. But it pretty much sums up why we haven't won the league in over a decade.http://www.setanta.com/content....ef=rss&
The Fall of the Anfield Empire
Liverpool take on Birmingham on Saturday, LIVE on Setanta Ireland, in a clash that they must surely win if they are to keep a Champions League spot in their sights, and stave off the alarming decline of a once-great club.
To children of the 70s and 80s the sight of Liverpool Football Club struggling in fifth place in the league, cut well adrift of the top sides, is a reality that's almost impossible to comprehend. Worse still for Reds fans is facing up to prospect of being beaten for fourth spot by their less inspiring but more industrious rivals from the other side of Stanley Park - and the financial calamity that that might represent.
People who grew up watching Liverpool steamroll sides in England and across the continent watch on in bemusement these days as the Anfield club are humbled by sides like Southampton, Bolton and this weekend's opponents, Birmingham.
The reasons for the fall from grace are myriad, but five distinct themes emerge in an examination of the fifteen years since Liverpool last claimed top-flight honours and, ahead of their clash with Brum on Saturday, Setanta takes a close look at the decline of the Merseyside Empire.
Graeme Souness
The seeds of the current malaise were sown following Kenny Dalglish's resignation in 1990 and the decision of the Liverpool board to appoint an old boy to replace him - Graeme Souness. The Scotsman came to Anfield off the back of a successful spell north of the border at Rangers, but his transfer policy and behaviour ended up alienating all but the most loyal of Reds fans.
Liverpool had been regarded by their own fans, and grudgingly by their rivals, as a team whose success was founded on playing the beautiful game. Souness apparently had little regard for this history and set about getting rid of talented ball-players in favour of hatchet men. To the horror of the Kop, he rapidly sold off players like Steve Staunton and Ray Houghton, who went on to prove their worth elsewhere, and brought in the likes of Julian Dicks, Paul Stewart, Torben Piechnik, Mark Walters and Michael Thomas (and shall we mention Istvan Kozma?). In fairness, decent signings like Mark Wright and Dean Saunders were injured as often as fit but if not, would it really have made much difference to Souness' reign?
The failure to groom replacements for the old guard gradually, as Arsenal's Wenger has done with Campbell, Toure and Lauren coming in for Adams, Dixon and Keown, was Souness' first major mistake. Liverpool left it far too late before adequately replacing Alan Hansen and Steve Nicol and only came across a decent centre-half pairing years later, the bedrock for any great team, with Sami Hyypia and Stephane Henchoz.
Spice Boys
Following Souness' departure the club entered a new exciting era, but ultimately one of under achievement, that was defined by a small coterie of players who were immediately labelled the 'Spice Boys' by the media. The leading Spice Boys were Jason McAteer, Stan Collymore, Phil Babb and Robbie Fowler. These boys seemed at times to be more at home on the catwalk than on the hallowed turf of Anfield and the breakdown in discipline, abetted by a nice-guy manager in Roy Evans who simply couldn't maintain a decent level of discipline, saw a culture of glorious failure develop at the club. Failure for the Kop was never glorious and the belief grew outside the club that the players were increasingly running the team.
Evans never addressed the inevitable disciplinary issues that arise when you have a group of young rich players at any club and the day the Liverpool team took to the Wembley pitch in cream designer suits it was clear that something very peculiar was going on at Anfield.
And all the while, an expensive array of players were signed; John Scales, Phil Babb, Neil Ruddock, Jason McAteer, Vegard Heggem, Bjorn Kvarme, but with no real success.
The men between the sticks
Bruce Grobelaar remains an Anfield legend and his importance in Liverpool mythology has grown in the years since his retirement. No manager has ever adequately replaced the gaping hole that Grobelaar left behind and any team with ambitions to win the league title needs a class goalkeeper. When United were dominating the Premiership, Schmeichel was key. When Arsenal were winning trophies in England and in Europe David Seaman was as important as anybody and with Petr Cech between the posts Chelsea look unbeatable. Liverpool have tried David James, Sander Westerveld, Jerzy Dudek and Chris Kirkland, all of whom have either been injury prone, inconsistent or just plain useless. At key moments the man given the Liverpool keeper's gloves has made crucial mistakes that have cost the club vital points and hindered the forlorn hopes of securing the title.
Dave Beasant, recalling the great Brian Clough's views, said of a goalkeeper's role in a championship winning side: "I always remember Cloughie admitting that Peter Shilton was the final missing piece in his great Nottingham Forest team of the 1980s.
"That's probably the best way of putting it. You will never win the Premiership with a bad goalkeeper, but a great goalkeeper can be the missing factor." By that measure, the failure over a decade to bring in a great keeper is one of the central reasons why Liverpool have so often been found wanting in the title race.
Houllier and transfer snafus
While all managers make mistakes in the transfer market, Liverpool's recent mistakes have been all too frequent and far too costly. Whether it was spending 11,000,000 on Emile Heskey or 10,000,000 on El Hadj Diouf, Liverpool's big transfer deals have not brought the success that the outlay promised.
Where the best managers' earn their money is unearthing cheap talent and making it great; witness Alex Ferguson's purchases of Eric Cantona and Peter Schemichel or Arsene Wenger's spending on Nicolas Anelka and Patrick Vieira. Contrast those dealings with the equivalent Gerard Houllier deals that brought Bruno Cheyrou, Igor Biscan, Vladimir Smicer and Salif Diao to Anfield, and the reason why Liverpool are in a financial strait-jacket are clear.
All in all, Houllier's high level of spending on a cabal of squad players that made no difference to the overall quality of the team, was what put paid to his chances of winning a league title with 'Pool. Whether his stunted style of play would have taken the Reds to the league title if only he had bought proven quality instead of deadwood is a moot point - but remember, he did finish in second place before the wheels came off, and he looked for a long spell to be building a title-winning side. However, frittering away money on uninspiring players, as well as having a one-dimensional approach to tactics that simply couldn't change, meant that when the slump arrived, Liverpool hadn't the players or the manager to be able to turn it on and turn it around. And it all left Rafa Benitez with very little money to rebuild when he arrived.
Financial failure
Liverpool are a massive international brand, yet while Manchester United, Arsenal and now Chelsea are big players on the global marketing stage, Liverpool lag well behind. That has left them financially hindered as they have slipped behind main rivals United in terms of stadium size, overseas fan base and merchandising. While most fans find United's sale of low rise ladies underwear, babygros and seven different strips a season distasteful, they do bring in the funds that allow United to move for players of the calibre of Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney.
Liverpool's failure to recognise the potential for their brand name in the early 1990s means they are now playing financial catch-up with United in a race they can never win. It is commonplace now to regard United as the biggest brand name in English football but if Liverpool had recognised the value of their name and their history at the same stage that United had, they might not find themselves going cap in hand to the Thai Prime Minister.
It's with this in mind that the L4 consortium are angling to take over the club. But takeover talks have been dragging on for far too long at the club, resulting in only 6million being available for Benitez in the January transfer window. Nobody wants to think about where Liverpool could be this time next year if Anfield chiefs David Moores and Rick Parry don't sort a deal before the summer to free some funds for the new manager to bring in some more players. This is the key to Liverpool progressing or not.
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