Five years ago, Gerard Houlliers reign at Anfield was slowly falling apart around him. The man simply wasn’t the same after his heart attack; the passion was gone, the squad had started to ignore him and his tactics and we were regularly losing games against teams that we should have been dispatching with relative ease such as Sunderland and Aston Villa.
And perhaps more crucially, Houllier had focused so much of his team around two players that he couldn’t see past them and if they weren’t in the team, then they simply fell apart. Those two players were Michael Owen & Steven Gerrard, our World Class forward and equally World Class midfielder. It’s now five and a half years since Houllier moved onto pastures new and in many ways the club, seemingly, hasn’t gone anywhere fast. Or so it seems.
What is never mentioned in alot of the articles being written about Benitez and how little success he has achieved is just what a mess the club was when he took over. No serious youth setup; Houllier was too keen on a cheaper option from over the channel than nurturing young talent. The footballing equivalent of a booze cruise, you might say; Players that wanted nothing to do with the club and would be happy to leave on the first contract out and a backroom team that had about as much passion for the club as he did.
Which makes the situation as it stands now all the more worrying. Benitez is a manager who builds his team around a World Class forward and a World Class midfielder, has squandered money on poor transfers from his home country and has a team behind that can’t seem to stop arguing amongst themselves. If time really has become a loop, then lets examine how and why we’ve (seemingly) come back to where we began back on June 16th 2004.
STEVEN GERRARD AND FERNANDO TORRES
These two are quite good, aren't they?
Houllier was rumoured to be very lenient towards Stevie and Michael in his latter years at the club, quite happy to let the two essentially have their own little clique and leave the rest of the squad to do their own thing, which obviously did morale a whole world of good. Ignoring the fact that Michael wasn’t anywhere near the same player that he was in 2001 (much like his manager in fact) and Stevie was still arguably something of an unpolished diamond at the time, it showed how one-dimensional Houllier had become. It was his downfall and it was arguably Rafa’s first big decision in standing up to Owen’s megolamania. Yes, the club may have been struggling for money and Rafa may well have shot himself in the foot but the club was in such a state that they were quite happy to give him the time to turn things around.
Rafa gave Milan Baros, Djibril Cisse, Fernando Morientes and Craig Bellamy their chances to become Rafa’s preferred number 9 but due to arrogance, inability to run with a football at his feet, an inherent lack of pace and a golf club all convinced him otherwise. It wasn’t till the start of his fourth season that he finally “stumbled” on his solution. As Sid Lowe pointed out in a recent World Soccer article, buying Torres was hardly a gamble (he was scoring regularly for Athletico Madrid every season) but he was very much the figurehead for Madrid, the boy wonder who had the hopes and dreams of a club on his shoulders at a club which could give Newcastle fans a run for their money in terms of unrealistic expectations. The move liberated Torres and in his first season he was unstoppable, as I think we all know by now.
The problem was, in hindsight, that Torres’ first season was TOO good. Other teams had got wise to him and while injury didn’t help, he wasn’t anwywhere near as successful as in his second season as in his first. And by his third season i.e. this one, all that teams have needed to do was mark him out of the game and BINGO! Attack denied. Villa and Chelsea had this down to a tee and they walked away with three points each. The same is said for Stevie, too. In fact, we’ve come full circle. Where Houllier put Stevie and Michael at the fulcrum of his team, Stevie and Fernando are the fulcrum of Benitez’s. The partnership is so successful that Benitez now seemingly knows no other setup for his team.
The difference between Benitez and Houllier is that while Michael and Stevie were expected to win game by themselves AND given free reign to do whatever they liked Rafa, while basing his team around two world class players, HASN’T allowed them the freedom to do whatever they please and has them play as part of a team rather than just expecting them to do all the work and have everyone else make up the numbers.
The other crucial difference is that this time Rafa has built up a squad of genuine internationals around them to help balance the workload. Which leads me nicely onto….
THE REST OF THEM
You lot, especially in the front row
Comparing the squad from 2004 and the one now is almost pointless. The difference in quality of player between then and now is simply remarkable. There was a lot of deadwood in Houllier’s squad; the fact that it wasn’t until the summer of 2008 that Rafa was done clearing it out when he finally managed to get rid of Anthony Le Tallec (and if one player summed up Houllier’s transfer policy, then he was it) showed just how much rebuilding he needed to do. Yes, a European Cup helped bring players to the club but adding the likes of Dirk Kuyt, Javier Mascherano, Ryan Babel, Glen Johnson, Daniel Agger and Pepe Reina have all improved the squad immeasurably. And while it is easy to pick apart Rafa’s poor transfer choices, let’s not forget some of the Red nosed Scots worst transfers. Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba, David Bellion, Massimo Taibi to name four at the very least. But that’s not what we’re discussing here.
