arrived in England, it was a very promising first season for both. But then Houllier was sacked, and everything changed. Having failed to settle at St Etienne when loaned at his own request, Le Tallec found himself back in the Liverpool squad, and would feature in seven games during ‘04/05. Most surprisingly, he was put into the starting line-up for the crucial game against Juventus at Anfield, which the Reds won 2-1, with the young Frenchman having a hand in Luis Garcia’s stunning goal that made it 2-0. But that was about as good as it got for Le Tallec; more loan spells followed, before he was sold to Le Mans for £1.1m in 2008. Sinama-Pongolle was faring much better during Benítez’s first year, until he suffered a serious knee injury, which curtailed his season at the mid-point. It was a bitter blow for a player starting to show some real form. Sold to La Liga’s Recreativo Huelva for £2.7m in 2007 after a very successful year on loan (before a move to Atletico Madrid in 2008), his time in England will be best remembered for two crucial contributions as a substitute in games that looked lost — against Olympiakos and Luton Town — but which, thanks to his goals, would start a run that led to silverware. For these contributions, and a few more special moments, Sinama-Pongolle will be fondly remembered, but not without a sense of regret about how much more he might have delivered.

Having had his fingers badly burned by his foray into the French market for major signings in 2002, Houllier turned his attention to proven home-grown talents who were ready to go straight into his first team. While Steve Finnan and Harry Kewell were born outside of the UK, in Ireland and Australia respectively, both had come through the youth systems of English clubs. Finnan had established himself as one of the Premiership’s best full-backs: a very steady defender who, at the other end of the pitch, could also put in a telling cross with either foot. The Irish international cost £3.5m from Fulham, but he initially struggled to find his best form. It was only in his second season, with the arrival of Rafa Benítez, that Finnan began to hit his stride. He maintained those standards for the next two seasons, with remarkable consistency; it was only in 2007/08, whilst struggling with niggling injuries that contributed to a loss of form, that his performances grew patchy. Meanwhile, some really tough competition for his place meant he was no longer a shoo-in –– Alvaro Arbeloa impressed, and Jamie Carragher, the player Finnan had replaced at right-back, switched to the position in certain games.

Kewell, meanwhile, experienced the opposite trajectory to his Liverpool career. The Australian, signed for a bargain £5m from cash-starved Leeds United, started in superb goalscoring form, hitting double figures halfway through his first campaign. But in terms of performances and fitness, that was as good as it got. Kewell was involved in all of Liverpool’s landmark occasions over the next three years, but suffered injury problems that consigned him to the periphery of each. He had the faith of Benítez, but without a miracle worker to help the winger stay fit and sharp, he was always fighting an uphill battle to stay in the team. He limped out of the first three finals under Benítez –– League Cup, Champions League and FA Cup –– and, following yet more injury woes, was only fit to enter the fray as a sub in the fourth, another Champions League Final. He managed to stay fit for two-thirds of 2005/06, and played very well at times, particularly in the FA Cup semi-final as Chelsea were beaten 2-1, but another injury, this time picked up at the 2006 World Cup after an effervescent display against Croatia, meant that he would barely be seen again in the next 18 months. Benítez gave him plenty of chances in ‘07/08, but Kewell couldn’t find his best form. What was in theory an excellent signing by Houllier turned out to be a massive disappointment. In 2008 Kewell signed for Galatasaray.

Transfer Masterstroke

A case could be made for both Gary McAllister and Didi Hamann, two central midfielders with contrasting styles and with a chasm in transfer fees. But the clear winner has to be Sami Hyypia, a bargain £2.6m capture from Willem II in 1999. Without any pace to lose, he has endured due to sheer defensive nous, and at the age of 34 in 2007/08 enjoyed one of his best seasons, featuring in almost 50 games when he was expecting closer to 15. Covering for the injured Daniel Agger, it was a sign of how well he was doing at the start of 2008 that the arrival and impressive form of Martin Skrtel did not consign the Finn to the reserves, but instead saw Jamie Carragher shift to right-back on several occasions, so that all three could feature. In April 2008 Pepe Reina sang the praises of the big Finn: “People say that he is not quick, but did Emmanuel Adebayor get past him with speed very often in three games against him? I don’t remember it if he did.” While it looks unlikely that Hyypia will reach the 500-game brigade (he is on 445 going into 2008/09), he still stands in the top 20 appearance makers for the Reds, and a one-year contract extension will see him complete at least a decade at the club. Incredibly, the centre-back played every minute of 57 consecutive European games for the Reds from November 2001 to February 2006, and passed the 100 European appearances mark soon after. Given his many towering performances in Europe, he will be remembered as one of Liverpool’s best-ever centre-backs –– praise indeed considering those who have gone before him. Never was he better than on the way to the club winning its fifth European Cup in 2005.

Expensive Folly

It’s hard to know how Djibril Cissé would have fared had he ever got to play for the manager who had coveted him for two years, and who agreed to pay a club record £14.2m for his services. More suited to Houllier’s tactics, and as a fellow Frenchman, there would have been a lot less uncertainty surrounding Cissé, and a lot more faith from the manager. Then there was the horrific broken leg suffered at Blackburn early in Benítez’s tenure, followed by an almost identical injury just before the 2006 World Cup –– at a time when Liverpool were set to recoup £8m from his sale back to France; in the end, the player departed to Marseilles for £6m a year later, after a loan spell that was part of his recuperation. Tall and explosively quick, the Frenchman had an excellent goalscoring record in France (and has scored a lot of goals there since his return), but lacked game intelligence and was forever running offside. Without the confidence he’d built up over a number of years at Auxerre, and with the weight of being Liverpool’s record transfer, he never found his stride. He also seemed to take Benítez’s rotation of strikers personally, although in 2008 he remarked that he had no ill feeling towards the Spaniard over his sale.

But Cissé was not Houllier’s biggest mistake. For all his faults, Cissé made some telling contributions, scoring a penalty in the Champions League Final, as well as a crucial and technically adroit goal in the FA Cup Final, not to mention 19 in total during 2005/06, when he played many games on the wing. Cissé also had some undeniably bad luck that made it harder for him to shine. El Hadji Diouf may have cost £4m less than Cissé, but he delivered nowhere near as much, in far less extenuating circumstances. Both players left Liverpool for £6m less than they cost, but at least Cissé left behind some warm memories, unlike the unpopular Diouf.

One Who Got Away

Like a man who thinks he has caught a moth rather than a Red Admiral, Nicolas Anelka was the player who was most firmly within Houllier’s grasp, only to be carelessly released. But there was perhaps an even greater mistake made a year later, albeit one for which the club’s hierarchy must share the blame. In his autobiography, Phil Thompson admitted that Liverpool were offered Cristiano Ronaldo for £4m at the end of the 2002/03 season, shortly before he eventually joined Manchester United for £12m. Thompson had been very impressed the first time he’d seen the youngster, but less so on a return visit. While interested, Liverpool were shocked by the player’s demands of a yearly salary of £1m tax-free. Thompson explained: “We had just signed Florent Sinama-Pongolle and Anthony Le Tallec, both on far less than Ronaldo’s aspirations. And we would have had anarchy if the other players had found out how much we were considering paying for an 18-year-old kid.” While trying to work out a compromise with the player’s agent, Ronaldo excelled against United in a friendly, and Alex Ferguson’s players said that they simply had to sign the youngster. Thompson explained that he was sitting in a lounge at Anfield having some lunch and looking at the big TV screen when he heard of the development. “Up came the news United had signed Ronaldo from Lisbon for £12.2m. Gérard and myself nearly choked on our food.” It was a massive missed opportunity, and even if Ronaldo had failed to find his feet at Liverpool, it would at least have stopped United possessing someone who would develop into one of their best-ever players by the age of 23.

Of course, the less said about Houllier’s apparent desire to recruit an ageing Dion Dublin in 2004 the better.

Budget — Historical Context

In 1998, Liverpool were still relatively cash rich, but times were changing. Houllier arrived just three years after the transfer record was last held by the club, and within a year had purchased Dietmar Hamann for £8m (53%), and nine months later, Emile Heskey for almost £11m. Heskey, who cost 73% of the English transfer record, was the closest the Frenchman would get to the spending of the rivals at Old Trafford; his other two expensive strikers, El Hadji Diouf and Djibril Cissé, cost 34% and 49% respectively.

Manchester United’s spending went up a level in 1999 from where it had been the previous decade — ever since Ferguson had bought several expensive players between ‘86 and ‘89. In the new millennium the United manager broke the English transfer record three times: paying £19m for Ruud van Nistlerooy in 2001, £28.1m for Juan Sebastian Verón in 2002 and £29m for Rio Ferdinand later that same year. The starting XI defeated 2-0 by Liverpool in the 2003 League Cup Final had five home-grown players, but also four who had at one time broken the English transfer record (the other being Roy Keane). The average cost was 42%, compared with Liverpool’s 24%. Unfortunately for the Reds, that victory was achieved with a 5th-place Premiership finish, while United won the league.

Leeds United also overtook Liverpool in terms of spending. Their squad from 2001/02 had three players — Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Fowler and Robbie Keane — who cost more than any Liverpool purchase until 2004. Youth team graduates Harry Kewell, Ian Harte, Gary Kelly, Paul Robinson, Stephen McPhail and Alan Smith helped keep down the average cost of the 16, but there was also a litany of  mid-range signings — Olivier Dacourt, Lee Bowyer, David Batty, Nigel Martyn, Mark Viduka, Michael Duberry, Seth Johnson and former-Red Dominic Matteo  — dating back to 1996 in the ranks. On average, the 2001/02 16-man squad cost 30.6% of the English record, which, in 2000, they themselves had set with the capture of Ferdinand. By contrast, Liverpool’s strongest XI in 2001/02 cost only 23%, while substitutes like Anelka, McAllister and Litmanen took the cost of the 16 down to 19.7%. Leeds’ overspending became legendary. Jobbing full-back Gary Kelly was given a contract worth £40,000 a week following their run to the Champions League semi-final at the start of the millennium, a figure he was still earning when the club was relegated to the third tier of English football. Then there is the apocryphal tale, which may actually be true, of Seth Johnson being advised by his agent to hold out for £13,000 a week from the Elland Road club — who promptly made their opening offer at £30,000 a week; in the end, Johnson’s agent said “Okay, make it £37,000 a week and he’ll sign”. Leeds won nothing, and never finished above Houllier’s Liverpool after 2000. Leeds were living the dream, but soon experiencing a nightmare.

But as soon as Leeds fell from grace, Roman Abramovich was on the scene, pitching up ominously in west London.

