Houllier's Liverpool legacy

[Matt]

Houllier's Liverpool legacy

By Patrick Barclay (Filed: 23/05/2004)

Did you notice the look on the face of Liverpool's chairman, David Moores, at the end of the Premiership season? It was dark and heavy, like a storm-cloud, and by tomorrow at the latest the rain will fall as, reluctantly, he tells Gerard Houllier the press have got one thing right: the board are looking for a new manager.

The best guess as to what has happened since Moores told the club's AGM the minimum requirement for the season was to qualify for the Champions League - a goal fulfilled when Newcastle failed to win at Southampton before they came to Anfield last weekend - is that the chairman has become battle-weary. To the sniping of ex-players and the rumblings from amid the support has been added the heavy artillery of banknote wads, one proffered by the Thai Prime Minister and the other by a lifelong fan called Steve Morgan who remembers Liverpool ruling the English game but seems to have forgotten that in those days Alex Ferguson was learning the rudiments of his trade at St Mirren and Arsene Wenger working part-time with Strasbourg's youths; as for Roman Abramovich, he was probably delivering Pravda in short trousers, earning his first few roubles in preparation for the advent of capitalism.

Try to put Liverpool's recent history in a bit of perspective, though, try to point out that the club had begun to lose their grip just before Ferguson began to exert his on behalf of Manchester United in the early Nineties, and you will quickly find that (to paraphrase the Kop's undeniably sincere but sometimes ironic-sounding anthem) you walk alone. Kenny Dalglish, after a brilliant start to his managerial career, could not handle the pressure and quit; we now hear he would be willing to return and serve the club in the more general capacity that, in truth, hardly proved his forte elsewhere. Houllier found the same pressure difficult but was willing to brave it in the belief that his Liverpool, like Ferguson's United, would come to exemplify the virtue of patience. Moores, a decent man, was willing to back him until the going got really tough. Only when the next manager has been in charge for a while shall we know if he was right.

Talk of Alan Curbishley is instructive because he appears to make few mistakes in the transfer market. Even Houllier's most ardent admirers would have to admit that his astute acquisitions - Didi Hamann, Sami Hyypia, Stephane Henchoz, John Arne Riise, Milan Baros and Gary McAllister come to mind - must be balanced against the likes of El Hadji Diouf, Salif Diao, Bruno Cheyrou and Bernard Diomede. Indeed it could be said that the late spring of 2002, during which he resolved to invest £20 million in Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou when Damien Duff and Ajax's Rafael van der Vaart might have been obtained for the same amount, was responsible for interrupting the club's progress under the Frenchman. At that time, Houllier had only recently completed his recovery from life-saving surgery. But it was a full recovery, so no excuses should be accepted. Nor, to be fair, has refuge been sought.

Recently he claimed his total spending had been £43 million net (as distinct from the much-quoted gross figure of £111 million) over more than five years and, when you consider that in three of those years Liverpool have been good enough to claim for the bounty of the Champions League, and that they have also won the UEFA Cup, he can scarcely be dismissed as a wastrel.

Remember the position when he came in. It was not, as some ex-players and fans imply, at the pinnacle of Europe, with Hansen, Souness and Dalglish swaggering around. The team included Harkness, Babb and McAteer. Around them were some poor examples to the club's young professionals. Although the notion that Houllier's enthusiasm for change was pursued ruthlessly is simplistic - he agonised over the sale of Robbie Fowler, for instance - the job was done and, as he has often pointed out, the days when Liverpool players featured as often on the news pages as the sports sections have largely gone. The club's training ground, rebuilt to Houllier's specifications, is of as high a standard as any in the land. But his greatest success, for all the new influences that have been brought to the club from abroad, has been with the English players.

The critics bray on about how Steven Gerrard has papered over the cracks of what will be Houllier's last season with the club. But the truth is that, but for Houllier, Gerrard might not be the footballer he is. He could have gone either way, in terms of both physique and mentality, in the crucial years after Houllier came to Anfield (having been technical director of France in the build-up to the country's World Cup triumph). The player himself has expressed heartfelt gratitude for Houllier's role in his development, both verbally and with a level of performance exceeded only by Thierry Henry this season.

When he scored against Levski Sofia, he immediately ran to the bench to touch hands with Houllier, just as Ruud van Nistelrooy made a similar gesture last weekend to Ferguson, who had shown such faith in the Dutchman when a serious knee injury kept him at Eindhoven, idle, for an extra year. Michael Owen has benefited from Houllier's knowledge, as have Jamie Carragher and Danny Murphy. The players Liverpool produce no longer fall by the wayside. That is, in my view, the essence of Houllier's legacy. He has brought Liverpool up to date. But improvement from within has never been the stuff of headlines.

If my assessment strikes you as a little sour, there are two reasons. The first is that Houllier is a friend, one of the most civilised men I have met in football and, beyond question, the most loyal. And I think he is being treated disrespectfully by inferiors (not that he is unique among managers in this respect, not while Juventus are dispensing with Marcello Lippi and Bayern Munich with Ottmar Hitzfeld). The second reason is that Liverpool finished the season with a rhythm that vindicated much of what Houllier had been promising. The silliest part of his impending dismissal is its timing, which has been dictated by a cocky housebuilder from the Kop and a smoothie populist from Bangkok. But the more money football craves the sillier it gets and even Liverpool, sad to say, have come to this.

[richbat]

An intelligent, balanced article that really gives credit to a man who has served Liverpool proud and in many ways been undermined by a weak board and a impatient and fickle group of fans.