While the aforementioned players have been added to the squad, we build so much of our game around Fernando and Stevie that the rest of team now don’t know what to do if they aren’t playing. Less maybe that they don’t know WHAT to do, more that they don’t know or believe that they can’t cope without one, the other or both of them playing. You only had to go back to the game against Lyon on Tuesday to see that for yourself. After Stevie went off, it was clear that there was a feeling amongst the team as if to say “What do we do now?”. This is no excuse and the fact that both Javier and Fabio have both come out and said they are more to blame than Rafa for the last month’s performances. Hopefully there is some much soul searching going on amongst certain members of the squad right now as they need to buck their ideas up.
Though some of Rafa’s decisions and handling of said players has hardly helped either. Which leads me nicely onto….
RAFA HIMSELF
Sorry I asked.
Let’s be honest, Rafa has not done himself any favours with certain decisions. His continued treatment of Ryan Babel has hardly done him or the player any good (though Babel himself has not exactly done himself many favours either in his time at the club) his almost flat out refusal to play Dirk Kuyt through the middle has taken alot of the edge out of his game (no-one can doubt his energy, no question); playing Fabio Aurelio in central midfield, his demotion of Riera to the bench, his suddenly tactical inflexibility particularly without Stevie and Fernando in the team. If there was one thing that you could say about Rafa in his first few seasons at the club it was his ability to change a team around and get a result when it mattered. Now, it seems that it’s one way or bust. No using the squad to the best of his ability, no tactical out manouvering just 4-2-2-1-1 and nothing else, even if we don’t have the right players to flourish in that formation.
But arguably the most bewildering of the lot is the decision to replace Alonso with a player who he knew wouldn’t be available until three months into the season is probably the most bewildering of the lot. Not the decision to sell him though, he would have left regardless or for stalling/haggling for more money either. Understandable given the circumstances. Rafa can complain all he wants about not having enough cash but if he spends it on a player that he KNOWS is carrying an injury, then he can hardly blame anyone but himseld. But then of course he felt that he had enough quality at his disposal to cover until Aquilani came back, so we come back to what I said earlier. The players he picked should have raised there game enough to compensate. And they didn’t.
But despite this, he should have been given cash to strenghten the team again further. Which leads me nicely onto….
HICKS AND GILLETT – THE WORST A CLUB CAN GET
"George spotted a Saudi prince and decided to make his move"
Aaahh, how could we ignore Cheech and Chong when analysing what has gone wrong for us this season? The financial aspect of their running of the club has been known for some time (and I could do with putting all the additional information that has come to light since my original article into a new article/rant about them in due course) but the relationship between the two of them is what is now poisoning the club more than the money ever did. On a basic level, a Canadian and an American from Texas was always going to be a fracturous relationship at best but with the almost constant squabbling between the two, you have to wonder how and where it is all going to end.
Well, one is Gillett’s courting of a Saudi prince. While on the surface it may seem as if he is taking the money and running, I think this is more a calcualted move to get rid of Hicks who has always come across as the more fat-headed of the two, though that is a bit like deciding who is the bigger fascist, Nick Griffin or Oswald Mosley? But it’s this relationship that is putting off any new suitors. In fact, Prince Faisal-al-Saud has stated that he isn’t going to act as a marraige councellor between the two of them. And I don’t blame him. Even if he has got Saudi Arabia’s oil billions behind him, he isn’t going to want to act as either Tom or Georgie’s personal banker/therapist.
The relationship between the two is clearly very broken; the fact that neither of them have been seen together at the same game for months should probably tell you everything you need to know about how the two feel about each other. Someone needs to do the honourable thing and fall on their sword. Cause they are becoming a distraction to all concerned.
While all the talk recently has been of Anfield going into meltdown (hyperbole at it’s very finest), there are definitely some issues at the club that need addressing. Players not pulling their weight (and openly admitting to it); a manager who’s started to lose his sense of perspective; owners who hate each other and make investing in the club difficult and off putting and a team that is too narrowly focused to two individuals. All concerned with the club need to sort themselves but also need to keep a sense of perspective.
The media are obviously spinning this for various reasons, chief amongst them to keep the little Scottish whinger on their side next time they need an exclusive but also to string out the narrative that they have created for themselves. And frankly, if there was a time to bring this act in the play of Liverpool Football Clubs history then 2pm on Sunday afternoon is probably as good a time as any.