Record

League Cup, 2001, 2003

FA Cup, 2001

UEFA Cup, 2001

Community Shield, 2001

European Super Cup, 2001

Champions League Qualification 2001, 2004

Conclusion

It seems certain that fans will always remain split over the contribution of Gérard Houllier. Between 2000 and 2002, Liverpool were a very strong team, formed from a squad brimming with talent and experience. The Reds won three major and two minor trophies in 2001, and finished 2nd in the league a year later — the highest since 1990. It’s just either side of this period where the problems existed. Beforehand, there was the joint-managership farce with Roy Evans — according to David James, “When the two systems clashed it was like Halley’s Comet hitting the earth.” And afterwards there was the final two years of his reign, when the football grew ever more predictable and league results faltered to the point where the Champions League was missed in 2003/04, and only narrowly guaranteed for the following season. The team was now struggling in the UEFA Cup, and aside from the League Cup victory over Manchester United in 2003, the domestic cups were not providing much respite either.

Unfortunately for Houllier, the good and the bad will be remembered in equal measure. You cannot analyse one without acknowledging the other, and as such, Houllier’s time will be considered a mixed affair: success and failure sit snugly side-by-side.

More on Houllier’s transfer dealings will be covered in my new book, Pay As You Play:The True Spending of Clubs & Managers in the Premier League Era, which will be released in November.

Perhaps like a lot of Reds, I’m struggling to come to terms with revised expectations brought about over the past year. In fairness to Roy Hodgson, very little of this is his fault.

The club has fallen a long way in a short space of time, and it can be traced back to when the money ran dry. And the job of managing Liverpool FC is one I don’t envy anyone having to undertake.

Above all else, I aim to be fair. It’s not always easy, and I don’t always achieve that. I get stuff wrong. I do feel that Benítez is a better manager than Hodgson, just as I feel Torres is a better player than Peter Crouch; which doesn’t mean I don’t rate Crouch (I spent years defending him to naysayers), or accept that there will be times when he’ll be the more effective player.

But I don’t necessarily think Benítez would automatically have done a better job at Liverpool this season. Frankly, I’m not sure what to think, such is the craziness surrounding the club.

I preached patience under Rafa Benítez, although that didn’t mean I avoided questioning his methods in the first year or so; I clearly did, but as time moved on, I learned to trust how he did things.

I didn’t like all of his signings, for example, but on balance I think he got good value for money, as evinced in how many of his players (even some of his flops) have left for a profit; and how Reina, Mascherano, Kuyt and Torres, his star signings, have all been subject of interest from other major clubs this summer, as did Alonso last summer.

Even so, I see no great harm in questioning someone’s methods, so long as you are not condemning him or demanding that they be easily understandable to you. I’m doing my best to judge Roy Hodgson only on what he’s done at Liverpool so far; but without ignoring the context of what went before: his overall ethos. That colours my judgement a little, but I hope not to be too prejudiced.

Some of it what he’s done so far I like, some of it I don’t. I hope to be able to discuss both without being labelled a pessimist or an optimist.

I apologise if I have been overcritical of the man in charge, or in any way unfair on him. I’m sure I will get stuff wrong as I come to terms with how he works. But equally, it’s not fair to compare my work on here with my work for the official site, which was undertaken with the difficulty of appeasing the Press Office, and in the knowledge that the people I was writing about may well be reading it.

(As I’ve noted before, as one example, I had comments about Crouch lacking pace – in amongst my praise for him – edited out, and that too many of Riise’s free-kicks hitting the wall. After a while, you start censoring yourself. I do understand why it’s not good to have criticisms of the players and management on a club’s official site, as it can upset those concerned; perhaps they shouldn’t be so sensitive, but there you go.)

In my previous piece on this site, there were criticisms and praise of both Rafa and Roy, but it’s always interesting to see how people interpret what I say to suit what they want to believe.

What I will make clear, as I did throughout last season, is that the squad is thinning and thinning all the time. And that judging Roy’s signings is difficult, because like Rafa with Kyrgiakos, Maxi and Jovanovic, he’s searching out bargains.

In the last couple of years, Rafa had to break even in the transfer market; and standing still in terms of investment in personnel means you go backwards, as those that do invest heavily quickly overtake you. As yet, Roy hasn’t even had that luxury; he’s in profit, and it’s hard to see him get all of the money from the sale of Mascherano, if it goes through.

My overall fear remains that he’s going mainly for older players to solve a short-term need, but that’s not necessarily his fault. This is more a problem with the way the club is being run. We are neither modeling ourselves on Arsenal, where youth is key, nor the likes of City.

I’m not sure Roy can have a proper club-building policy, because he cannot afford any of the kinds of medium-expensive purchases like Alonso, Kuyt, Mascherano and Torres, who served the club well and have seen their values rise.

If Roy did get the full money from the Mascherano sale, and the player leaves for a profit, that would show the benefit of bringing the player to the club in 2007. The problem is, if the money gets lost in the accounting, and if Poulsen, 30, is his replacement, in two/three years’ time, there’s no player (he’s retired or released on a free), and there’s no money.

Can Roy find a few like Reina/Skrtel/Agger/Benayoun/Garcia/Arbeloa/Crouch in the medium-low price range? And can he avoid those like Pennant/Morientes/Josemi/Riera/Dossena? Time will tell. It may well be that £5m on Poulsen ends up being considered one of his biggest deals.

On a personal level, I have no problem with the likes of Poulsen, Konchesky (as mooted) and, of course, Joe Cole. It does worry me that, aside from Wilson and Shelvey, who were lined up last season, we’re now signing players in their late 20s/early 30s, but again, I can’t be sure that’s Roy’s desire or just the position he’s in (even if he has a track record of fielding older XIs).

With the exception of the gifted but inconsistent Cole, it’s hard to see many of his signings lighting up our eyes with expectation. Even Stoke appear to be able to spend more on a single player right now. Liverpool spending £8m seems almost far-fetched. So if some of Roy’s signings seem a bit mid-table, it’s because, currently, that’s the budget. (Will he spend more than the £10.5m shelled out on Andy Johnson for Fulham? Although if he does, hopefully it’ll work out better for him.)

As I said the other day, with the lack of a transfer fee for Aquilani before 2011, it suggests to me one unnecessary hole in the squad, for all the player’s fragility.

But maybe the club really is so desperate as to want to save a couple of million pounds in wages at the expense of naturally gifted player, or the manager felt he would be disruptive if kept around (I’ve seen no evidence for this, although that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true). Insua being frozen out is another weird one, although a sale process had been instigated while the club was manager-less.

As with Aquilani, I can’t be sure of Insua’s mental state – although forcing him out of the club is not the way to make someone feel valued. These aren’t black and white issues; I can just give my opinion, with that caveat to be borne in mind. I happen to think the squad would be stronger with them kept around.

In some ways, including budgetary, it looks like a repeat of the problems that dogged Benítez’s final campaign, from which he never really recovered, and ‘lost’ some of his senior players in the process.

Mascherano has put Roy in a corner, much as he did with Rafa last season, when Barcelona first made their furtive approaches.

Roy had to start with international ‘hangovers’, much as Rafa did last season; then it was the Confederations Cup and World Cup qualifiers, this time the World Cup. Rafa had two difficult fixtures in the first three games last season (to sides who ended up 4th and 6th), but the opening pair of games this season have been unenviable to say the least (teams likely to finish 3rd and 4th). Both have/had a lot of injuries to deal with, although last season saw more disruption at the heart of the team in the opening month, with centre-backs dropping like flies and young debutants forced into the action.

So now Roy has a long trip to Turkey to contend with; made all the harder due to the absence of so many major players. If the Reds lose, I won’t be blaming him. If it’s a thrashing, then of course he’ll have to answer questions, but I’d expect any injury-ravaged Liverpool side under any manager to struggle in such a difficult environment.

I wouldn’t miss the Europa League if it ends before it begins in earnest, as it takes a lot out of players before the all-important league games. Liverpool were close to making the final last year, but no-one seemed too excited.

But equally, when everyone is fit it’s a way to keep the fringe players happy, and give some of the younger players experience. It can damage league confidence if you lose in the competition; or it can help gain it back if you win in it.

The next dozen league games will determine much of Liverpool’s season. The Europa Cup won’t.

Recently I’ve been described by a couple of people on Twitter as the most negative Red they’ve ever encountered. While my disposition isn’t quite as sunny as when I was writing for the club’s official site (which required the omission of criticisms), I’ve always just tried to call it as I see it, based on evidence and analysis, with a bit of gut feeling thrown in.

While I foresaw a tough start to the league season, I didn’t expect it to go quite so badly. It could have all been different, of course, but for the late, late Arsenal equaliser. But that still doesn’t really explain the shambolic showing at Man City. It’s 52 seasons since Liverpool started with a home draw and away defeat; the Second Division days, before Shankly.

I’ve long-since accepted the notion that if several key players, and the men in suits, really weren’t happy with Benítez, then replacing him was always going to be more simple than replacing all of them.

Last season’s failure was put down by those suits to the problems with the boss, so a new boss of any identity should at least ride the wave of that relief. While financial problems meant that the squad wasn’t as good as it should have been, there wasn’t an awful lot wrong with the majority of it 12 months earlier.

As an English manager with experience of the Premier League, and given his age, Roy Hodgson was never going to be a long-term solution, but instead, someone who could do a job from the start, with the explicit aim of regaining a place in the top four. With his far more personable approach with players, and the shadows and long faces of last season banished, I expected a better start than this. There’s no shame in losing at City, but the performance was the problem.

I had my misgivings about Hodgson pre-dating his appointment, as noted on this site; I am on record from 2009 as being a massive fan of his work at Fulham (in my book, Red Race), but I am also aware that most managers who’d done similar work in the past did not see that translated to bigger clubs.

The stats showed that he liked to field a very experienced (i.e. old) side, and his style was rooted in the 1970s ideas of English coach Allen Wade, whose work subsequently inspired Sven Goran Eriksson and Gérard Houllier. He was not a club builder, and didn’t look to youth. He was a good man-manager and organiser of defences.

While I’ve warmed to the man based on his press conferences, I am still awaiting evidence to dispel my niggling fears about his suitability to Liverpool. This does not in any way mean that he is the wrong man; simply that I am still looking to see evidence (at this early juncture) that negates my admittedly preconceived notions. He has plenty of time to set that right.

I’d hoped that the home game against Rabotnicki was such a moment, as the Reds dazzled, but the opposition were amateurs on tour who’d spent the day taking pictures of the stadium. Since then, possession football has been totally absent, conceding the lion’s share of the ball against Arsenal, Trabzonspor and now City. This is more like Liverpool 1998-2004.

