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The once, current and possibly future king brings a straightforward, positive team mentality back to Anfield

For two decades English football has changed at dazzling pace, but for 90 minutes here we were back in 1991, when Kenny Dalglish posted his last win as Liverpool manager. On a bad pitch against macho opponents, a leader pulled from the fog of history revived the ancient Anfield virtues of verve and togetherness.

Seven minutes before the end of a restorative 3-0 win a low rumble of “Dalglish, Dalglish” started in the red sector of Molineux. The rescuer raised both arms. His players were about to concoct a 30-pass move that brought the previously hibernating Fernando Torres his second goal of the day. For a time this was a throwback fixture, a test of intestinal fortitude on a winter pudding that evolved, as so many Liverpool games did 20 or 30 years ago, into a display of superior pedigree.

Still wearing one of those duvet coats that real football men favour, Dalglish hasn’t altered much since stress drove him out of Anfield in 1991, a couple of games after a 3-1 home win over Everton, in February of that year: his last flourish as the heir to the bootroom heritage. That pained departure opened a void that Dalglish has now returned to fill. The third of his three league title wins was Liverpool’s last, in 1990, and the road since has been one of near-misses, false dawns and crises, provoked mainly by takeovers and instability.

“He’s enjoying a warmth and support that Roy didn’t have” Mick McCarthy, the Wolves manager said, in support of Roy Hodgson, who persuaded the game’s outstanding player, Raul Meireles, to join from Porto in the summer. “Roy Hodgson was the key because he worked so hard to get me here,” Meireles said before the change of manager, but Dalglish will yield the credit now for relocating the Portugal midfielder to an advanced role behind Torres, where Steven Gerrard also likes to hunt.

To wait two decades for a win at the club he embodies and which he wished he had never left has been a torment to Dalglish but now he stares from the dug-out with a good chance of reclaiming the job beyond May. To be catapulted back to the pre-Premier League era must have been dizzying? “My missus said that,” Dalglish told us. “She said – I’m sleeping with the Liverpool manager again, after 20 years.”

Hodgson’s successor has veered away from complexity and introspection in favour of the simpler values he absorbed in his reign as Liverpool’s finest player. “He just told us to trust each other, trust ourselves,” said Pepe Reina, the goalkeeper. With confidence slipping, Dalglish saw the need to bring the team’s under-achievers back up to the required standards, and used encouragement, his own charisma and a more positive tactical outlook to restore faith in and around the first-team squad.

“At the moment the feeling is of elation,” he said. “Everybody’s happy, because they’ve got the sensation they played as a team. It was only comprehensive at the end because of the hard work, determination and effort they put in throughout the game. They got the reward. I don’t think it was a phantom result. It’s a great credit to the players that they’ve kept their belief and their ambition to win football matches. They showed that today – because that was a really hard game.”

Torres and Meireles inspired this rare away win. El Niño, who is coming out of his trance, went mano a mano with Richard Stearman, the Wolves centre-back, and probed for space while Meireles orchestrated the best of Liverpool’s passing, ahead of Lucas Leiva and Christian Poulsen, who were noticeably more effective.

“It wasn’t just his goals, it was the work rate he put in,” Dalglish said of Torres. “The goal last week gave him a bit of heart, and Meireles is a good footballer. Coming into the Premier League in your first season it’s not easy to pick up the pace of it. Missing pre-season training with the club isn’t doing him any favours either. It was great for Christian Poulsen, too, who made a solid contribution until around the hour mark, when he started to tire because he hasn’t had many games. Raul, since we’ve been here, has been very impressive.

“They showed they’ve got a lot of pride in themselves and pride in the football club. The way they’ve responded to Sammy Lee, Steve Clarke and myself has been a great credit to them. They couldn’t have worked much harder than they did today.”

For every Liverpool disciple there is the fear that Torres has woken up to earn himself a move more than to impress Dalglish. But while “very amicable” conversations continue between manager and owners on the subject of reinforcements there remains a hope of persuading Torres not to scoot.

Modern football management is often cast as a mysterious compound of science, politics and psychology, but Dalglish made it seem much less esoteric, reconnecting points 20 years apart by reminding Liverpool who and what they are: or were, when he was last king.

Kenny DalglishLiverpoolPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk

Two goals from Fernando Torres and one from Raul Meireles, of which the vintage Liverpool would have been proud, gave the messiah they call Kenny Dalglish his first win of the second coming.

Wolves’s victory at Anfield in December put one of the nails in Roy Hodgson’s managerial coffin, but any hopes they nurtured of a home and away double were stone dead by the 50th minute, when Meireles volleyed a spectacular second goal into Wayne Hennessey’s top-left corner from 25 yards.

In search of a clean sheet, which has become a Liverpool rarity, Dalglish overlooked Joe Cole in favour of a defensive midfielder Christian Poulsen, eschewing 4–4–2 in favour of a 4–2–3–1 formation.

Wolves arrived in buoyant mood after beating Chelsea the last time they played at home in the league and drubbing Doncaster 5-0 in the FA Cup in midweek, but they never threatened to scale those heights, and had the look of relegation candidates throughout.

Liverpool’s nerves were evident when José Reina put successive goalkicks out of play, but they fashioned nearly all the chances, and had their reward after 36 minutes when, with Wolves appealing for offside, Meireles squared the ball in from the right for Torres to beat Hennessey from six yards. The offside claim was invalid, Zubar playing the move onside.

Wolves’ first decent goal attempt was delayed until the 39th minute, when Reina flew to his left to deny Doyle. If they hoped it would spark an improvement, they were wrong. Five minutes into the second half Meireles scored his “worldy”, as the players call such classy gems, and that was that as far as the points were concerned.

Wolves huffed and puffed and Steven Fletcher tested Reina from distance, but it was Liverpool who scored again in the 90th minute, when Torres, set up by Dirk Kuyt, thumped the ball home from six yards.

Premier LeagueWolverhampton WanderersLiverpoolKenny DalglishJoe Lovejoyguardian.co.uk

• ‘The first time was brilliant but this time is better’
• Restoring confidence a priority for Liverpool manager

It may only last five months and there will be no double this time, yet Kenny Dalglish has described his Liverpool return as the finest job of his career as he attempts to improve their embarrassing away form at Wolverhampton Wanderers today.

Liverpool have won only once on the road in the Premier League this season and suffered their eighth away defeat in Dalglish’s first league game in charge at Blackpool.

Unlike 1985, when a then 34-year-old Dalglish replaced Joe Fagan in the wake of the Heysel disaster and won a league and FA Cup double in his debut season, the 59-year-old now finds himself working on the fragile confidence of a team four points above the relegation zone.

Having feared the opportunity to manage Liverpool again had gone forever when Roy Hodgson was favoured last summer, Dalglish admits his second chance means more than any other appointment in his illustrious career.

“This is the best job I’ve ever been offered,” said Dalglish, confirmed as a candidate for the post full-time this summer by the chairman, Tom Werner, this week. “Why? Because it is Liverpool Football Club. The first time was brilliant but this time is even better. I was only a baby when I was in charge last time, now I’m a granddad, so I was running out of time. It was the best offer I could ever have had.

“It is very seldom you get offered a job and are fortunate enough to have most things in place. For me, coming in here was the best offer I have had in my life and I wasn’t going to turn that down. There are problems that need to be solved but I wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t any problems. Hopefully we can solve them.”

Attempts to improve the Liverpool squad with the signing of Uruguay international striker Luis Suárez are proving as complicated as Fenway Sports Group, the club’s owners, anticipated when they targeted Ajax’s captain for this transfer window.

The clubs remain poles apart in their valuation of the 23-year-old and so, for Dalglish, a more immediate concern is solving an away record that he admits has become a psychological problem for the Liverpool squad.

Mick McCarthy’s team hastened Hodgson’s exit as Liverpool manager with a 1-0 win at Anfield just over three weeks ago and Dalglish admitted: “We wouldn’t be disrespectful to Wolves to say that, if we are right mentally, then we are going to win. They are tough opposition.

“But looking at ourselves, there will be a psychological element to it and we’ve got to overcome that. Everybody’s got to overcome that and we will do our best to help the players through it.

“A victory would be pretty handy. I know it’s not acceptable but they did win at Bolton, so they are capable of winning away from home. They’ve just got to do it more often. The only thing missing from the players is a bit of confidence. I don’t think there’s any lack of determination, lack of pride or anything. They just need a bit of belief.”

Steven Gerrard serves the final game of a three-match suspension at Molineux and, despite continued weaknesses in defence, Dalglish believes the Liverpool rearguard are not solely responsible for the poor away form that has dogged the squad for over a year.

“The defence starts with Fernando,” he said. “Everybody needs to chip in, it’s not just the defence. I know this may sound repetitive but we could do with getting a bounce of the ball going our way for a change. That would be helpful.”

Kenny DalglishLiverpoolAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk