Dalglish: Liverpool’s New Manager?
Anfield icon Kenny Dalglish has been handed the responsibility of selecting Liverpool’s next manager.
There may, however, be a shock return to the post he vacated 19 years ago. Dalglish — now a club ambassador — has emerged as a contender to succeed Rafael Benitez and is the favoured choice of many, including ex-team-mates.
“I would have thought Kenny would be heavily involved and quite rightly so — maybe not just in choosing the manager but holding the fort in the meantime,” said former Reds defender Mark Lawrenson, now a BBC pundit.
Dalglish is the last manager to win a league title with Liverpool and whoever the new boss is will be given the remit of bringing the crown back to Anfield.
Aston Villa boss Martin O’Neill won the Scottish title with Celtic and — as revealed in the Belfast Telegraph last month — is the frontrunner to be in charge at Liverpool next season.
Roy Hodgson’s relative success at Fulham in guiding them to the Europa League final makes him a runner and he has admirers at Anfield.
Although a former Manchester United star, Mark Hughes is also understood to be a contender.
Long gone are the days when Liverpool promoted from within their own ‘boot-room’ with Bob Paisley following Bill Shankly and Joe Fagan then taking charge, and it remains unlikely that the next boss will be someone with a Liverpool background.
Steve Nicol, a stalwart in the success-filled era of the 1980s, is an outsider. He has been managing New England Revolution in the USA for the last eight years.
With thanks to the Belfast Telegraph
Bring Back Dalglish, Groom Carragher
Jamie Carragher
Old ghosts are haunting Liverpool. Anyone acquainted with the club’s famous history will need few nudges to notice that a distinctive dynamic struts and frets its familiar way across the Anfield stage again.
The Kop has been here before. Echoes of the past abound. For 2010 read 1991.
Different causes, different characters but the level of stress Kenny Dalglish succumbed to almost a full score of years ago finds some modern symptoms in the furrows knitting Rafael Benítez’s brow. The current custodian of Liverpool’s fortunes is running on empty just as Dalglish was 19 years ago.
Benítez seems drained of energy and ideas; some of his tactics are debatable, many of his buys questionable. Support for the manager from the Kop remains solid because that’s the Liverpool way. Fans respect the office of manager. They would never countenance knee-jerk reactions. In 1991, the local Echo and Post letter pages brimmed with doubts about Dalglish’s line-ups yet few fans dreamed of challenging his right to govern.
When Dalglish suddenly resigned, following that switchback ride of an FA Cup replay at Goodison Park, a stunned Merseyside experienced its JFK moment. The news was even announced over the Tannoy at Lime Street. Tony Cottee, twice an equaliser that night, has just released a DVD chronicling his finest moments but there will surely be no nerve-shredding 4-4 draw with Everton around the corner to ambush Benítez.
Hold on. What’s that coming over the hill? It is David Moyes’s newly buoyant Everton, charging across Stanley Park on Feb 6, bright and breezy and early for a 12.45 start, driven on by Steven Pienaar and Marouane Fellaini, their threat enhanced by Landon Donovan, particularly from corners. As against Spurs on Wednesday, Liverpool may raise themselves against Everton but the impression will remain of a club drifting, of a dressing room growing apart from Benítez, of the life ebbing away from the Spaniard’s reign. The Kop, who have not seen the title since the Dalglish era, deserve better.
New thinking is required. Make that old thinking. Liverpool’s prominence was once rooted in the Boot Room, in the nurturing of talent from Bob Paisley to Joe Fagan. (Roy Evans also emerged from the Boot Room but was never a success as a manager). Dalglish, who steered Liverpool to three championships, was not a Boot Room boy but the principle of promoting from within, of handing responsibility to someone steeped in the club’s great tradition and distinct DNA, makes sense.
The Boot Room, an area absorbed into the press room in the mid-Nineties, was always as much about flesh and bones as bricks and mortar and now is the time to restore the philosophy. Liverpool must start rebuilding. The individual in Benitez’s squad most suited to a career in management must begin training with a different perspective.
That man is Jamie Carragher, a footballer far more suited to the stresses and strains of dugout life than Steven Gerrard. One of the few players really fighting for the cause, Carragher must be earmarked by a grateful, forward-thinking club as exuding management potential and given some of the younger teams to work with.
Anyone who has met Carragher is immediately struck by his deep knowledge of the game, his fascination with what makes good teams tick, and appreciates instantly that here is someone destined for management once he has acquired the requisite skills and badges.
More urgently, Liverpool need a manager for 2010, not 2015. Benítez should survive until the summer when someone of the motivational substance of Jose Mourinho, Fabio Capello or Guus Hiddink assumes control, turning the lights back on in a dressing room plunged into gloom.
Until then, the board must encourage Benítez to invite a refreshed Dalglish, currently on duty at the academy, to assist him. Dalglish’s presence alone would lift the team’s mood and remind certain players of the standards Liverpool aspire to. The squad could certainly do with the Scot’s winning blend of relentless banter and utter dedication.
To read the full article, read Henry Winter’s piece in the Telegraph
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- Time running out for Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez (telegraph.co.uk)
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