Liverpool’s average age so far this season in the league is over 27; in any given Premier League season (the good and the bad) it hasn’t exceeded 26.5. Liking experience isn’t a crime, and it’s fine if the players are good enough. But it backed up another belief: Roy prefers older players.

Part of the problem is that it costs a lot more money to buy players at the right age, in their ‘prime of value’ from 21-27, so I have some sympathy here; Roy is working within the awful confines that haunted the previous manager, although last season certain pundits said it was not a valid excuse.

And 4-4-2, with two similar strikers, and trying to hit long balls into the channels, strikes me as archaic. It’s a formation that’s hardly used these days, and almost never by the top clubs. To do so without a recognised winger on either flank, and with only full-back comfortable of getting forward, was worrying.

For the record, I Tweeted well before the game that I didn’t see how Ngog and Torres would work together, seeing as they are not a natural pairing; both have similar assets, although Torres, the superior player, was the one lacking the sharpness going into the game. Beyond the first few minutes, they didn’t exchange a single pass.

Prior to the game, Andy Gray eulogised about Roy’s decision to play Steven Gerrard “where he belongs”, claiming that he never understood why Benítez and Capello used him anywhere but his best position in the centre of midfield. “I don’t know” he blustered, “you’ll have to ask them”, as if it were some crazy foreign notion.

Gray also explained how man-marking will improve Liverpool at set-pieces, and he said that he was delighted for Liverpool fans that the manager was being really positive, with two strikers – making it clear, in a sarcastic tone, that it’s something Benítez would never have dared do.

Gerrard had a couple of bright moments, not least when hitting the post, but on the whole the game passed him by, as did James Milner for the opening goal. Liverpool were beaten from a corner – when having no men on the posts and marking zonally would have rendered Tevez offside. And 4-4-2, contrary to Gray’s bold proclamations, was a disaster. Rather than play between the lines, the Reds are now playing in straight lines.

When will Gray learn the the numerals 4-4-2, even with two out-and-out strikers, does not necessarily make a team attacking? Last season, Liverpool had two attacking full-backs; this season, just half (Johnson, as he’s only done so half the time). So it’s swings and roundabouts as to how many attacking players are in the team.

But losing the midfield in numerical terms five to four, and therefore starving the front two of possession beyond ‘out balls’, is not an attacking move.

Gray said that Gerrard would be happiest playing in the centre of midfield. It ignores his happiness at winning a lot of games and scoring a lot of goals as the semi-striker; a role that garnered him the Footballer of the Year award and, most recently, his best goals for England in a scintillating second half display. His best position is the one that suits the team, not him.

Even though Liverpool lost to Arsenal last season, the Reds bossed the first half by a country mile and should have been 4-0 up at half-time (according to Arsene Wenger). In recent seasons, the Reds have put four past the Gunners on several occasions at Anfield, and actually bossed those games for long parts.

And the draw at City earlier in the year was fairly even stuff, with Liverpool never rattled. Arsenal at home and City away are traditionally good fixtures for the Reds. But this season, Liverpool’s midfield has barely had a touch.

Now, you can do that and still win games by taking your chances; not least by breaking with breathtaking skill and verve, as seen by Germany in the World Cup. But you cannot do it habitually and expect to get very far. At times under Benítez, Liverpool controlled games to a fault, and didn’t make it count. But the opposite – having so little possession – means you run the risk of being overrun.

If Sky, and Gray, are going to go great lengths to tell us how much better things will be under Hodgson than they were under Benítez, then what do they say after a reversal like that? (A game for which Gray said he preferred Roy’s approach.)

I’d rather Liverpool were winning games every week, but if they don’t, I do want to call to account those who spent so long criticising the previous manager last season, and continue to do so this. (Again, they are the ones who keep bringing up his name; any praise of Roy is always couched in a criticism of Rafa.)

Liverpool were losing 3-0 on 68 minutes, and Roy made his first change on 78 minutes, some 15 minutes after the point Rafa would tend to (and get slated by Gray for leaving it too late).

At that point, Roy brought on Babel, who was taken off in midweek at half-time, just seconds after scoring: another Andy Gray no-no.

Babel didn’t start the next game (this one) either, and the previous manager was slaughtered any time he did something like that. Ngog didn’t start the game after he scored against Arsenal, too. Torres went off when we needed goals to win the game. And when Roy changed his team heavily for the Uefa Cup, he wasn’t rotating, merely “making good use of his squad”.

If Roy wants to make these decisions, that’s fine; aside from not being a fan of 4-4-2, I have no great problem with any of these judgement calls. He’s the manager and he’s entitled to do so. But why are the same decisions (or even more extreme versions) being met with a different reaction?

I’m also baffled as to why, with the squad in need of bolstering, a talented defence-splitter like Aquilani is not even going to be considered – no transfer fee this season as it’s a loan, and no player to call upon. While Mascherano was missed last night, Aquilani in the hole would have made more sense than Ngog. I appreciate the Italian’s frailties, and admit that he still had plenty to prove, but he was one of the more talented individuals, in a squad that needed strengthening, not weakening. Time will tell, but I do still find it odd; if we’d got £12m to invest in the side this season, I’d have seen the point.

Similarly, Insua is also being totally frozen out. While he is not the perfect left-back, he is more natural there than Agger, who, in turn, is a better centre-back than Skrtel.

One thing I did expect was early season optimism, and the buzz you get from a new man in charge. But now, it seems, we haven’t even got that. Roy is discovering that Liverpool is an incredibly hard club to manage. Already the press conferences are tetchy (according to Oliver Kay), when at Fulham they were light-hearted.

It’s a club that turns managers into nervy, paranoid stress-heads, and I hope Roy retains his composure, and maybe after that first win – surely against West Brom at Anfield? – he can avoid the problem that befell him at Blackburn: dragged into the bottom three early on, never to escape.

Anything but three points in this game – after a tough, hostile trip to Turkey – and then it’s trips to Birmingham and Manchester United while almost certainly in the relegation zone. And while the fixture list gets easier from then on, the fear becomes the kind of tailspin we saw last season; once things start going wrong, its hard to arrest.

Based on resources, Liverpool are currently equipped to finish about 6th. City are equipped to finish in 1st, but given the newness of the project, in the top 3 at least. But this wasn’t even City at their strongest; several of the major new signings weren’t available.

I do not expect or demand that Roy match Rafa at his best, from just two seasons ago, but I do believe it’s his job to improve on last season: Rafa at his worst. However, I think 5th or 6th would be fine. What he cannot do is slip well below 7th come May.

A tough start to the fixture list means that 17th at this stage is to be taken with a pinch of salt. But it’s vital to not stay down there for too long. All is not lost, but with the upcoming games, in the next few weeks it could get worse before it gets better.

By Daniel Geey. Daniel works as a solicitor for Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP and advises entities wishing to invest in the football industry, specifically in relation to the ‘fit and proper person’ test, conflicts of interest, multiple club ownership and third-party player ownership. He is also a subscriber to The Tomkins Times.

The aim of this article is to set out briefly the rationale for the new UEFA rules, then go into a little bit of detail about what they say, and then offer some insight into their significance for Liverpool Football Club. The article will try and demonstrate that, in the short term at least, due to the unfortunate timing of the proposed takeover and the lack of any significant funds in the last few transfer windows, Liverpool Football Club has not been able to take advantage of the UEFA rules used to calculate whether a club has broken even. There is no coincidence that Manchester City are spending fortunes this summer, because from the 2011/12 season, as will be described below, the club runs the risk of breaching the UEFA rules by spending over and above what they earn.

Background

UEFA and its president, Michel Platini, have long been concerned that clubs who continually make losses and, as a result, accumulate debt are not playing by the rules of fair competition. The Premier League, and in particular its chief executive, Richard Scudamore, has been wary of lessening the global attractiveness of the Premier League by curbing the ability of owners to subsidise their clubs or, in some cases, milk their clubs dry. Tellingly, however, UEFA has implemented, as part of its already functioning club licensing system, the Financial Fair Play Rules (FFPR) to ensure a club, more or less, has to balance its books.

UEFA’s overall aim for the FFPR is for its affiliated football clubs to balance their books, not spend more than they earn, and to promote investment in their stadia and training facility infrastructure and youth development. This idea of self-sustainability relates to UEFA’s underlying belief that transfer fee and wage inflation continues unabated because each set of new club owners injects more money into the European football club market. This ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ effect spirals further because a new owner then has to outbid other high-spending clubs.

Whilst the beneficiaries are no doubt the players who are earning ever more lucrative salaries, the clubs (through their representative ECA body) have been seeking ways with UEFA to actually limit their own spending. This may seem rather ironic in the case of Chelsea, given their £120m loss in 2004, but it actually makes perfect sense; Mr Abramovich, after spending over £700m, sees the fallacy of football clubs constantly outdoing one another. The very clubs that are being restricted by these rules are the ones that have actively participated in, and consented to, the proposals. Clubs are asking UEFA to save them from themselves. UEFA, along with the various interest groups, put forward proposals in order to create a deflationary effect across UEFA affiliated national football associations.

The Basics

It should be borne in mind that the new FFPR relate only to Champions League and Europa League, and not to domestic league, participation. Each club that believes it can qualify for that season’s European competitions must, prior to the beginning of that season, apply for a UEFA Club Licence. From the 2013-14 season, the licence stipulations will include adherence to the FFPR. Until the 2013-14 season, there are no sanctions for breaching the FFPR.

The FFPR will therefore start to bite from the 2013-14 season. The rules need to be borne in mind from the 2011-12 season onwards because the 2011-12 and 2012-13 season accounts are used to determine a club’s licence application in the 2013-14 season. For Liverpool, it means the club is unlikely to take advantage of the loophole that clubs like Manchester City are using for their benefit (i.e. buying this season so transfer spending does not appear in their 2011-12 accounts). Manchester City may still have break-even problems if their wage bill is as astronomical as most newspapers speculate.

The rules also encourage investment in youth development and infrastructure. Such infrastructure includes stadium and training ground development and expenditure in a club’s academy. Any club has the incentive to spend in these areas, should they wish to participate in European competition, because the FFPR does not count such investment as expenditure for the purposes of its break-even calculation. Therefore, any new funding for the proposed Stanley Park stadium will not impact on Liverpool’s ability to pass the FFPR because such finance would be excluded.

As any potential stadium is not included in UEFA’s break-even calculation, Liverpool’s next owners will be free to plant the first shovel in the ground, safe in the knowledge that higher levels of income will be generated which should aid Liverpool with their break-even requirement. The greater the commercial revenue growth funded by long-term infrastructure investment, the larger the revenue to balance against expenditure.

UEFA has also been at great pains to stress that they are not anti-debt. With Manchester United’s huge reported debt and our own debt inching towards it, Platini placated various debt-ridden clubs with the distinction that so long as the debt is being serviced (i.e. profit is covering interest payments) UEFA does not have a problem. Issues become more delicate when interest payments to service the debt do not cover the profit made. Sound familiar/worrying? From Liverpool’s latest published accounts, its trading profit of £27.4m fell someway short of the £40.1m required to service the interest payments due. The latest accounts certainly show Liverpool Football Club in the wrong type of red.

Acceptable Deviation = Break Even (ish)

A few important points to bear in mind. Usually, break-even means expenditure must equal revenue. Not in this case; at least at the outset of these rules. This is because included in the break-even calculation are the acceptable deviation provisions (code for a little bit of a loss is acceptable in the first few years). Clubs will not have to break even until 2018/19 season at the earliest.

The revenue that is taken into account for break-even purposes includes gate receipts, broadcasting rights, commercial sponsorship details and profit on player transfers. Expenditure includes player transfers, wages and associated costs and other operating expenses. There are also anti-evasion mechanisms like arms’-length trading and related-party transaction requirements.

The acceptable deviation provisions allow a club with some losses over a certain number of seasons to ‘break even’ and therefore pass the FFPR. Without trying to get too technical, below is a table that I have amended slightly from an excellent Swiss Ramble blog on the FFPR.

In taking the first row as an example, the rules come into force in the 2013-14 season. The reason why this is important is because, in the first year, two years’ worth of accounts are used to assess whether a particular club can successfully apply for its UEFA Club Licence.

Therefore, a club’s accounts for years 2011-12 and 2012-13 are used to determine the licence application. This is crucial because the present 2010-11 season accounts are not taken into account. The reason why Manchester City are investing so heavily now in their playing squad is because the overinflated transfers will show up as major expenditure only in their year-ending 2010-2011 accounts. Should they spend this type of money in the next summer’s transfer window (for the 2011-12 season (T-1)), such spending would be taken into account for the break-even calculation, which could have a damaging effect on being granted a UEFA licence.

Indeed, the FFPR may signal the end of the mega transfer because a club may simply not be able to afford a £50m fee and then break even. This is of course unless a club makes big commercial profits, which very few clubs (bar Arsenal) have done recently.

Strategically, if Chelsea or Manchester City want to buy Torres at a figure around £50m-60m, they would probably have to do it during this, or the January, transfer window. This would keep the Torres transfer off their 2011-12 season balance sheet. Otherwise, from the 2011-12 season onwards a club would have to make windfall revenues from their commercial activities (or sell another top player) to afford a marquee signing like Torres to balance the books. (Note: it may be possible to take a loan to fund a large transfer so long as the interest repayments do not send a club into the red.)

The table shows that the acceptable deviations (i.e. losses) vary quite considerably. From the 2013/14 season when the rules practically come into force, an owner can invest up to €45m over two seasons in exchange for more shares in the club. It means that after the 2013-14 season an owner can on average exchange only €15m worth of cash for shares each year to spend on transfers and wages, etc. That figure is reduced to €10m per season (€30m over three seasons) for the 2015-16 season. If an owner does not put any money into a club by way of cash for shares, each club’s acceptable loss (by reference to the last column in the table) is a mere €5m over three years.

Sanctions

The Club Financial Control Panel will conduct club audits to ensure that the system is applied correctly. If the Panel believes that the FFPR have not been fulfilled, it can refer the case to the strangely named Organs for Administration of Justice, with the ultimate sanction being a ban from UEFA competitions [and harvesting of your kidneys? PT].

The UEFA Disciplinary Regulations do provide for a whole host of possible sanctions including a reprimand, a fine, disqualification from competitions in progress and/or exclusion from future competitions or withdrawal of a licence.

Although the above are all possible sanctions, it appears likely from the outset (from the 2013-14 season) that a soft-touch approach may well be applied, simply because these rules were in part drafted by the clubs not wanting harsh sanctions for breach of the rules. This is unless presumably there is a blatant flouting of the rules (i.e. someone posting a loss similar to Chelsea’s £140m loss in the 2004/5 season).

Why a soft-touch approach? Because there is nothing set in stone in the rules which says a club falling outside of the break-even parameters will automatically have its licence refused. Indeed there is even a provision where clubs can be in breach of the break-even calculation and still not be sanctioned at all! (Annex 11(2) for those wanting to know where to look).

It should be borne in mind that Real Mallorca have, at the time of writing, been refused entry into this season’s Europa League because they failed to meet the UEFA Club Licensing entry criteria. This decision can however be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Such an instance does illustrate the powers UEFA has to refuse a club licence application. When the FFPR get added to the licence criteria in time for the 2013-14 season, the rules will be stricter than those applied to Real Mallorca. A future high-profile UEFA refusal of a club licence application should not however be ruled out.

What does this all mean for Liverpool?

Short-Term Significance

Before the impending ownership changes were mooted, this piece was very much a ‘missed opportunity’ article. This was because I thought it highly unlikely that the current owners would either authorise a spending spree or sell before the transfer deadline with enough time for someone else to invest heavily. I presume that this will unfortunately still be the case.

As already mentioned, transfer spending completed before the 2011-12 season (as the first accounting period UEFA uses to measure the break-even test) would not be included in the UEFA FFPR calculations. Any large transfer spending, if it is not done in this summer or winter transfer window, would be taken into account by UEFA.

That is why it is so imperative for Liverpool, if they are going to get any transfer money from the new owners, to spend it quickly (and wisely!).

Longer-Term Significance

I may be proved wrong but this is where I believe the rules are in Liverpool’s favour. Unlike smaller Premier League clubs who will probably have only a finite level of commercial income (mid-range stadium capacity, merchandising sold only in the local area, limited commercialisation of overseas markets), Liverpool are one of only a small number of global football institutions that have the ability to expand their international commercial activities.

Additionally, and most importantly, the club has the potential for a much larger stadium to bring vastly increased revenues. Liverpool’s annual match-day income from their latest accounts of £42.5m is dwarfed by Arsenal’s £100.1m and Manchester United’s £108.8m in revenues. Being debt-free (a big ‘if’) and having £60m worth of additional revenue each season creates a much larger revenue stream with which to break even.

Therefore, in the long term, Liverpool’s hopefully increasing international commercial performance (perhaps into China) along with the potential revenue windfall of a new stadium should allow the Reds to keep within the rules by having larger revenues to balance against larger transfer spending.

Liverpool’s global following should give the club a disproportionate revenue advantage when compared with probably all but two or three other Premier League clubs. The fact that Liverpool are 7th (measured by revenue) in the Deloitte Football Money League 2010 for Europe shows the potential for further revenue growth.

Thoughts and comments most welcome. Subscribers can discuss the article below.

Daniel also edits a football law publication called On The Ball which can be accessed here and has a personal website called www.danielgeey.com where you can access for free all his published football law articles. Follow Daniel on twitter at www.twitter.com/footballlaw

I’m warming more and more to Roy Hodgson every day; pretty much in the same way I did to Rafa in 2004. I respect and support new managers, but they’ve also got to remove any doubts I hold.

In 2004 I hated zonal marking. Why? Because Liverpool conceded a few goals, and everyone told me it was rubbish. But then someone explained it to me in far better depth than you’d get on Sky, and I was less cynical; and for the next few years, as I made notes on it, the Reds conceded relatively few goals from set-pieces, even having the best record in 2005/06 (with a taller team than in 2009/10).

So I defended the manager’s right to use zonal marking.

I’m not sure I was keen on rotation. But when I looked at which clubs rotated, and which ones didn’t, I saw the league winners changing team on a regular basis, and teams that hit the wall in March keeping the same XI. (If your squad doesn’t have enough depth to rotate, you’ll tire anyway.)

So I defended the manager’s right to rotate.

Roy has to prove to me that he can lift Liverpool in the same way that he lifted Fulham – it’s a different task entirely. So far I can’t fault him; two competitive wins (against very poor opposition, but wins all the same), the signing of Joe Cole and talking a lot of sense.

So far so good; and that’s all we can go on. While he wasn’t my first choice, I promised from the outset to judge him fairly by what he does.

But let’s get one thing straight: as manager until just a couple of months ago, Rafa has to be discussed; his stamp is all over the club. Equally, let’s accept that it’s not me starting the discussion.

Last night, Ray Houghton spent 10 minutes going through the usual claptrap on ITV4 (when the network wasn’t randomly cutting to ads, as is its wont).

In response, I made one mention on Twitter about how rotation never seemed to harm all the recent title winners (it was, said Houghton, the reason Rafa messed up Liverpool’s chances), and not for the first time I get told “move on, you saddo” and, as has been the case any other time I’ve mentioned Rafa’s name, suffered accusations of being unable to “let him go”.

As far as I’m concerned, I try to work on facts; those facts don’t change just because it’s a few months later.

If Roy Hodgson wins the title without rotating, fair play to him. Hell, yeah!

But Ferguson, Mourinho and Ancelotti needed to do so quite heavily. If that only works with a bigger squad, then look at a smaller squad – Aston Villa – and how, over the past few seasons, O’Neill has rotated little, and seen his teams collapse in the spring. Villa may have done no better had O’Neill rotated his limited squad; but those who won the title needed to keep players fresh. (And even scoring four goals in a single cup game didn’t mean players like Tevez made it into the next line-up.)

With the exception of Joe Cole, this is still a collection of players brought to Liverpool by Rafa. Even Jovanovic, Wilson and Shelvey were sourced during his time at the club (obviously scouts were involved, too).

If Roy gets better responses from the players who failed last season because he’s more amenable, then great; by all means make that point. But let’s not say, ahead of the season, that he’s going to right all these wrongs on the basis of a couple of games against really poor opposition. And let’s not pretend that all of the ills of last season were present from 2004 to 2010.

Listening to ITV4, you’d think Liverpool never played exciting football under Benítez, or thrashed the likes of Real Madrid and Manchester United, or put four past Arsenal and Chelsea on a couple of occasions; or set the Champions League record for winning margin in a single game in an 8-0 victory over Besiktas. These weren’t the weekly norm; but they took some achieving all the same.

As pleasing as the football was on the eye last night, beating part-timers with swagger is now the new benchmark. Seriously?

Last season was hard to defend at times, and I told Rafa this on a couple of occasions.

However, he wasn’t the only one at fault. He was also let down by players who refused to take enough responsibility; something Roy Hodgson hinted at this week, when he said players can’t keep blaming other people.

Rafa also had an injury crisis, particularly in the early months, which is when the confidence-killing rot set in. How managers react in adversity is vital, and on the whole Rafa coped well; last season his words, for whatever reason, had less effect.

Let’s be clear: something had to change. The fact that the season itself had changed – a long summer break to clear heads and set all 20 teams back on level pegging – was always going to help. Some players needed changing and, it seemed, possibly some major stars too – or failing that, the manager himself.

In the end it was the manager, as it so often is. On the evidence of last season, perhaps it was fair enough; on the evidence of all six seasons, maybe not.

(The same as, if based on last season alone, Gerrard’s place in the team should have been under threat; however, based on 2004 to 2009, when he lifted the European Cup, FA Cup, played in two more finals, scored almost 100 goals and won the Footballer of the Year award – all with the same management style of Benítez – he was the first name on the teamsheet.)

Critics

I had to laugh at my critics calling me an idiot for continuing to suggest things would turn around last season. But in each of Rafa’s five previous seasons he hit a really rocky patch (as most teams do each season), and I kept the faith in the manager, and in under-fire players like Peter Crouch (when he first arrived).

The first time led to Istanbul. The second to FA Cup success and the best points haul for 18 years. The third to another Champions League final, in which the team performed better but this time lost. The fourth to a Champions League semi-final, lost in extra-time. The fifth to a title-race that went into May, and the best points haul in 21 years.

The sixth? Well, in the end that one didn’t really turn around. I was wrong. But five out of six ain’t bad. My point was that, based on 2004-2009, Rafa had earned the benefit of the doubt.

(One other point: last season I read someone saying that “Tomkins would probably also say Guus Hiddink is a great manager if he was in charge”. My response would be, why wouldn’t I? Is he not also a great manager? I didn’t see Hodgson in that bracket, but he now has his chance to change that perception.)

Roy is not the antithesis of Rafa

In order to judge Roy correctly, can we establish a truth about what Rafa did? Even John Aldridge said that “kids would never get a look in in pre-season like they did this year under Roy”.

For starters, Roy had little choice, due to the World Cup; with 12 senior players absent, who else was he going to select? The ladies team?

Second, players like Craig (now at Accrington Stanley) Lindfield and dearly-departed Besian Idrizaj scored goals for the Reds in pre-season games as mere teenagers.

Zak Whitbread and Darren Potter played in Champions League qualifiers as youngsters. None of these are Premier League-standard players now or then, but they had a chance to show what they could so. Neil Mellor had a run of games. He did okay. But he’s now found his level.

They were the best of the bunch, but sold before establishing themselves as regulars; hardly blazing a trail to prove Rafa wrong, are they? Stephen Warnock aside (who Rafa immediately gave his debut, at 22), which kid was sold and made the decision look like a big error? Where are all these released Reds ripping into Rafa’s judgement with their performances?

Also, Danny Ayala played in the league at 18, as did Jack Hobbs and Danny Pacheco. Martin Kelly made a superb debut at 19 against Lyon in the Champions League. Danny Guthrie played in a few games. And Jack Robinson made his league debut (albeit in a game with little at stake) at just 16.

And in a League Cup quarter-final at White Hart Lane in 2005, players like David Raven, Richie Partridge, Mark Smyth, John Welsh and Darren Potter all featured. Was that not giving (fairly unremarkable) kids a ‘chance’? It’s not the Champions League final, but equally, it’s more than just a pre-season friendly.

The problem is, until players like Suso (16), Sterling (15) and Silva (16) were brought to the club in the past year or so – players who look simply outstanding in their age group – too many of the kids were just not up to scratch.

That’s why the Barcelona academy gurus were brought in by Benítez last summer. That’s why, at U16 level, the Reds were sensational, beating Manchester United 6-0 at one point. And why the U18s got better as the season went on. That was after the Academy was revamped by Benítez.

Hypocrisy

Last night it seemed that Roy was praised and Rafa criticsed in the same breath, for doing the same things. There was a lot of talk about how great Liverpool’s shape will be when not in possession; but no mention of how that was already the case.

Chris Coleman was purring over Roy using inside-out (wrong-footed) wingers and overlapping full-backs, when Rafa doing that was often seen as a waste; where were the natural wide men hugging the touchline?

Coleman said that Hodgson will not rotate; he’ll be better as he’ll pick his best XI every week, as he did at Fulham. Then later he said he’d rotated his squad brilliantly in the Europa League, and mixed and matched for the first half of the competition.

So which one is it? At Liverpool you can’t easily do that, especially in years when in the Champions League; when Rafa mixed and matched in any domestic cup he was slaughtered. When the club made the League Cup final with kids in 2005, he was not given any praise; just criticised for losing at Burnley with what was an even stronger XI. The Reds later won the Champions League. Rotation worked.

I lost count of how many times Clive Tyldesley criticised Benítez in the game last night. There were criticisms over style of play; over rotation; over not trusting Gerrard to not empty the midfield; over his relationship with Gerrard in general; and so on. The one criticism that I agreed with was a general failure with Rafa’s wide-midfield/winger purchases, though Garcia and Benayoun were pretty successful, and Kuyt, as with the Dutch, does a great job there.

There were at least five in each half before I lost the desire to count. (Of course, when Rabotnicki nearly scored as an unmarked player breezed in at a late corner, there was no mention of Rafa and his crazy zonal marking.) When Glen Johnson did a backheel, Tyldesley reacted as if he wasn’t doing that kind of thing last season. He was.

In 2004, in Rafa’s first Champions League game ‘proper’, Liverpool were fantastic in beating Monaco, finalists just a few months earlier, 2-0. In early home games against Norwich and West Brom – not great, but better than last night’s opponents – Luis Garcia and Xabi Alonso wowed us with their skills. And by 2009, Liverpool were often good enough to beat anyone in Europe.

So while I’m encouraged, let’s wait and see how Roy’s Reds perform against better teams, including Arsenal and Manchester City in the opening weeks of the season – when time and space to make fancy flicks will be at a premium – and then the Rabotnicki display can be put into perspective. If the same kind of football is carried into those games – especially away (Roy’s record on the road at Fulham was woeful) – then we might really be onto something.

Finally, the criticism of Rafa remains (such as from Houghton last night) that he didn’t deliver the league title. Getting closer than anyone since 1990 was not good enough. Six years in the Champions League, four of them to levels we could only dream about pre-2004, were not enough.

So will Roy be crucified if he doesn’t deliver the title?

I hope not. Because that won’t be fair. And I’ll be on hand to say “hang on, be realistic”. Despite the 7th placed finish last season – which I’ve already described as the perfect shit-storm – if everyone is fit, he has a better squad than Benítez inherited. But as Benítez found, other clubs have been pumping tons of money into their squads in the past few years. Liverpool were being left behind.

If Roy gets to spend a lot of money – but crucially, without selling first (“you can have a new engine, but only if you give us your tyres”) – then maybe he should at least challenge for the title.

But as things stand, even with a further £100m (net) invested in the squad, Liverpool’s will still not match the cost of those collections at City or Chelsea – or include the experience of winning ingrained at Old Trafford since the ‘90s, or Stamford Bridge since 2004.

To be honest, if Roy matches Rafa’s overall performance in the league, I’ll say he’s doing a good job. Personally, I’d be more than happy with that.

Yesterday I was asked by The Daily Mail for 200 words on the potential Chinese takeover. While it’s far from my favourite paper (relating to the right-wing scaremongering in the front part), I’m happy to try and offer a balanced view to tabloids (bar that one) on a once bitten, twice shy rule; badly misquote me, and never again.

“We’re getting views of important Liverpool fans on the potential takeover. Is it a good thing? Is it a worry that the club could be owned by China, a country with the worst human rights record in the world?”

I submitted the following:

I’ve had contact with hundreds of Liverpool fans, via my website and Twitter, on the issue.

As you’d expect, opinion seems split between concern over an association with a country that has human rights and dictatorship issues, and excitement over the large amounts of money they might bestow. Being owned by the Chinese government’s investment arm would present great commercial potential, but also, you’d expect, numerous political complications.

A lot of fans think nothing can be worse than Gillett and Hicks. But whether from the Far East or, as Liverpool and Manchester United fans have discovered, the Wild West, there’s no guarantee that anyone will be as good as their word, or have the club at heart. It’s about money and kudos.

Martin Broughton needs to get this sale right, as clearly it takes a long time to oust unpopular and unscrupulous owners. In the desire to get rid of the Americans we shouldn’t accept anything but the right offer.

There aren’t many saintly figures capable of drumming up the kinds of money we’re talking about, and the days of kindly old benefactors seem long gone. But being owned by the Chinese government – I’m not sure any of us expected to have to get our heads around that.

Only 54 words were used, although I don’t feel misquoted or misrepresented. The one important omission was that we can’t accept the word of any potential owners; only actions will suffice.

The latest on the Chinese bid can be found in this Press Association interview.

It was encouraging to hear Roy Hodgson say in a press conference last week that the squad was not in need of a complete overhaul; backing up my recent assertion along those lines (made in response to Gérard Houllier’s ludicrous claim that he left behind a much better collection of players in 2004.)

And now, Roy’s even gone so far as to bring back one of Rafa’s favourites – Fábio Aurélio – who was released in May not on footballing grounds, but because of fitness issues (which were reflected in the pay-as-you-play contract he refused.) Rafa clearly wanted him as part of the squad, but only now, it seems, was the Brazilian deemed worthy of a more risky deal.

So if we had the Rafalution, now we have the Royvalution … except, it’s more a case of evolution.

Those who thought players like N’Gog and Lucas were not worthy of the shirt, and were picked by Rafa only because he ‘favoured’ them, can hopefully now see that they are clearly part of the new manager’s plans too.

Like Benítez, Hodgson can see that N’Gog is a talented player, if not in Torres’ class; then again, who is? (And how many are even close?)

I always argued that as the Frenchman fills out, he will become more effective. Equally, once he wises up to canny defenders, he’ll improve further. It’s an education. He’s only 21, and while pacy young strikers can burst onto the scene as kids, hold-up play takes time to learn.

And Lucas was handed the captaincy in the Europa Cup, when older, more experienced players like Agger and Skrtel were available. Kuyt is another who Fulham fans tell me Roy will like.

There will be changes, as Roy stamps his own authority on the squad, but it’s thankfully not looking like a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Fernando Torres’ decision to definitely stay will mean that replacing one of the key men, in the key positions, does not need addressing. My nightmare scenario was seeing him sold too late in the transfer window to reinvest the money (if indeed it would be offered to Roy).

I always maintained that the squad that ended last season is about as good as you’d get for one whose fees total just £140m, and where a failure to find good local youngsters in a decade is not the manager’s fault. (Again I repeat, because it’s still being overlooked: the overhaul of the Academy in 2009 might be Rafa’s greatest legacy. He didn’t destroy it, as some claimed; he sought to get the place to finally deliver.)

Of course, some players are now worth less than the fees paid; others far more. It’s not perfect, or possessed of the depth of a £250m squad, but it’s very strong in several areas.

In some ways, the squad has already been improved. Shelvey and Wilson are theoretically sound investments; potential stars of tomorrow who can do a basic job today, as they serve a first-team apprenticeship.

And of course, there’s the fact that teenagers Pacheco, Kelly and Ayala – all blooded last season – are now a year older, stronger and wiser.

One thing I often noted about Benítez’s buying policy is that he rarely plumped for ageing stars; so while this trio – and others – will be better players in 2010/11, no-one has fallen off the other end of scale, as was the case with Hyypia last summer. Only Jamie Carragher presents any age concerns, but he does play in the one outfield position where experience can compensate.

While Liverpool may lose players, it won’t be due to old age. That said, there is a gap in the middle ground relating to incoming transfers.

Jovanovic, at 29, is a very fine footballer indeed; but as yet, we don’t know if he’ll settle in as hoped. I’ll be happy if, on average, he gets close to the form Albert Riera showed in his first five months at the club, while simultaneously accepting that even week-old roadkill shows more movement and initiative than the Spanish w(h)inger last season.

And Joe Cole, while statistically inferior to Yossi Benayoun in terms of contribution over the past three years – more assists but an inferior scoring rate per 90 minutes played – does have that X-factor that could (finally) make him a real superstar. If he has 25% more talent than Benayoun, he also misses more games. So some question marks remain, but a fit Cole will be a real asset.

Selling Insúa would weaken the squad, but I’m not sure he should have been Liverpool’s first-choice left-back this season anyway. What I do believe is that he has the potential to be something special when he’s 24/25, and also, as his excellent assist rate suggests, someone who can be deployed further up the field. My frustration at his (possible) departure is limited more to his potential than him being the finished article. I hope he stays.

Of course, almost certain to leave the club is his fellow Argentine, Javier Mascherano. As one of the handful of Liverpool players who can rightly be considered (if not confirmed) as world-class, his departure would weaken not just the squad but the first XI. But I’ve long-since been resigned to him leaving, and felt that his poor start to last season, and terrible disciplinary record in that campaign, counteracted his better moments.

Hopefully the links suggesting the third and final Argentine, Maxi Rodríguez, is also up for sale are wide of the mark. As someone on Torres’ wavelength from their time at Atlético Madrid, it would be a worrying move.

Having said that, who plays where – and indeed, who gets in the team most weeks – is an interesting question right now. Then again, you need two good players for every position; formation, form and fitness often dictates the rest.

While still lacking anything approaching a world-class winger, the Reds have a lot of very good wide midfielders.

Is Joe Cole to be considered one of these, or finally destined to play in his favoured position off the main striker? Jovanovic can also play up front, as, of course, can Kuyt. Maxi, meanwhile, played in central midfield for Argentina in the World Cup.

Then there’s Ryan Babel, who remains a Grade A enigma, but whose natural gifts make him someone to consider rather than instantly discard. David Amoo fits into the same category, but as a teenager, still has an excuse about his final ball. (Unlike Babel, he seems happy out wide, as an old-fashioned winger.)

Then there’s the fight for the ‘hole’. Gerrard? Cole? Aquilani?

Even Kuyt, if Roy wants to get closer to an old-fashioned 4-4-2, but do so with a striker who is used to supplementing the midfield.

Buying Policy

Limited funds don’t stop you from buying good players. But they do make it much harder to buy a certain kind of player.

Liverpool’s buying strategy so far this calendar year – and this applies equally to Rafa, who sourced many of the stars (Maxi, Shelvey, Wilson, Jovanovic), as much as Roy Hodgson – has a clear gap in the middle ground. It’s the gap where money really tells.

Jonjo Shelvey and Danny Wilson are two of the brightest prospects in British football. But while Wilson has played under the microscope at Rangers, neither has been tested beyond sub-Premier League standard.

At 18, that’s no problem whatsoever; many 18-year-olds haven’t played beyond the reserves. But these are great prospects and not nailed-on certainties; neither is ready to be a regular first-teamer yet. They are vital signings in terms of building a club, but as supplementary transfers.

At the other end of the spectrum reside Maxi, Jovanovic and Cole: international players entering the final stage of their careers; possibly still in their peak, but fast approaching 30 and, crucially, available on a ‘free’.

Again, I think all three are potentially excellent signings; Maxi has proved his quality after he found his match lungs last season. Jovanovic has pace and an eye for goal. And Cole has great innate ability. I have no complaints with any of these being brought to the club.

But these are not long-term investments. These are here-and-now-only purchases. You won’t lose a lot if they flop; equally, you won’t possess any resale value further down the line.

The real money in football goes on players who are good enough to instantly elevate the team, but who can be sold in four or five years’ time for a major profit, to fund the next wave. It’s not about buying just to sell; it’s about having the opportunity to do so, and not be left with an expensive, unsellable flop.

Mascherano, Torres and Alonso were three of Rafa’s most expensive signings. But with a mind to ‘speculate to accumulate’, each added tens of millions to his value while at Anfield, and did so by delivering quality out on the pitch. It’s win-win.

At 25, Aquilani still has a big reputation in Italy, should he ever need to be sold. Still only 23, Ryan Babel, for all his flaws, could still gain back his fee if Roy can’t coax consistency from him. (I believe Birmingham offered around £11m in January.)

Also 25, Glen Johnson has many years left ahead of him in the game.

And though they weren’t as expensive, Agger and Reina, like all the others, were aged between 20 and 25 when they signed. At ‘only’ roughly £6m each, at the time they were still the record amount the club had paid for a goalkeeper and a defender.

Only Robbie Keane, for £19m aged 28, didn’t make much sense in financial terms (even if, in theory, most of us could see what he was supposed to offer on the pitch, even if he ultimately failed to do so). The speed with which he was offloaded was vital to it not being a total disaster; he wasn’t terrible at Liverpool, but once it was clear he would not be a success, losses had to be cut, and in so doing, were duly minimised.

It seems unlikely that Roy will get the chance to spend in this way this summer, unless he sells first. Not since 2007 has there been any significant investment in the squad that didn’t come after someone left for good money.

Indeed, marquee signings were not a big feature of his predecessor’s reign: only seven at £10m+ in six years; not a huge amount considering the spending of rival clubs and the income from consistent Champions League football (and from selling some big-name players).

The problem now is that players like Torres, Alonso and Mascherano – early 20s, already full internationals – are no longer being brought to the club. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s vital that a new owner is found.

Hopefully Kenny Huang will prove a better custodian than Gillett and Hicks, should he be that man. But even if he is, it might come too late for this transfer window. (While I welcome the speculation, I do think that owners need to be judged on their actions and not their words; we’ve been caught out by that before. And while it is theoretically possible, it’s hard to believe that anyone could be as bad as the two Americans; or, given the stick they’ve received, would even dare to try.)

Once Mascherano departs, it’ll be interesting to see if Roy is allowed to spend £15m+ on a player.

Indeed, everyone will be waiting to see if all of the money goes back into the squad; at the time of writing, Liverpool sit 20th out of 20 Premier League clubs in terms of team investment this summer; so far, it’s all about profit. (So much for the ‘big summer’ Tom Hicks promised; unless he was referring to the money he’d be making.)

If Roy can avoid the problems of last season – most crucially, too many injuries – he will stand a good chance of a smooth evolution that brings the best out of the talent Rafa left behind. If some of the players were indeed unhappy with Rafa’s man-management, they’ve now got a clean slate; that excuse has gone.

Getting back into the top four will be no easy feat, with Arsenal having added quality at both ends of the pitch, before even contemplating Man City’s spend-till-we-get-there attitude.

Chelsea and United looked nailed-on for the top four, but even if Spurs suffer a Champions League hangover (as I suspect), City and Arsenal will expect to be up there, too.

But it seems far less like being the catastrophe that I feared could happen when it looked like prospective transfers might fall through (Wilson, Jovanovic), and more crucially, big names would leave and the funds potentially vanish.

Equally, Roy has talked a good game so far, and done everything that’s been asked of him in terms of actions. I don’t think he’s the master tactician that Benítez is, but perhaps he’ll offer more in other areas.

And if the league season gets underway with Gillett and Hicks ousted, well then, hell, any lingering pessimism might vanish completely.

Whilst I lost faith with Gérard Houllier before he was sacked in 2004, I do think he did a fine job up until 2002. However, his incredible attack on Benítez cannot mask the fact that Houllier left a pretty dire squad low on value and morale, and that in almost every way you look at it, the Spaniard did better than the Frenchman.

Houllier told Mihir Bose of the Evening Standard:

“After Rafa Benitez left this summer, one of the players sent me a message. He said, ‘Boss, he hasn’t beaten you.’”

I’m not quite sure what Houllier, or the player, means by this. Were they playing against each other?

Houllier won more ‘proper’ trophies than Benítez; but the Spaniard won the one that mattered most, and came close a further two times. Like Houllier, he also won an FA Cup; Rafa faced inferior opposition in the final, but far superior opposition on the way to it. He also took a title challenge into May, later than Houllier.

Benítez won 56% of games, to Houllier’s 50%.

Benítez averaged 72 points a season, the 4th-highest in Premier League history out of those who have managed for more than two seasons; Houllier averaged 65, ranking 9th, behind Roy Evans, his predecessor. Benítez easily has the highest Liverpool average since Kenny Dalglish, and unlike Houllier, improved on his predecessor’s tally.

Houllier’s best season was 2nd, with 80 points; Benítez’s 2nd, with 86 points. (Houllier’s best season also happened to be the one of which he missed almost half, due to a serious heart complaint; results picked up as soon as he fell ill, perhaps due to a “do it for the boss” reaction, which gradually wore off. In fairness, it was his team, but Phil Thompson was doing the legwork.)

Benítez made it to three Champions League semi-finals and two finals, to Houllier’s none. But Houllier did win more League Cups.

Is that what he meant?

