Liverpool's loyalty being stretched to limit

SOCCER ANGLES:As Liverpool fans vote with their feet, Roy Hodgson looks a Red man walking, writes MICHAEL WALKER

THIS COMING November will be see an avalanche of tributes to Alex Ferguson. The month marks the 25th anniversary since Ferguson moved south from Aberdeen to Manchester United. It is a statistic that grows in stature with every dismissal of a manager elsewhere, one heightened by the recent cull across England, particularly in the north-west, particularly in Liverpool.

Matt Busby played for Liverpool. And Manchester City. That did not prevent him becoming United manager in 1945. There he stayed for 24 years. During that period Liverpool had only three managers, Don Welsh, Phil Taylor and Bill Shankly, who carried on until 1974.

In the last six years alone, Liverpool have had three managers – Gerard Houllier, Rafa Benitez and Roy Hodgson.

With the last described as a Red man walking, a fourth is expected any day now.

It is said that Liverpool’s new owners prefer a permanent appointment rather than a temporary one. If so, and if they get what they want in the difficult month of January, then it is less likely to be Kenny Dalglish back in the Anfield dugout. That means Ferguson will be opposing his seventh different Liverpool manager at United.

Compared to City, where Ferguson is onto his 13th manager in 24½ years, Liverpool’s record is okay. Even when the Anfield club was not replicating its league-title glory days it remained loyal to managers.

It remained loyal to an ethos based on stability. Everyone admired Liverpool for that, but not many copied them. Because while stability would seem to be a reasonable, sensible everyday management target, to football clubs it is more like a dream.

Newcastle United fans are portrayed as being addicted to turbulence at St James’ Park. When you actually talk to them, they go all misty-eyed about stability. For a while, before and after Bobby Robson’s five years in charge, Newcastle fans cherished that more than success. When Newcastle reached the quarter-final of the Uefa Cup and the semi-final of the FA Cup under Graeme Souness, and lost both, some consolation was found in the fact that the club’s trophy drought was not broken by the unpopular Scot.

Many Newcastle fans did not believe in Souness from the start. They wanted Martin O’Neill.

It only takes one fan to daub paint on a wall, but the ‘Hodgson Out’ graffiti in Liverpool on Thursday morning felt representative of a widely-held sentiment. Many Liverpool fans simply did not agree with his appointment and we live in a vocal world. Empty seats at the home game with Bolton cannot be ignored.

Even if the new Boston-American ownership believes in Hodgson’s ability as a manager, and they did not appoint him, then this is/was still a huge test of faith. They too are likely to believe in the benefit of stability over its opposite but the trouble with stability in football is that it sometimes requires a commitment that overrides the reality of results.

Hodgson’s CV is there for all to see, and it is eight months since he led Fulham to a Europa League final against Atletico Madrid in Hamburg. But it is a distressing fact for him that losing 1-0 at home to Wolves matters more to Liverpool, and to Hodgson’s post there, than Fulham beating Juventus 4-1 on the way to Hamburg.

On nights such as against Wolves and Blackburn, stability moves from being a guide to how one wants to run a football club, in this case Liverpool, to an aspiration. Luck, injuries, refereeing decisions, all those uncontrollable aspects of football which have such an effect, are deemed less relevant than the decrease or loss in faith in the manager. Sackings appear abrupt but they are the consequence of an incremental process.

Retaining faith in a manger during a bad run emerges as the definition of stability. At the moment Owen Coyle’s stock is so high he is in with a shout of turning up at Anfield, sold as a 21st century Shankly. Coyle is impressive up close. The job he did at Burnley was top-class, the ruthlessness of his decision to leave mid-season an example of clear ambition.

At Bolton Coyle is up a gear. The club is ticking over nicely, the team developing. But what happens if there’s a slump? Will it be recalled what a sterling job he has done so far in his career, or will suppressed doubts resurface? This is the conundrum a hierarchy at any club faces. Picking a team that convinces in differing circumstances is one hard task. Picking a manager who can do that consistently is harder still. Believing in him when results slide is the hardest task of all. As Alex Ferguson knows, even as United possibly hammer home the last nail in Hodgson’s coffin this weekend.

Don't cry for Keane; he wouldn't want it

DO NOT weep for Roy Keane. He would not want it.

By the standards of most clubs, Keane was given time. Ipswich Town does not have a reputation for hiring and firing and reclusive owner Marcus Evans maintained that tradition. Stability is a practice and an ambition at Portman Road.

Do not weep for Roy Keane because the charm and charisma he can switch on in a room, the oblique sense of often self-deprecating humour, is part of the reason why he will always get a job. At some point in the next six to 12 months you can be sure that some owner, somewhere will think of Keane or encounter him and share the same fascination that propels the media circus in his wake.

Keane will be able to give his side of the story at both Sunderland and Ipswich. That will always be more convincing than the speculation that billows around him wherever he is.

Keane must have spoken to Evans in detail about his time on Wearside. The rapid rise followed by the dislocation, then the fall. He will have accepted his part in that – Keane moved his family to Suffolk in acknowledgement of its role in his end at Sunderland – and may have talked about other errors, large or small. When he talks calmly, Keane is a model of been-there, done-that wisdom.

A problem is that this public persona jars with reports back from the frontline of the training ground. There Keane can be happy-clappy, but also dark, forbidding and at times contrary. Players deemed good are left out, players slammed and isolated are then suddenly recalled. That creates an atmosphere. It's not too different elsewhere.

Brian Clough, Keane's manager-hero, was said to be similar but when it comes down to it Clough was a better spotter of players than Keane, than most in fact. That is a bottom-line judgment within football.

When he gives his side Keane may well point to a destabilising sale of Jon Walters last summer. But it did not hamper Ipswich at first and in September, sitting in a promotion spot, Keane was enthusiastic about the spirit forged in adversity. He accepted the changed economics at Portman Road and in return, just as they did in his first season when he went 16 games without a win, Ipswich held firm as thoughts of promotion turned to those of relegation.

The club did so because their manager was Roy Keane. It is the reason he will get another job, because he is Roy Keane.