A hard man in corduroy

Gerard Houllier looked up from his coffee cup, peered over his glasses to gaze at the fresh presence which had just occupied the doorway to his office and then smiled. Phil Thompson, Houllier's combative assistant, and as scouse as the Mersey, returned the gesture. Head to toe, Thompson was kitted out in new gear. Clearly he liked it.

"Someday you will have a tracksuit," he said to Houllier, as if Houllier was jealous of Thompson's attire. Houllier, dressed in corduroy trousers, a vision in beige, just smiled even more. Tracksuits are not Gerard Houllier's cup of coffee.

Thompson knows, however, that there is little else beige about the French manager of Liverpool. If Bobby Robson says he "bleeds black and white" at Newcastle, then Houllier bleeds red, Anfield red. And by far the most surprising, and genuinely startling, feature of a lengthy conversation with Houllier this week was his appetite for blood to be spilt for the Liverpool cause. Many times in the interview did his left fist clench as he described attributes he admires most.

The discovery of Houllier's capacity for ferocity was unforeseen. With his glasses, cords, teaching experience and French accent, the easy stereotype has formed of Houllier as a wet-handshake academic. A calculator. If Arsene Wenger is the professor, then Houllier is the 53-year-old polytechnic lecturer. Appearances don't deceive in these cases.

Wrong. Wenger may not be vocal, but he is as hard as Highbury marble; Houllier, said Wenger, is "open and passionate". Which is exactly what Houllier was in the flesh, only twice as much. "You need to have an elephant's skin," Houllier said of his chosen profession. "Personally, I keep extremely focused on our task, on our road, on our target. I know where we are, I know where we are going and I know what we have to do. I know it will take time. That's all. The rest? I don't care." It was a brief but convincing manifesto.

For Houllier, his knowledge is his power, power he is not afraid to use. His decision-making is steadily transforming Liverpool. As he said, proudly: "After eight games we had 10 points, the next eight we won 17 and the eight after that 17. That's 16 games and 34 points. No team has done better than us since October. That is a championship run."

Forthright and aggressive, Houllier's analysis of Liverpool's shortcomings was probably similar to yours or mine: dodgy keeper, defenderless defence, whingeing midfielder, slacker mentality. But these problems had not been addressed. Houllier did so in less than a year after fully succeeding Roy Evans.

Out went David James, Phil Babb, Paul Ince, Steve McManaman. In came Sander Westerveld, Sammi Hyypia, Dietmar Hamann, Titi Camara. Plus, what Houllier regards as his best signing - "team spirit". Liverpool, seventh last season, finished 25 points behind United. Today, fourth, they trail by 10 points and have a match in hand. Two victories in those games could make them most interesting challengers. Their great advantage is that so little is expected. It is Houllier's first full season.

It is 15 months since Evans was asked to make his emotional exit from the club he had served for 34 years. It was five days after Liverpool lost at home to Derby County. The previous week they had been beaten by Leicester City. Houllier, despite his position as joint manager, somehow avoided the bulk of the blame and also - possibly because of the nice-man image - escaped accusations that he had stabbed Evans in the back.

Yet, given his well-disguised hardness and the fact that the changes he has instigated since, taken collectively, have amounted to revolution more than evolution, Houllier's on-going assessment of Liverpool's inadequacies must have been unforgiving, even if unspoken.

"I have never said about what went on here and I won't tell you," was his response to the inevitable question. "All I can say is that everybody has his own way of doing things. I'm happy with the way things are going now. I can justify why we introduced strict rules before matches, banned mobile phones, did this and that.

"There was all sorts of shit written, saying that I've banned coffee - I'm the heaviest drinker of coffee. In fact coffee is good." He took another gulp.

Alcohol is not so good. Neil Ruddock tells stories about how prevalent the booze culture was at Anfield during his time but Houllier immediately eroded it. He said the effect of that can be seen in the rapid improvement in Steven Gerrard this season. "Now Steven understands."

Other changes include an improvement in the facilities at training - the pitches are luxurious at Melwood even in January - and the removal of the physio Mark Leather, the man who had been looking after Michael Owen.

"It's very true that the environment plays an important part," said Houllier. "You have to make sure that everything surrounding the players has to be a positive dynamic force. If the team behind the team is united then the players feel it. If you are at a table and the staff are laughing and joking then the players feel that.

"Even the kit man, if he is a sulky guy, if he has no sense of humour, that rubs off. If you have negative people, if you have a physio who tells the players they can't make it on Saturday, `oh it's a bad injury', if he says it could be cancer, or something needs amputated - you can't have that."

Off the park is one thing, reconstructing matters on it is another. Houllier provoked criticism and scepticism when he went out and spent £25 million on seven foreigners last summer, though he was keen to point out that Alex Ferguson's last seven purchases have all been foreigners.

Names such as Hyypia and Camara were new to England. Houllier may have been a past manager of France, Paris St Germain and, as technical director to the French Football Federation, been responsible for the successful nourishing of young talent (so much so that he was given a World Cup winner's medal for his role in France '98) but Merseyside and beyond wondered. Houllier, meanwhile, was certain.

"No team has achieved anything without a good defence," he said. "I said openly that what we needed was a new diamond defence: a goalkeeper, two central defenders and a defensive midfielder. We managed to get the players we wanted and although some of them were not well-known, we knew they were good enough for us, they could do a job. And they've done it, so far. But it's not only down to those four.

"We've still got a lot to do. Fortunately the team is young, very committed. Young, I insist on that. We will reinforce the team, we will strengthen it, but you must take winners. The higher you go in the game, the more you have to have guts, people with heart and commitment. If you have chickens you have chickens.

"Good teams are made up mainly of people with skills, but the mental toughness is needed to cope with difficult moments, sometimes injustice. You have to make sure you have winners, not moaners. You can't have moaners, sometimes you just have to shut up and get on with things." Hence, bye-bye Mr Ince to Middlesbrough.

Houllier's natural gravitas makes it possible to see how he could inspire, especially the young - his advice to Dublin teenager Richie Partridge is to become "manly". This is, after all, the man who selected Eric Cantona for France and who, indirectly, was responsible for Cantona's arrival at Old Trafford.

Understandably, neither Cantona's nor Houllier's longstanding connection with Ferguson were subjects he wanted to discuss in this of all weeks. All Houllier would say on Cantona was: "I knew Eric's worth."

He knows Ferguson's also. Another part of Houllier unhelpfully camouflaged by his image is the fact that, not unlike Ferguson or quintessentially pugnacious English managers like Jim Smith, Houllier took his first manager's post among the pots and pans at the bottom of the ladder. Aged 32, having never played professionally himself, and still teaching, Houllier joined a French fifth division team, Noeuxles-Mines. Three years later they were in the second division.

After that came Lens, Paris St Germain and France. But Houllier, now famously, had spent part of his teaching practice in Liverpool. He had stood on the Kop. He was a fan. He understood Anfield.

Thus he did not sound phoney when he said: "At this club supporters play a part. That is down to (Bill) Shankly. He made supporters believe in the team and the team believe in the supporters. That's a great heritage. You have to keep that alive. I believe in that."

Walking away from Gerard Houllier, there was little room to doubt the conviction of his beliefs. He was, as Arsene Wenger had said, open and passionate. But he came across as fearless too. You don't have to inhabit a tracksuit to be a hard man in Liverpool.