Time Becomes A Loop
Five years ago, Gerard Houlliers reign at Anfield was slowly falling apart around him. The man simply wasn’t the same after his heart attack; the passion was gone, the squad had started to ignore him and his tactics and we were regularly losing games against teams that we should have been dispatching with relative ease such as Sunderland and Aston Villa.
And perhaps more crucially, Houllier had focused so much of his team around two players that he couldn’t see past them and if they weren’t in the team, then they simply fell apart. Those two players were Michael Owen & Steven Gerrard, our World Class forward and equally World Class midfielder. It’s now five and a half years since Houllier moved onto pastures new and in many ways the club, seemingly, hasn’t gone anywhere fast. Or so it seems.
What is never mentioned in alot of the articles being written about Benitez and how little success he has achieved is just what a mess the club was when he took over. No serious youth setup; Houllier was too keen on a cheaper option from over the channel than nurturing young talent. The footballing equivalent of a booze cruise, you might say; Players that wanted nothing to do with the club and would be happy to leave on the first contract out and a backroom team that had about as much passion for the club as he did.
Which makes the situation as it stands now all the more worrying. Benitez is a manager who builds his team around a World Class forward and a World Class midfielder, has squandered money on poor transfers from his home country and has a team behind that can’t seem to stop arguing amongst themselves. If time really has become a loop, then lets examine how and why we’ve (seemingly) come back to where we began back on June 16th 2004.
STEVEN GERRARD AND FERNANDO TORRES
These two are quite good, aren't they?
Houllier was rumoured to be very lenient towards Stevie and Michael in his latter years at the club, quite happy to let the two essentially have their own little clique and leave the rest of the squad to do their own thing, which obviously did morale a whole world of good. Ignoring the fact that Michael wasn’t anywhere near the same player that he was in 2001 (much like his manager in fact) and Stevie was still arguably something of an unpolished diamond at the time, it showed how one-dimensional Houllier had become. It was his downfall and it was arguably Rafa’s first big decision in standing up to Owen’s megolamania. Yes, the club may have been struggling for money and Rafa may well have shot himself in the foot but the club was in such a state that they were quite happy to give him the time to turn things around.
Rafa gave Milan Baros, Djibril Cisse, Fernando Morientes and Craig Bellamy their chances to become Rafa’s preferred number 9 but due to arrogance, inability to run with a football at his feet, an inherent lack of pace and a golf club all convinced him otherwise. It wasn’t till the start of his fourth season that he finally “stumbled” on his solution. As Sid Lowe pointed out in a recent World Soccer article, buying Torres was hardly a gamble (he was scoring regularly for Athletico Madrid every season) but he was very much the figurehead for Madrid, the boy wonder who had the hopes and dreams of a club on his shoulders at a club which could give Newcastle fans a run for their money in terms of unrealistic expectations. The move liberated Torres and in his first season he was unstoppable, as I think we all know by now.
The problem was, in hindsight, that Torres’ first season was TOO good. Other teams had got wise to him and while injury didn’t help, he wasn’t anwywhere near as successful as in his second season as in his first. And by his third season i.e. this one, all that teams have needed to do was mark him out of the game and BINGO! Attack denied. Villa and Chelsea had this down to a tee and they walked away with three points each. The same is said for Stevie, too. In fact, we’ve come full circle. Where Houllier put Stevie and Michael at the fulcrum of his team, Stevie and Fernando are the fulcrum of Benitez’s. The partnership is so successful that Benitez now seemingly knows no other setup for his team.
The difference between Benitez and Houllier is that while Michael and Stevie were expected to win game by themselves AND given free reign to do whatever they liked Rafa, while basing his team around two world class players, HASN’T allowed them the freedom to do whatever they please and has them play as part of a team rather than just expecting them to do all the work and have everyone else make up the numbers.
The other crucial difference is that this time Rafa has built up a squad of genuine internationals around them to help balance the workload. Which leads me nicely onto….
THE REST OF THEM
You lot, especially in the front row
Comparing the squad from 2004 and the one now is almost pointless. The difference in quality of player between then and now is simply remarkable. There was a lot of deadwood in Houllier’s squad; the fact that it wasn’t until the summer of 2008 that Rafa was done clearing it out when he finally managed to get rid of Anthony Le Tallec (and if one player summed up Houllier’s transfer policy, then he was it) showed just how much rebuilding he needed to do. Yes, a European Cup helped bring players to the club but adding the likes of Dirk Kuyt, Javier Mascherano, Ryan Babel, Glen Johnson, Daniel Agger and Pepe Reina have all improved the squad immeasurably. And while it is easy to pick apart Rafa’s poor transfer choices, let’s not forget some of the Red nosed Scots worst transfers. Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba, David Bellion, Massimo Taibi to name four at the very least. But that’s not what we’re discussing here.
While the aforementioned players have been added to the squad, we build so much of our game around Fernando and Stevie that the rest of team now don’t know what to do if they aren’t playing. Less maybe that they don’t know WHAT to do, more that they don’t know or believe that they can’t cope without one, the other or both of them playing. You only had to go back to the game against Lyon on Tuesday to see that for yourself. After Stevie went off, it was clear that there was a feeling amongst the team as if to say “What do we do now?”. This is no excuse and the fact that both Javier and Fabio have both come out and said they are more to blame than Rafa for the last month’s performances. Hopefully there is some much soul searching going on amongst certain members of the squad right now as they need to buck their ideas up.
Though some of Rafa’s decisions and handling of said players has hardly helped either. Which leads me nicely onto….
RAFA HIMSELF
Sorry I asked.
Let’s be honest, Rafa has not done himself any favours with certain decisions. His continued treatment of Ryan Babel has hardly done him or the player any good (though Babel himself has not exactly done himself many favours either in his time at the club) his almost flat out refusal to play Dirk Kuyt through the middle has taken alot of the edge out of his game (no-one can doubt his energy, no question); playing Fabio Aurelio in central midfield, his demotion of Riera to the bench, his suddenly tactical inflexibility particularly without Stevie and Fernando in the team. If there was one thing that you could say about Rafa in his first few seasons at the club it was his ability to change a team around and get a result when it mattered. Now, it seems that it’s one way or bust. No using the squad to the best of his ability, no tactical out manouvering just 4-2-2-1-1 and nothing else, even if we don’t have the right players to flourish in that formation.
But arguably the most bewildering of the lot is the decision to replace Alonso with a player who he knew wouldn’t be available until three months into the season is probably the most bewildering of the lot. Not the decision to sell him though, he would have left regardless or for stalling/haggling for more money either. Understandable given the circumstances. Rafa can complain all he wants about not having enough cash but if he spends it on a player that he KNOWS is carrying an injury, then he can hardly blame anyone but himseld. But then of course he felt that he had enough quality at his disposal to cover until Aquilani came back, so we come back to what I said earlier. The players he picked should have raised there game enough to compensate. And they didn’t.
But despite this, he should have been given cash to strenghten the team again further. Which leads me nicely onto….
HICKS AND GILLETT – THE WORST A CLUB CAN GET
"George spotted a Saudi prince and decided to make his move"
Aaahh, how could we ignore Cheech and Chong when analysing what has gone wrong for us this season? The financial aspect of their running of the club has been known for some time (and I could do with putting all the additional information that has come to light since my original article into a new article/rant about them in due course) but the relationship between the two of them is what is now poisoning the club more than the money ever did. On a basic level, a Canadian and an American from Texas was always going to be a fracturous relationship at best but with the almost constant squabbling between the two, you have to wonder how and where it is all going to end.
Well, one is Gillett’s courting of a Saudi prince. While on the surface it may seem as if he is taking the money and running, I think this is more a calcualted move to get rid of Hicks who has always come across as the more fat-headed of the two, though that is a bit like deciding who is the bigger fascist, Nick Griffin or Oswald Mosley? But it’s this relationship that is putting off any new suitors. In fact, Prince Faisal-al-Saud has stated that he isn’t going to act as a marraige councellor between the two of them. And I don’t blame him. Even if he has got Saudi Arabia’s oil billions behind him, he isn’t going to want to act as either Tom or Georgie’s personal banker/therapist.
The relationship between the two is clearly very broken; the fact that neither of them have been seen together at the same game for months should probably tell you everything you need to know about how the two feel about each other. Someone needs to do the honourable thing and fall on their sword. Cause they are becoming a distraction to all concerned.
While all the talk recently has been of Anfield going into meltdown (hyperbole at it’s very finest), there are definitely some issues at the club that need addressing. Players not pulling their weight (and openly admitting to it); a manager who’s started to lose his sense of perspective; owners who hate each other and make investing in the club difficult and off putting and a team that is too narrowly focused to two individuals. All concerned with the club need to sort themselves but also need to keep a sense of perspective.
The media are obviously spinning this for various reasons, chief amongst them to keep the little Scottish whinger on their side next time they need an exclusive but also to string out the narrative that they have created for themselves. And frankly, if there was a time to bring this act in the play of Liverpool Football Clubs history then 2pm on Sunday afternoon is probably as good a time as any.