by JC_81 » Fri Apr 07, 2006 11:44 am
It's a topic that has cropped up on a number of occasions on here but it's still interesting to see the range of different views that our fans have of Houllier.
I look at it this way. Our club was a shambles at the end of the Evans era. Off the pitch the players did as they liked and on the pitch they only played when they felt like it. Souness bought a lot of rubbish and arguably that's where the slide started, but Evans was not blameless, he made a lot of buys that didn't work out either and how many years in a row did he fail to sort out our centre half and goalkeeper position? A blind man could see that's where our weaknesses were.
Houllier started well. He was the disciplinarian the club needed and his willingness to release England Internationals James and Ince for nominal fees showed he would take no nonsense. Mobile phones were banned from the training ground, training was taken more seriously and he immediately sorted out our defence - Westerveld, Henchoz, Hyypia and Hamann became the defensive diamond on which the team was built. While we converted to a less attractive counter-attacking style, it's what we needed to do imo, previously our team didn't know how to defend.
For the first few seasons we made steady progress, the football was poor but we were hard to beat and there was a fighting spirit not previously present, most fans seemed satisfied we were moving forward. Then came the treble and then a league finish above United the season after. This was the crucial stage, we had gone as far as the counter-attacking style would take us, Houllier just didn't know it.
The next season we moved backwards and failed to qualify for the champions league, the team started to lose confidence in Houllier. His excuses became more and more frequent for bad results and eventually the fans lost trust in him. His decision not to sign Duff and Anelka for the same cash he spent on Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou basically sealed his fate.
In his last season he took the shackles off the team and abandoned the defensive tactics. The trouble was Henchoz had badly lost form and he was trying to convert Biscan to CB, which few people ever saw working. Subsequently we lost a lot of goals that season and only finished in a CL spot because Newcastle finished the season so badly.
In summary Houllier was the type of manager we needed at the time. If he'd left after 3 years he'd have left as a hero. The truth is though he stayed too long. I remember thinking at the time that he wasn't the same after the heart surgery, not as ruthless, he let his players away with more. Ultimately though it was the money he spent on players who weren't good enough that was the last straw. He left the club with a better infrastructure, the youth academy and a better set of players imo, but at what cost? Financially we must be far worse off for Houllier's reign. Sadly at the end of Houllier's spell we were no closer to winning the Premiership than when he arrived.
