Liverpool FC Forum

by **jonnymac1979** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 12:08 pm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport....o31.xml

A year's sabbatical has proved more than enough for Gerard Houllier. ''How do I feel?'' answered the new coach of Olympique Lyonnais, rhetorically. "It's a mixture of pleasure and excitement.'' Given that his task at that particular moment was helping Jean-Michel Aulas, president of the four-time French champions, to deal with the increasingly detested transfer tactics of Chelsea, he might have added ''spiced with a dash of fury that Michael Essien is being lured away from us on the eve of the season'', but he did not. Nothing seems capable of daunting Houllier these days. Remember how he even appeared, smiling bravely, at the Liverpool press conference called to announce his own dismissal. So the challenge of improving Lyon's top-of-the-tree team while trying to compensate for the loss of their leading player is hardly going to keep him awake at nights.

''It's bad news for Lyon if Michael goes to Chelsea,'' he conceded. ''There's no disguising that, because he's an outstanding player. I'm in a position to say that because I've worked with Steven Gerrard and they are in the same class, albeit with differences of emphasis. You don't have many players who can go from a defensive position to the opposition's box and score. Essien scored nine goals last season, five in the Champions League, without taking penalties or free-kicks. I'd compare him with Roy Keane at his peak, or Michael Ballack, or Frank Lampard - and all of their teams have won the big prizes. Steven Gerrard, who is a prime example of that type of player, has just won the Champions League. So they are a rare and precious breed. There are only five or, at the most, 10 of them in the whole of Europe. That's why the price for Essien is high. If Chelsea don't like it, they can always leave him with us!''

He knew it was a forlorn hope and the Ghanaian midfielder, having made his farewell appearances for Lyon during the Peace Cup tournament in South Korea, was not in the party who travelled to Le Mans for today's opening French League match on the banana-skin ground of a promoted club with little to lose. Although Lyon ended their Far East jaunt dismally, being swept aside by Tottenham in the final, they were more like their true selves in winning 4-1 at Auxerre in the French equivalent of the Community Shield last Wednesday and for Houllier there was the further encouragement of seeing his new centre forward, John Carew, not only score a hat-tick but earn the penalty that produced the other goal. ''We tried to take Carew to Liverpool two or three years ago,'' he recalled, ''but the fee Valencia were asking was too high.''

You can seldom spend long in Houllier's company without the subject of Liverpool arising. There is a saying that the only sure way of leaving a football club is to become its manager, but Houllier's leaving of Liverpool was purely physical; he did say at that extraordinary press conference that he would remain an ardent fan, and he has been as good as his word. Although a few eyebrows were raised by the disclosure that he had celebrated with Rafa Benitez and the team in the Istanbul dressing-room after their Champions League triumph over Milan, his own account of the incident is disarming: ''It was one of the best moments of my life when I saw the reaction of the players. I'd been outside with my brother Serge, who is also well known to the lads, but I was feeling a bit apprehensive because, after all, it was they and Rafael Benitez who had won the trophy - the only thing I had contributed was the fourth-place finish the previous season that got them into the competition. But, when Benitez saw me though the open door, he was really good. He called me in and it was great that the players wanted to share the moment with me - there were quite a few hugs - because you cannot live with people for four, five or six years without becoming attached to them and I was so proud of their performance that night. There were no mixed feelings at all - I'd always known that at some stage I'd have to leave the club. But I never fell out of love with Liverpool for a moment, never bore a grudge. I'm a fan for life.''

After he lost his job there, Houllier became an expert analyst for the French television channel that covers the Premiership, so he spent most of his weekends in England. He claimed - though it remains to be proved - that a season on the other side of the great divide between football and the media had given him a sense of perspective. About the futility of paranoia over refereeing decisions, for example. ''I've seen that there are things you can control and things you cannot control. You have to be strong enough to overcome your frustrations.''

Mistakes were made and, but for one by the official who handled Lyon's second leg against PSV Eindhoven last season, Houllier argued, the French club would have reached the Champions League semi-finals. Such are the standards, attained under Paul Le Guen, to which Houllier must aspire. But many French critics wonder why young Le Guen quit when he had nowhere else to go: had he sensed only decline ahead? ''There is a danger,'' said Houllier, ''that, after winning four titles on the trot, a team can actually acquire an excess of confidence. We need to acquire a bit of humility and start afresh. It's a new chapter. Paris St Germain, Marseille and Monaco will be stronger and a new challenger can always appear, like Lille did last year.''

Clearly the change has been as good as a rest for Houllier. ''It was good to have a break for four or five months,'' he said, ''but after that I got fed up being out of the game.'' The wait for the right offer ended when Aulas - a man whose worst enemies admit he has done a marvellous job in building Lyon - tired of his search for a distinguished foreigner and went for the former coach of the French national squad. Houllier had little hesitation in accepting, even though he had enjoyed aspects of his media work. It was not just that English football is his favourite. ''It is a different scene. The journalists go from one game to another, linked by their work, whereas we only see our counterparts twice a season. The working life of the coach can be quite a lonely one.''

But irresistible. After Houllier had praised his players' condition, pointing out that they had triumphed at Auxerre less than 48 hours after returning from the Far East, I reminded him that it was after a summer partly spent in Korea - extending his season's duty at the Confederations Cup - that he suffered the rupture of the aorta that nearly killed him. The best part of four years on, he looks fitter. ''I feel completely different,'' he said. ''I was overworked at that time.'' He still has plenty on his plate. But that sense of perspective should help.

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Houllier opens up a new chapter - By patrick barclay

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