United may surpass Liverpool’s league record but, with the king back at Anfield, their reign will be short-lived
When you walk through the storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There’s a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
WE CLUNG to the Anfield anthem, but it was difficult to hang on to the unerring faith that it espouses. As Liverpool Football Club lurched from one crisis to another, the storm was seemingly without end. Our dreams were more than just tossed and blown; they were reduced to tatters, and then resurrected as nightmares.
At one stage it looked as though the team might be relegated and the most successful English club ever forced into liquidation, such was the debt it had been saddled with by its owners. A fire sale of the club’s best players seemed inevitable.
It is difficult to raise one’s head, much less hold it high, when the proud and once magnificent institution that is the repository of so much of your love and so many of your dreams has been reduced to a tabloid laughing stock. I’m sure I wasn’t the only Liverpool stalwart haunted by thoughts of how fast and how far once great clubs like Leeds and Newcastle had fallen.
But last October the storm eventually did pass and a golden sky began to emerge over Anfield again, when New England Sports Ventures (now Fenway Sports Group) bought the club. A quick internet search confirmed the new owners were of the right calibre – just as 10 minutes on the internet in February 2007 had shown that the then new owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, almost certainly weren’t.
I shed a tear when Bill Shankly retired and bucket-loads of them after Hillsborough. I was close to crying again in October, only this time with sheer relief. The skies were golden again, but the lark had yet to sing.
Our previous manager but one, Rafael Benitez, had stood four-square with the supporters, and fought the previous owners until he was exhausted. They eventually sacked him.
Roy Hodgson, a manager with a distinct mid-table mentality, succeeded Rafa. He was immediately out of his depth at a club with the history, traditions and world stature of Liverpool. He tried to apply the same methods that had worked for him at innumerable second-rate outfits around Europe. But his journeyman football was the very antithesis of everything that Liverpool stands for. We have been raised on entertaining football; we expect our team to take to the field believing that they can beat whoever is lined up against them.
It wasn’t long before Roy had steered a demoralised and confused Liverpool to just above the relegation zone. Roy is a nice man, apparently, but so too are lots of other people who aren’t capable of managing Liverpool.
In January, to sighs of relief all round, including probably from Roy himself, he was sacked and “king Kenny” Dalglish installed as interim manager until the end of the season when he will surely be awarded a long-term contract.
It is impossible to exaggerate the esteem in which Dalglish is held by everyone connected with Liverpool. He was the club’s greatest player, one of its best managers, and is that rarest of creatures in professional football, a man of the highest integrity.
Kenny and his wife Marina gave so much of themselves in support of the families of the 96 supporters who perished at Hillsborough in 1989, he had to retire, emotionally shattered, from football for a while.
Dalglish has instilled confidence, unified the club, and brought a smile back to the faces of everyone associated with Liverpool. You could sell tickets to his sharp-witted press conferences. Players, who until he arrived had seemed totally lost, have responded to his personable man-management style by taking 30 points from his 15 league games in charge (second only to Chelsea in form). Better still, thanks to Kenny and his training staff, they have begun to play with the dash and verve expected of a Liverpool side.
In every respect, Dalglish epitomises the much-lauded “Liverpool way”. At last, the sweet silver song of the lark can be heard around Anfield again. Even the sale in January of top striker Fernando Torres failed to dampen spirits. Dalglish responded in the Liverpool style of old by replacing him with the Alan Shearer-esque Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez, who is showing flashes of brilliance reminiscent of Dalglish in his heyday.
If Manchester United win the Premiership this season they will surpass Liverpool’s record of 18 league titles. I would prefer if they didn’t, but will lose no sleep if they do. It is only a matter of time before they are playing catch-up again. The storm is ended, the king is back, and Liverpool Football Club is on the march again. There is now more than just hope in our hearts, there is belief again.