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Liverpool's
Success Should Be Your Wake Up Call, Freddy! |
29 May 2005
 Firstly,
congratulations to Liverpool FC on deservedly winning the Champions
League. Secondly, I'm jealous as hell and thirdly, I bloody well hope
Freddy Shepherd was watching. I was and what I saw was a transformed
club enriched by the expertise and skills of their foreign manager,
the very amiable Rafa Benitez.
When Liverpool left the pitch at St. James' Park back in the first
week of March with their collective heads bowed having lost the game
1-0 in a fairly mundane spectacle, I along with 53,000 others had
witnessed one of the worst Liverpool sides seen at the Old Gallowgate
in living memory.
They were truly awful! Made all the more remarkable given that we
ourselves were no great shakes that day either. In fact, based on
those 90 minutes alone, they had as many problems as we did if not
more it seemed and there was very little to separate the two clubs
at the time I thought.
Both were a million miles off the top three of Chelsea, Arsenal and
Manchester United. Both had squads full of poor to average players
(and still do). And both had managers who in their first season in
charge were struggling with the expectations and demands placed on
their shoulders by impatient and expectant fans used to seeing better.
In Liverpool's case, much better.
Deep down however I knew that Liverpool were heading in the right
direction and that it was just a case of when, not if, they would
start to see the benefits of a change in management. A change brought
about despite the previous incumbent having won numerous trophies
and having just clinched 4th spot no less. Their route into the Champions
League and over wor lot too...
Newcastle on the other hand seem to be at a cross-roads. And it doesn't
look like we'll make any great strides further forward in the near
future either, not for a very long time anway. Not unless attitudes
and mentalities change at the very top, I'm afraid.
Since that match the two respective clubs have shot off at different
ends of the spectrum altogether. Newcastle were humiliated in two
Cup competitions and have progressively gotten worse while Liverpool
have closed the gap on the top three with one momentous win on foreign
soil. That's football for you. May 2004 only 4 points separated the
two clubs. March 2005 only 1 goal separated the two clubs.
And now, just two months later?
Now the proud name of Newcastle United is synonymous with the words
'laughing stock' where as the proud name of the Anfield side is once
again synonymous with the word 'greats'.
Make no mistake about it - winning the Champions League in the long
run will be of greater benefit to Liverpool than winning the Premiership.
As a League team, they are average, their inconsistent and poor season
reflects this. Indeed, they aren't much better than our own team in
that respect. But for all their failures in the League, the are the
No.1 team in Europe at the moment. United didn't even qualify for
Europe!
Furthermore their incredible success in Istanbul and the manner in
which it was achieved has catapulted their status home and abroad
to new heights. Their star shot further into the ethos where we can
only stare on in wonder at, while our own fades.
Already one of the biggest club's in the world with the finest C.V
of any English team, add the riches earned from their run in the Champions
League (anywhere between £20-30m), the new found confidence
and feel good factor sweeping around the club like loved up hippies
around a camp fire, the lure and appeal in attracting players to a
side that bears the name 'European Champions' and the belief in their
manager who has delivered such a great achievement despite being handicapped
by injuries, the language barrier, lack of funds in comparison with
others and an average squad to pick and choose from, and they can
only get better. And they will. Because they have a great manager
in Rafa, one of Europe's finest coaches. A foreigner.
When the ill-timed decision came to sack Sir Bobby Robson, we chose
British and I think the two contrasting fortunes at both club's since,
shows in our respective choice of manager. Or more significantly their
nationality. Liverpool chose a continental Champion with a proven
pedigree on the biggest stage of them all - Europe. We chose a home
grown chump with a pedigree chump record. A manager who has made a
dogs dinner of all but a few of his previous jobs in one form or another
and will almost certainly do the same at Newcastle.
But lets not use the success of Liverpool and Benitez to criticise
the Scot. That would be unfair and wrong. Souness would have been
a mug to turn down the Toon job. He is at fault for many of our current
woes of course but not to blame entirely.
No, those who dictate the managerial policy at the club are to blame
because they didn't have the knowledge, foresight and balls to go
foreign when those closer to home all screamed out poor or average,
and that's just the managers that turned us down!
Firemen get their hands burnt all the time but they go back into the
flames. It's their job. And it is the job of Freddy Shepherd and Co.
to appoint the best possible man for the job to keep the good name
Newcastle United apace with the others. Regardless of past experiences.
Regardless of nationality.
And they have failed, and miserably so. Their insular outlook on all
things football have seen to it that those mere 4 points this time
last year may as well be 4,000 points as I write. That's how far ahead
Liverpool are now. That's how far we have fallen behind 12 months
on.
It is no fluke or coincidence that the top managers in the Premiership
are foreign. And as much as the Football Association and League Manager's
Association like to crow over their various management courses, foreign
managers will always succeed where English/British managers fail.
In Europe.
That's why the FA chose a Swede to manage the national team. Why Chelsea
appointed Jose Mourinho. Why Tottenham brought in Jaques Santini and
then Martin Jol. Why Arsenal brought in Arsene Wenger and why Manchester
United's next manager will almost certainly be foreign.
And so must Newcastle's next victim. Freddy Shepherd has to forget
about this Geordie nonsense and appoint a manager with a proven track
record on the European stage because that's where a club like United,
as he is so often quick to point out, not only needs to be, but also
needs to compete - in every way imaginable. From training to dietary
methods. From scouting to buying players. From playing keep ball to
winning cynically.
Looking at the current crop of English and British talent on the managerial
scene that a club like Newcastle could possibly attract or prize away,
none in particular stand out and they are much the same as far as
I'm concerned with little or nothing to choose between any of them,
really. And for that reason and that reason only, Souness should be
handed time to rid the club of ill-discipline, replenish the squad
and to leave the club in good shape for his eventual successor.
A foreigner, Freddy. Not Alan Shearer, not Steve Bruce,
Sam Allardyce or David O'Leary, but a manager who knows
how to play the game European style with a proven track record at
that level.
Against all the odds, with an average squad riddled with injuries
and up against one of the best teams in the world in AC Milan, Liverpool
won the biggest club prize of them all. And who would have thought?
Rick Parry and his fellow Board of Directors for one. That's why they
appointed Benitez.
Well done Liverpool.
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