“When I came into the changing room in Istanbul some of the players said: ‘Boss it’s your team.’“ …

First of all, what the hell were you doing there, as ex-manager? What kind of egotist walks in like that, even if at the game in an official capacity? Did Roy Evans start wandering into the changing rooms in Cardiff and Dortmund?

… “Twelve out of 14 in Istanbul were players I had signed or developed. I left Liverpool with a team in the Champions League. But when you finish seventh with Torres [er - wasn’t he injured for a lot of 2009/10?] and Gerrard  [ditto]. . .” His voice tails off. Houllier does not need to spell out the very different legacy Benitez has left Hodgson.

What, one with 12 players at the World Cup, and four – all signed by Benítez – in the squads for the final? Rafa leaves an excellent team, but one which cannot cope with many injuries and dips in form; as seen last season. It’s not the deepest of squads, as the Spaniard himself acknowledged last season.

Also, Liverpool finished with more points (63 to 60) in Benítez’s final season, and made a semi-final. The team Houllier left won just 16 of their 38 games, compared with the 18 won last season. Neither season was great; but come on, let’s not pretend that was a good Liverpool side six years ago, just as it wasn’t seven years ago.

Liverpool finished 23 points behind the Champions last season; but 30 points behind in 2004. Incredibly, Liverpool lost five league games at Anfield in 2003/04, and did poorly in all three cup competitions.

The problem of one bad season last year – but not as bad as 2003/04 in many respects – was exacerbated by better teams now existing to take advantage. (And while it was one bad season, I’ve said since before 2004 that two poor ones in the row is the true mark of a manager having lost his way.)

Liverpool were also a stable, fairly well-run club back then; no American owners pillaging and plundering. Yes, there was a lack of visionaries at the club, but that’s better than what we’ve had to put up with since 2007.

There was also no Chelsea as we’d know it from 2004 onwards, nor Man City; both clubs have spent millions more than Liverpool. Indeed, in the last three years, Aston Villa, Birmingham, Spurs and even Sunderland have spent more (net) than the Reds. (Maybe Houllier could ask himself why his good friend Arsene Wenger has failed to even finish 2nd since 2004, when up until then his sides finished either as Champions or runners-up.)

Houllier is happily taking credit for Istanbul; but none of the blame for a lame squad that Benítez struggled to get 58 league points with in his first season (more-or-less what Houllier ended with).

He takes credit for Gerrard and Carragher, and yet while he played a big part in their careers, both were at the club when he arrived in 1998, and also further developed by Benítez in his first season; Carragher as a centre-back, Gerrard in a more attacking role (his average goal ratio was 6 a season in Houllier’s time, with a maximum of 10; he averaged around 20 a season under Benítez, with a maximum of 24 and a Footballer of the Year award).

Houllier left Harry Kewell, who was never fully fit after halfway through his debut season (a bit like leaving a written-off Ferrari in pieces in the garage). He left Vladimir Smicer, who was talented but also rarely fit. And Chris Kirkland, who made Kewell and Smicer look indestructible.

He left Djibril Cissé, who, like Emile Heskey, cost in excess of £25m in today’s money (source: TPI), but who lacked guile to go with his pace. He left Jerzy Dudek, whose excellent debut season and sublime performance in Istanbul were great bookends for the three nervy, error-strewn years in between. And as much as I loved Igor Biscan, he was, like Smicer, a hugely inconsistent and relatively expensive player entering the final year of his contract when Benítez took over.

He also left Djimi Traore, a player whose attributes (height, pace) were outweighed by his headless chicken act. Milan Baros was another headless chicken, although at least one with some talent.

He did leave Hyypia and Hamann – two fantastic players – but both were entering the final stages of their careers. Steve Finnan also had a limited time left, but it was only after Benítez arrived that he showed his true worth. And John Arne Riise was a good all-rounder.

But then there’s Salif Diao, El Hadji Diouf, Bruno Cheyrou, Anthony Le Tallec and Carl Medjani. What a waste of time they were.

Getting any kind of money for Houllier’s flops was a challenge. Indeed, making a profit on any of his successes was rare; only Hyypia, if sold at his peak, would have added greatly to his value and brought in enough money to reinvest. (The costly Hamann would have surely got his money back.)

Of course, Traore left for £2m, four times what he cost. Milan Baros was sold for roughly twice what he cost. Alou Diarra, who spent three years at Liverpool out on loan, also raised £2m, having been a free transfer. And the lively, likeable but often ineffective Sinama-Pongolle left for more-or-less what he cost. All told, about £12m raised on £6m of spending.

But Heskey, Cissé and Diouf left for less than half of their considerable original fees, at a time when high football inflation meant that they were sold for even less, in relative terms. Owen left for half of his actual value, too, with his contract in its final 12 months (having refused to sign a new deal under Houllier). Diao left for nothing, as did Cheyrou.

Stephen Warnock was also part of Benítez’s inheritance. But at 22, he’d never been given a single game by Houllier.

As far as I can tell, during his time in charge Houllier didn’t sell for a profit a single player he himself had signed; essential to rebuild without having to force the club to stump up cash it doesn’t possess. And in total, only three players signed between 1998 and 2004 ended up making the club a profit, none of them hugely significant.

Now let’s look at Benítez. Like Houllier, he signed some duds. Unlike Houllier, he regularly sold them for profit to make money to reinvest (making for a high gross spend, but a relatively low net one; essentially the money was recycled).

Following Benítez’s exit, the £1m paid for Insua seems to have turned into £5m. Yossi Benayoun, despite now being 30, left for what he cost; a great deal for a player at that age. San Jose, signed for a negligible fee, recently left for £2.6m; in other words, paying for Danny Wilson.

If the club wanted, it could get £30m for Javier Mascherano and up to £70m for Fernando Torres. Pepe Reina and Daniel Agger are both worth far more now than when purchased; easily £30m combined. These were all excellent investments, both in terms of playing ability and resale value. None is yet at his peak.

Liverpool received £30m for Xabi Alonso, after five seasons (two of them excellent) following a £10.5m (£20m TPI) transfer. Despite only having a year left on his deal, Alvaro Arbeloa also left for a profit, heading to the mighty Madrid.

Flops like Gonzalez, Voronin, Leto and Paletta (due to a sell-on clause) all left for profits (yes, they required wages while here, but then so did all Houllier’s flops.) Nunez, Josemi and Kromkamp all left for more-or-less what they cost. And players like Keane, Dossena and Morientes, though offloaded at a loss, still left for more than half what they cost; only Jermaine Pennant was a complete write-off.

And if sold now, El Zhar, Degen and various other ‘free’ fringe players would lead to a profit, while Maxi – who is in no way a flop – could easily bring in £4m (if Benayoun is worth £6m). Kyrgiakos, a desperate but essential signing when funds were too tight to go beyond £1.5m, would leave for at least what he cost.

Hit-and-miss players like Bellamy, Crouch, Carson (including £2m received by Aston Villa to take him on loan) and Sissoko all raised a lot of money through sales for profit; money that was usually spent on better players, and then disingenuously used against Benítez to make out he’d spent more than he had.

So far, eleven of Benítez’s signings have left for a healthy profit (over £42m in total), compared with Houllier’s three (worth around £6m).

And even if Torres, Reina, Agger and Mascherano weren’t sold until 2013, then unless injured they’d still conceivably raise a profit of over £50m that a future manager could benefit from.

The fact is, if you add every pound spent by Benítez to every pound players have either been sold for or are now worth, he’d be well in profit. Not bad for a manager whose Champions League runs raised much of the cash in the first place, at a time when David Moores was running out of dough, and Gillett and Hicks were looking to run away with the money.

For more on the spending comparison, there is this article I wrote a couple of months ago.

Back to Houllier’s interview:

By then the Frenchman was in sole charge and he still believes his pioneering tenure made it easy for Benitez to follow. “One, the pattern of getting a foreign coach was already accepted. Two, he had a Champions League-winning team.”…

Woah woah woah. Back up. Two of the most important players in 2005 were Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia. And I don’t recall Liverpool winning the Champions League until a year after Houllier was sacked, following consecutive dire seasons. How can he claim such a thing?

He laid some of the foundations, clearly, but if Roy Hodgson wins the league in 2011 (however unlikely), will Houllier come out and say that it wasn’t down to his good friend, but rather Rafa Benítez? Of course not.

…“Three, the team were already in the Champions League. Four, we had built new facilities. And five, it was a different training routine, different attitude and mentality.”

Maybe these are true. But Liverpool were not Champions League regulars by any stretch of the imagination. And Benítez could not get the boost of introducing basic, continental techniques (fitness, anti-alcohol, etc) because Houllier already had. That one cuts both ways.

Above all else, it strikes me that the miracle of Istanbul was not due to the fact that the Reds came from 3-0 down at half-time against the mighty AC Milan, but how such a collection of players could even get near the final, let alone win it.

And for that reason, Benítez deserves far more respect than his bitter predecessor seems capable of affording him.

Chris Rowland’s articles are usually for Subscribers only, but this one is being offered as a free read.

Three teams, three huge clubs in their own right, with vast support, illustrious histories and a generous sprinkling of trophies, have all suffered from a common blight, one of a distinctly red hue.

Spurs, Man City and yes, our blue neighbours have had to live for years in the perennial shadow cast by their giant red neighbours. They’ve been almost defined by not being Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool.

All three clubs had have their times in the sun; something close to parity has prevailed at various points in recent-ish history in all three cities; Spurs’ double-winners of the early ‘60s, winning a few cups and putting in the odd league challenge while Arsenal were subdued, City’s rise to prominence in the late ‘60s/early 70s as United subsided post-European Cup, post- Best/Law/Charlton, finally experiencing the ignominy of relegation in 1974, to that back-heeled goal by a Denis Law wearing City’s sky blue. And of course Everton in the mid-‘80s, winning a couple of titles, an FA Cup and a European Cup Winners’ Cup and sharing supremacy with Liverpool. And let’s not forget they still boast the longest unbroken run in the top flight.

But then came the Premier League. More or less ever since (and in truth for a long time before that), the ‘other’ teams, those not coloured red, have appeared as second-class citizens feeding off scraps, the pikey chavs round the corner from the swanky executive detached palaces of their bigger, more glamorous, more powerful, more influential, and above all more successful G14 reds, each Red victory parade frazzling the raging sense of inequality inside… imagine how painful that must have been to such proud clubs? (I can hear you crying now…)

Of course, who constitutes the elite has always been subject to gradual change – as shown last season, unfortunately from our point of view. It wasn’t always the Big Four. It wasn’t always even four. In fact for many years it was usually two – us and whoever had bubbled up to the surface to challenge us that particular season (more than once, nobody did. We were just the Big One). United could make the same claim post-Prem.

Right back when Shanks’ dynasty first got established in the early/mid 1960s, the United of Best, Law and Charlton were our main rivals, before vanishing from the spotlight for over a quarter of a century, replaced by the Man City of Francis Lee, Mike Summerbee and Colin Bell. As we entered the 1970s, Leeds and Liverpool vied for supremacy, with Everton, Arsenal (the double in 1970/1, followed by 18 years of not very much) and Derby County (champions under Brian Clough then Dave Mackay in 1972 and 1975) all having the odd brief surge to the surface before sinking back into the depths.

Forest, again under Clough, rose spectacularly in the late 1970s, winning the league and back-to-back European Cups as well as a few League Cups. For 3 or 4 years, Liverpool and Forest were the Big Two. Note no mention anywhere of Chelsea until the mid/late1990s, or Tottenham, or indeed Arsenal until George Graham in the late 1980s. Some unlikely runners-up included QPR (we nipped ahead of them only in the last game of the 1975/6 season by winning our last game, at Molineux) and Ipswich Town (pipped by Villa in 1981). W.B.Albion, Southampton and Norwich City also had their moments at the heady heights. It was possible then.

Perhaps most hurtful of all for those in the red shadow in this two-tier system, even the once-all-consuming local derbies became devalued – at least for the Big Reds, for whose supporters beating their local rivals became no longer the top prize. They had bigger fish to fry – Liverpool and Utd’s games with each other, United’s heavyweight clashes with Arsenal and more recently Chelsea, Gooners’ attention more fixed on fixtures against United and Chelsea than Spurs. And there were always those heavyweight Champions League fixtures … never mind Everton, we’ve got Barca on Wednesday. As noted professional smartarse Oscar Wilde observed, ‘If there’s one thing worse than being talked about, it’s not being talked about’.

For the Evertonian, the derby being relegated in importance adds bile to bitterness. For them, the derby match is the focus for all their sense of being left behind, their only chance to reclaim some local pride and bragging rights, the odd cup run notwithstanding. Even if Liverpool were to win the Premier, the Champions League and the Grand National, Evertonians would continue to dine out on the back of any scruffy derby triumph they can get.

This gulf spawned a new breed of supporter of the forgotten three, driven by an almost obsessive hatred of their overpaid, media-hungry, fat cat fancy dan rivals – ‘Liverpool/ Man Utd/Arsenal ruined my life’. Unable to compete either on the pitch or in the transfer market, the fans have no other outlet for their growing frustration than to belittle their neighbours’ achievements, dismiss them as not ‘real’ football clubs but bloated corporate giants, and deride their fans as glory-hunting, fickle, transient, merchandise-buying consumers, not locals but travelling from all over (a particular complaint against Liverpool from Evertonians, and against United from everybody, including Liverpool). Those three are all the people’s clubs, you see.

But the ground is shifting. The gulf no longer seems unbridgeable. You could even argue they’ve already bridged it. It seemed the only realistic prospect of them or anyone else joining the top table was for wealth of Abramovic-esque proportions to parachute in from a clear blue sky. Well it has, this time landing at Eastlands. Spurs, meanwhile, have suddenly acquired vast spending power to amass a squad which, if arguably lacking the very highest quality at the very top end, makes up for it with more than two teams’ worth of very good quality players. Shrewd re-investment of the unfeasibly large sums they acquired for the likes of Berbatov and Keane (ahem) has helped. As we rock unsteadily with all our well publicised woes and financial restraints, even relative perennial paupers (once known as the Millionaires’ club, incidentally!) like Everton seem able to match our spending power.

Everton seem to be progressing via another route – good old fashioned sensible housekeeping, moulding an assembly of unsung lower league and overseas bargains and the odd piece of heavy investment into a unit, whilst also recently starting to see their impressive youth policy bear fruit, with the likes of Rodwell, Gosling [where did we leave that written contract offer?] and Coleman setting out on what look like being very promising careers. Everton and for that matter Villa, who seem to be progressing under that most elusive of species, the benign and supportive American owner, probably have the strongest historical sense of being part of the elite, whilst City the strongest finance-based future case to join/rejoin it.

So all change then? Will City, Spurs and Everton finally emerge from the red shadows, or will their renaissances look no more than a brief scamper into the sunlight as the red establishment reasserts itself?

And what of the reds themselves? What happens to United once the Glazers get asked for the bill and old Sir Alex finally chews his last? We are led to believe that Arsenal and their Incredible Youth will prosper for years to come, but that doesn’t always follow – Crystal Palace under a youthful Terry Venables were dubbed ‘The Team of the Eighties’ by the ludicrous London media. Remind me what happened in the eighties. There’s also an ageing Chelsea that could be beyond even Abramovic’s wallet and any coach to fix in the short term – losing or replacing Drogba, Terry, Joe Cole, Ballack, Lampard, Carvalho, Ashley Cole etc won’t come cheap.

All of which leaves – Liverpool. What part will we have to play in this New World Order? Still part of the big However Many, or slipping back amongst the also-rans?

‘This summer will be big’, said the soothsayer Tom Hicks. Well for once he’s right, though perhaps not in the way he intended. This is indeed a Big Summer for Liverpool Football Club.

Chris is the author of the Heysel diary, From Where I Was Standing.

The Long and Winding Road: LFC supporter ownership is no longer just a beautiful dream

By Dan Kennett, subscriber to The Tomkins Times.

Like many LFC fans, I’ve long had my doubts about Spirit of Shankly. I’ve said in the past that “they don’t speak for me”. I thought that they were simply a niche group of hardcore űber-fans, most of whom seemed to sit in block 306 of The Kop.

For many fans, the catastrophic public relations disaster of the Munich-singing footage cast a long and dark shadow. In the past, they’d never really made it clear what their overall aims are in layman’s terms. Perhaps more importantly there never seemed to be any sense of an overall strategy to reaching those aims. It always seemed to be much more haphazard, almost off-the-cuff and simply responding to events.

I therefore thought long and hard about attending the Spirit of Shankly “Independence Rally” at St.George’s Hall yesterday. I go to most home games but don’t go to away games. I’m lucky to live close enough to walk to the ground and never have to leave early to “beat the traffic”. My political views are left of centre but not socialist. I’ve no inclination to get involved with militant activism, my upbringing and parent’s finances were much too bourgeois for that. OK my Mum and Dad’s upbringing was working class in 1950s Liverpool but they’d both worked their socks off and ended up with good jobs.

In the end I decided to go on the basis that I class myself as a mainstream fan. Part of the “silent majority” if you like. I’d had the pre-event emails from SoS (and ShareLiverpoolFC – don’t forget this was definitely a joint event) advising about the Credit Union scheme. As a fan who loves my club and despises everything our owners stand for I wanted to hear more.  SoS are never going to get anywhere without the support of mainstream fans and I wanted to see if they could reach out to me. Boy was I glad I attended. I went a sceptic and returned a convert. This wasn’t just a load of fans making noise to no effect. The whole rally had a purpose. Raising awareness of a plan which if fulfilled could see genuine supporter-ownership (or at least supporter-representation) in Liverpool Football Club.

St.George’s plaza was full but not chocka. Two-thousand is a good estimate, though others say more. More importantly, the demographic was good. Families. Women without fellas. Pensioners. Dads ‘n’ Lads. OK the predominant demographic was white male aged 30-50 but did you expect anything else?  The atmosphere was light-hearted, almost friendly. The speakers had a lot to do with that. Neil Fitz as compere set the tone. Funny but mostly sensible and not aggressive. John Bishop was hilarious. The music was great. Karen Gill was great. OK she didn’t have her Grandad’s oratory skills but her speech still set the romantic and nostalgic emotions running. The speakers also continually (and correctly) acknowledged the huge amount of scepticism that is still out that needs to be overcome. Beforehand I’d been worried about the potential for the event to backfire through some idiots burning American flags or the atmosphere turning sour in front of the media. Thankfully apart from a couple of minor cases of foot-in-mouth syndrome from some of the speakers this didn’t happen.

The chap from SoS who had to deliver “the boring bit” did a great job. Speaking to others around me in the crowd, the “boring bit” was why they’d all come as well. So what did we learn?

Firstly came the announcement that ShareLiverpoolFC and SoS are working as one. Very welcome news, the last thing we need is different groups pulling in different directions.

Secondly they said the driver should be “the average fan in the street” (whatever that is). Therefore the cost of a share has been set at £500 instead of ShareLiverpoolFC’s initial £5,000. Afterwards I found that the Liverpool groups have also been consulting Supporters Direct who’ve already helped small clubs set up not-for-profit ownership.

Thirdly, and most importantly the objective is to secure a minimum 10% stake in the club. Obviously more depending on how much money is put into the Credit Union. The stake will be equity, not debt and the 10% will be a permanent “blocking stake” ensuring that never again could Liverpool Football Club be sold lock, stock and barrel to people who do not have the best interests of the club at heart. There’s also a schedule of dates throughout July and August. The Credit Union scheme will be established and legitimised. They want to start getting the money into the scheme as soon as possible. Due to current UK legislation, the scheme will only be available to those who either live or work in Merseyside. SoS did assure that this legislation is being changed in the future to allow rest of UK and rest of the world participation.

So there we have it. It’s not Real Madrid or Barcelona yet, or even one of the Bundesliga clubs. But it’s a start and it’s no longer just a pipe-dream.  The sceptics will still be out there saying that this isn’t realistic, that the owners/banks will never talk to us. They’ll also refer to the “real politics” behind SoS and how we’re all just stooges in some kind of dastardly militant plot. They’ll also say that the scheme will be raided in the same way as Maxwell raided the Mirror pension funds. But it’s easy to snipe from your armchair and behind your keyboard.  It’s much more difficult to try and do something about it.

Liverpool Football Club is representative of a wider problem in the UK. Every week over 30 pubs close. Petrol Stations lie abandoned. General stores and Post Offices are closing. Not-for-profit community buyouts are already commonplace in rural parts of the UK (http://www.plunkett.co.uk/).  The only difference with LFC is the size of the task and the amount of money needed.

If you want supporter-ownership of Liverpool Football Club then get involved.

If you think there’s even the remotest chance that this could succeed then get involved.

No-one is asking anyone to join a picket line or take some form of direct action.

Join the scheme.

Tell all your Liverpool supporting friends, family and colleagues.  Download and distribute the SoS Credit Union leaflet.

Raise awareness in your local communities.

It’ll be a long and winding road but let’s start the journey together and believe that this can work.