Kenny Dalglish is going to be our new manager until the end of this season at least. While I have to agree that his credentials both inside the club and outside the club are impeccable – the man is a legend plain and simple – I do wonder if his appointment might be a retrograde step for the club, and not what is best for the club at this moment in time.
Remember, he has not managed a club in over a decade, and it doesn’t always work bringing in legends to steady sinking ships (it didn’t work when Manure bought Busby back a couple of years after he left; it didn’t work when Newcastle bought Keegan back and even when they gave Shearer the job and it didn’t work when Bryan Gunn took over at Norwich either) so there is no saying that this will work.
If it does work then brilliant, but if it doesn’t then what was the point of making the decision in the first place? I personally would have stuck with Roy till the end of the season, and then if it still hadn’t worked then bring somebody new in, but I am not in charge of the club (a bloody good job too you are all saying), but I just hope that this isn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back and backfires on us all.
Given that the statistics of Roy Hodgson’s brief tenure as Liverpool manager weren’t that great (but conversely to compare him to other manager’s when he only had the job for six months is really taking the piss. He is the only Liverpool manager never to win a trophy. Ok that is a fact, but if you take into consideration all of the other Liverpool managers, how many of them had won anything in their first six months?), you can see why his stewardship was not working, and also that is was probably time for him to call it a day, but I fail to see what Kenny can do with the same group of players that Roy couldn’t do.
I am not convinced that a Dalglish led Liverpool will lead us to a higher position than we would have got under Roy Hodgson, only a few league games under his stewardship will tell me that, so it is a bit early to judge but I really can’t see it making that much of a difference at the moment. It may do at first, as more often than not, new managers get a good start when they first join a club, but if the players start playing like they have been doing then we are back to square one, and these are the same players who have been underperforming all season.
The players obviously didn’t want to play for Roy, that much is obvious, especially in the Bolton game when Stevie G clearly missed that penalty on purpose and the attitude of Fernando Torres all season, but who is to say that they will want to play for Kenny more? What a shocking indictment on professional footballers if they suddenly start playing well again after playing shit for the majority of the season so far, just because there is a new man in charge. That is not on in my book, I know that it happens, but it shouldn’t and it is just plain wrong!
I will be happy if we can beat the scum tomorrow, get a couple of decent players in the transfer window, and finish around the same position as we did last season, all of which we could of achieved under Hodgson. There will be no magic wand that the appointment of Dalglish will suddenly give us to make us a great team, and propel us into the top four.
It will take a lot of time and a lot of hard work, which Hodgson was not given. What if Dalglish’s record at the end of the season is no better than Roy’s was? We will never know what a full season with Roy Hodgson in charge will be like now, but you can guarantee he will get the blame if Kenny doesn’t miraculously turn the club round in the next six months.
Dalglish was a great manager for the club back in the eighties; let’s hope that he doesn’t fail the expectations the fans have of him this time. The current squad has to take a long look at themselves, and what they have done to the club this season, and bloody well pull their collective socks up. They failed Roy Hodgson; let’s hope they don’t do the same for Kenny.