Watch Liverpool

Posts Tagged ‘manager’

Anfield captain justifies Kenny Dalgish’s stance after Bolton debacle and insists the Reds are still challenging for all three of their pre-season targets

Steven Gerrard has the offer of an ambassador’s role from Liverpool but they are not spoiling him yet. The 31-year-old, along with the rest of Kenny Dalglish’s squad, was subject to another calm, composed but cutting critique before training at Melwood on Monday as the manager showed that two nights’ sleep had not lessened his disgust at their performance against Bolton. Backed into a corner and challenged to respond; it seems it was forever thus for Liverpool’s talismanic captain.

Manchester City’s arrival at Anfield for tonight’s Carling Cup semi-final second leg marks the start of a four-day period in which Liverpool could vanquish both Manchester clubs from domestic cup competition and book a first appearance at Wembley for 16 years. Or retreat into renewed self-doubt as City and United move further into the distance while hysteria attaches itself to Dalglish’s rebuilding work. There is no middle to squeeze at Liverpool.

Gerrard, of course, has seen it all before and having converted the penalty that separated the semi-finalists in the first leg, he will be the man Liverpool turn to for the way through once again. The difference in this potentially defining week, however, is that the most strident criticism of Liverpool came from their own manager, a man immersed in the traditions and expectations that he declared his team betrayed at the Reebok on Saturday night.

“It was definitely justified,” Gerrard admits. “When you put in a performance like we did as a group you expect criticism, especially from your manager. Kenny spoke in the dressing room after the game and on Monday before training. He wasn’t angry, he just said it as it was. He didn’t lose his rag or his control. He told individuals and us as a group that it wasn’t acceptable. As captain of the team that is down to me and he went through all of us.”

Gerrard does not dispute Dalglish’s claim that the City second leg contributed to the complacent showing at Bolton. “We didn’t need telling really. I knew at half-time and I knew after the game that that hadn’t been good enough. Maybe the lads had one eye on this and one eye on that. At the beginning of the season the big objective for this club was top four so if you look at it that way, Bolton is bigger than Manchester City.” He rejects outright, however, the idea that the 3-1 defeat represents an opportune wake-up call ahead of City and Saturday’s inflamed FA Cup fourth-round with Manchester United.

“There is no good time to perform like that when you play for this club,” he insists, the disdain clear in his voice. “You have to win every game. The people new to the club will appreciate and understand that a bit more after a performance like that. You can’t do it here. The fans won’t accept it, they don’t deserve it. It’s not allowed. Otherwise you get criticised by your manager, like we have all experienced. I have been here a long time and experienced days like that and the important thing is to move on from it fast. If we perform like that against Manchester City, there will be no Wembley trip.”

Dalglish insisted players would be moved on if the attitude at Bolton prevailed. His problem is that five of the team that started against Owen Coyle’s then bottom-placed team were his signings and Craig Bellamy, the veteran signed on a free, was the only one to impress. The £75m spent on Andy Carroll, Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing remains a weight upon the manager and, with the occasional exception from Henderson, poor value for Fenway Sports Group, the club’s owner.

Gerrard says only: “Those players know themselves. They know how they are playing. They know what form they are in. What I can say is that those players are working so hard to put in good performances. They are not giving up, they are not throwing the towel in, they are working day in, day out. The effort is there. Maybe they just need a little bit of luck, something to turn their way and they can go on a fine run. We all know those three players you have mentioned are good players.”

An outlay of over £100m in the past 12 months by Dalglish and Fenway, with £50m recouped from the sale of Fernando Torres alone, has not transformed Liverpool from a team hovering above the relegation zone when Roy Hodgson was sacked last January into convincing contenders for Champions League qualification. But they are where most expected them to be; competing for a top-four finish, playing far better football – Bolton being the most obvious exception – than in recent seasons and a home draw away from a first visit to Wembley since the 1996 FA Cup final. The murmurs of discontent about Dalglish, and not for his handling of the Luis Suárez controversy, have not escaped Gerrard.

“Our targets were to get into the top four and go on two long runs in the cup and it’s still possible. Why change? Why are we crying out for change?” he asks. “We’re six points off fourth and there are 16 games left. You’re not telling me that this team and the players we’ve got here are not capable of making that up? The sides who we are competing with aren’t on all-out consistent runs. Man United got beat 3-0 by Newcastle the other week, Chelsea drew with Norwich and Arsenal have lost their last three. Why isn’t it possible? Why are people crying out for change?

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all great here. We’ve got a fight on for fourth but we had a fight on at the start of the season, when we were telling people our aims for the season. Of course you go into every season wondering if you can get into the title race but at the moment we’re not in it and our realistic aim at the start was top four and two good long runs in the cup. At the end of this week we could be going to Wembley, we could be in the fifth round of the FA Cup and six points off fourth. The flip side of that is different but big weeks happen at big football clubs and this is a big week.”

And what would it mean to the Huyton-born midfielder to lead Liverpool out at Wembley? “Nothing,” he states. “But to lift the cup at Wembley would mean an awful lot. To get to Wembley is the target, to win it is the dream.”

Steven GerrardLiverpoolManchester CityAndy Hunter
guardian.co.uk

• Comments come after incident with Oldham player
• ‘We are deeply sorry for what happened,’ Dalglish said

Kenny Dalglish has used his programme notes to say Liverpool “will not tolerate” racism and discrimination in football. The Reds have been criticised their handling of Luis Suárez’s unsuccessful defence against allegations he racially abused Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. Last week the Oldham defender Tom Adeyemi was allegedly racially abused at Anfield by a fan, for which a man was later arrested.

“Whatever the outcome of that investigation we are deeply sorry for what happened,” Dalglish wrote in the programme for the match against Stoke City. “We do not want and will not tolerate racism or discrimination anywhere near football and certainly not anywhere near this football club.

“The club is blessed with a worldwide fanbase, made up of different nationalities and diverse cultures, all of whom come together as part of the Liverpool family. The club will continue its proud record of fighting all forms of discrimination.

“Past, present or future, it has no place at Anfield, in our club or in the game.. We will give any help we can to Tom, Oldham Athletic and the police to ensure this incident is dealt with properly.”

Captain Steven Gerrard echoed the sentiments of his manager, adding in his programme notes: “Such incidents have no place in society, in football or at LFC. As a football club we have always supported anti-racism initiatives and our fans are well-known for their sporting nature and good humour. Any other type of behaviour will not be tolerated.”

Kenny DalglishLiverpoolguardian.co.uk

Liverpool may be regretting their stance on the Luis Suárez racial abuse controversy after Friday’s incident involving Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi

The Luis Suárez T-shirts Liverpool wore at Wigan were always a bad idea, quite the worst attitude struck in a solidarity campaign that brought the club’s decision-making into question if not disrepute, and the sight of supporters wearing them at the next home game at Anfield came with a queasy sense of foreboding. As several black sportsmen pointed out in the aftermath of the Wigan game, unqualified support for a player who had admitted bringing the colour of an opponent’s skin into an argument on the pitch was at best a confused message and at worst a dangerous one.

It cannot be said with certainty that the fan responsible for the alleged racial abuse of Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi on Friday night at Anfield was wearing one of the Suárez gesture garments, though police conducting an investigation have witness statements that raise the possibility. But it now seems clear that Liverpool’s handling of the whole issue will come back to haunt them for the rest of the season. A backlash against Suárez is fully expected when the player returns from his eight-match ban, particularly if he plays against Manchester United, and Liverpool will have been bracing themselves for all manner of terrace taunts and insults in their away games in the meantime. What no one could have anticipated was the race issue erupting at Anfield so quickly after the events of the last month, almost literally blowing up in the club’s face through the actions of Liverpool supporters.

This is hugely embarrassing for a club that quite rightly prides itself on zero tolerance of racism, and issues a booming reminder of that stance over the public address system before every Anfield kick-off. Most Premier League clubs do something similar in making supporters aware that racist behaviour is now an arrestable as well as an ejectionable offence, though you rarely hear the ground rules enunciated so loudly and so clearly as you do at Liverpool. This is not because the club have had problems with bigotry in the past, but because the club understood the anti-racism message from the word go and chose to stand squarely behind it.

That is why the defence of Suárez has proved so divisive. Liverpool never apologised, when a conciliatory statement on day one might have taken much of the heat out of the situation, and never appeared to consider the possibility that their player might have been even slightly at fault. Even now Kenny Dalglish’s stance is that the club has been harshly treated for reasons that it is not possible to make public, while the player himself has offered a qualified apology that pointedly fails to include Patrice Evra and insists on his own innocence, despite an admission that he used the word “negro”. There is no need here to reopen the debate about the nuances of what that might mean when uttered in Spanish, the FA have formed their conclusions and acted accordingly, and Liverpool have grudgingly accepted the outcome. Suárez is serving his suspension, yet possibly due to the ungracious way in which Liverpool have reacted to a sentence that most people beyond Merseyside feel is severe but justified, a lingering sense of resentment appears to have filled the void.

How else to explain why the Kop, with an enviable reputation for being both one-eyed yet fair-minded, should come to be sullied by apparently needless accusations of taunting a lower-league player because of the colour of his skin. The Kop is bigger than that, or should be. Liverpool are bigger than that, and used to be. It would be easy to blame Dalglish for all this, because his surly suspicion of outsiders and prickly reaction to any form of criticism has been on prominent display in the months following Evra’s initial complaint in mid-October, though no one could possibly accuse the Liverpool manager of promoting racist behaviour or being anything but horrified at the damage a tiny minority of fans at the Oldham game have done to the image of his club.

All the same, actions have consequences, and though the T-shirts at Wigan were generously viewed in some quarters as Liverpool circling the wagons and going on the defensive, the dangers of going it alone and disagreeing so markedly with the rest of football opinion can now be seen a little more clearly. It has already been noted that Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United seemed to act with greater knowledge and professionalism. As soon as Evra made his manager aware of his grievance, Ferguson took him to the referees’ room and made sure he obtained written statements. That done, Ferguson was content to let the FA deal with the case and abide by their instruction not to discuss the matter in public while deliberations were being made. Liverpool and Dalglish took a different course, and perhaps now wish they had not. If there is a lesson for football to learn from the past few weeks it is that the issue of race cannot be dismissed lightly. Any complaint should be taken seriously, investigated thoroughly and played by the book, not interpreted as an attack on the club or the integrity of its player.

That may seem obvious, but tribalism in football supporters is alarmingly easy to ignite. At Wigan a couple of weeks ago (why is it always Wigan?), a small minority of Chelsea supporters could be heard singing the Anton Ferdinand song (”You know what you are”). Ferdinand was nowhere in sight, of course, as Chelsea were not playing QPR; it was just the fans’ way of expressing their support for John Terry. Warped logic, if you like, but once accusations start to fly and reputations are defended, these particular disputes take on a life of their own.

One hesitates even so to link the unpleasantness at Anfield directly to the Suárez case, to guess at the motivation of Adeyemi’s alleged abuser(s) or to blame anyone within the club for the irresponsible actions of a spectator or two, though it seems fair to suggest that without the Suárez business it would probably never have happened. Maybe not all T-shirt wearers are really Liverpool supporters. Maybe the Kop was infiltrated by malign troublemakers from the other end of the East Lancs Road. But this time it simply cannot be Patrice Evra’s fault.

LiverpoolLuis SuárezRace issuesPaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk