15 months ago, a man nearing 60 with a well paying laid back job, at a place he loves, cut off his vacation cruise to hear your cries by taking on one of the most challenging jobs given the nature of the task at hand. Within 15 months, he has given us a trophy, he has brought us to within 180 minutes of another and he has given us many memorable wins. He helped us when we needed someone to lift the gloom. Today, when everything may not be working well for him, would we turn our backs on him? I will not. In Kenny I Trust.
When Kenny came back on, I was concerned about if the things didn’t work well. I didn’t want his last image at the club to be of a defeated or a failed manager. In fact, his answer to those queries pretty much summed up what Kenny is about. He thought he couldn’t not take the responsibility. Let’s be clear, he hasn’t done it for the money. He has made enough and was still having a decent job to probably take care of his needs and leave a little surplus. He did it because he felt he needed to do it for the club, for the fans, for us.
Very soon there was a swarm of Kenny t-shirts and replica shirts being bought by the fans. He was probably adored more than any other player at one point – Stevie was out injured, Torres had left. Fans would give him the keys to their house but suddenly there’s a lot of ‘blame Kenny’ on forums, social networking sites etc. However, let’s see what a task he had on his hands. He had to rebuild almost the entire team. Reina, Skrtel, Agger, Johnson, Gerrard, Lucas are the only names that come to mind from the previous squad who get an automatic start. And then the bench was shoddy too. He bought his players and some click immediately, some a little while later and some don’t at all. While it is fair to say that some signings haven’t performed as well as they should have, wouldn’t it be a tough ask for more than half the team to come on board and start gelling well specially when they play ‘pass-and-move’ which needs more understanding among players? Anyway, I am not here to justify the results and I personally don’t like where we are in the league right now, nobody should. Let’s say that the past few weeks haven’t gone Kenny’s way. Meaning he isn’t having a great time and my question to the fans is whether we will turn our backs on him when he needs us the most? Would you let him walk alone? I wouldn’t. I’m sure the owners wouldn’t either. I’m confident that the players he command would never. Would you?
YNWA!