Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Liverpool sacked their first manager in almost 50 years when they got rid of Gerard Houllier yesterday.
Now, there's a lot to be said about his bad transfer dealings, or his style of play, or any of the other downsides to his reign, but I'd rather pay tribute to Houllier because I honestly believe his reign will be remembered as a good one -- after all, he's won more than Roy Evans and Graeme Souness combined.
I haven't been supporting Liverpool for all that long really -- about ten years or so? -- but Houllier's reign has easily been the most successful. There's something to be said about how much fun Roy Evans' crazy teams (with Fowler, Redknapp and McManaman in full flow) were, but those teams were also painful to watch. Yeah, we'd win games 4-3 and 4-2, and we'd often beat big teams like Newcastle and Arsenal, but we'd also lose 1-0 to the likes of Coventry. Ultimately, as flashy and complete as that Liverpool team looked, it simply didn't have the right stuff to even contend for the title -- let alone win it. No matter how awesome we'd look in taking some teams apart, we had fundamental flaws that Manchester United in particular would ruthlessly expose and destroy us (David James and Brad Friedel made Liverpool-career-ending mistakes against them, and I'll never forget Pallister strolling in past our awfully weak aerial defence to head home two goals at Anfield). And no championship team loses 1-0s to Coventry. Championship teams grind out results even when doing badly. We couldn't do that.
Houllier came in, made his mark on the team and cleared out a lot of my favourite players -- including Robbie Fowler, my all-time favourite. And he replaced them with a bunch of players that I personally didn't like and were much maligned in general (like Smicer and Heskey). But you know what? He made it work. Heskey chipped in with 22 goals in his first full season, and after only hitting one in his first Smicer fired in almost ten in the next. We had a certain toughness about us. We were solid at the back, we were brilliant on the counter, and we started to develop that ability to grind out results.
It culminated in that magnificent couple of years when we managed to win five trophies, then genuinely challenged for both the league and European Cup. Michael Owen was European Footballer of the Year, then followed it up with World Soccer's Player of the Year to go alongside Houllier's Manager of the Year and Liverpool's Team of the Year. Yeah, it was on the basis of winning "second-rate" competitions like the FA Cup and UEFA Cup (the league and Champions League being the real prizes), but the expectation was that it would be the first in a string of successes -- the warning shot across the bows of the winning clubs.
Except it never came. For whatever reason, Houllier was never able to build on what he'd already achieved, and instead we fell and so he had to go.. But like I said, I'm not going to get into all that. I'm going to go over the good times instead. After all, he actually made us contenders. He brought us that much closer to being able to win the big prizes, and for that I thank him.
And I also thank Houllier for the great memories from his time at Anfield. There were his three victories at Old Trafford (all 1-0, all Danny Murphy), not to mention some great performances at home against the old enemy; Gary McAllister's incredible free-kick to seal a vital 3-2 victory over Everton; the unreal 5-4 UEFA Cup Final win over Alaves; Michael Owen's winner against Arsenal in the FA Cup Final; his emotional return in "that" game against Roma in the Champions League; 4-0 against Arsenal... there were an awful lot of great moments. And again, it's not a singular moment, but just knowing we were contenders again.
So, thanks for all the memories Gerard. It might not seem like it right now, but we do appreciate it.
Posted at 4:48 AM
