Houllier: Re-examined

[Warning: This is an essay! I will probably continue to edit this piece.]

Houllier’s reign can be split into two periods – three years of success followed by two years of failure – Chris Bascombe, Liverpool Echo May 24th 2004.

The above statement is one that I want to re-examine particularly because it sums up how I evaluated Houllier’s tenure as Liverpool manager around the time of his sacking in 2004 and I believe it reflects the views of the majority of Liverpool supporters. So many times, I have heard people suggest that the man never truly recovered from the illness that almost claimed his life in 2001, that this somehow affected his judgement and he was never the same manager again.

It’s an understandable conclusion to draw given that prior to the illness, he seemed to be getting most things right and afterwards (pretty much immediately) he seemed to be getting most things wrong. The common opinion seems to be that after returning from illness, his tactics, team selection and judgement in the transfer market were inferior to the standards set previously while the man himself appeared to display a sense of paranoia and began spouting verbal diarrhoea in a way that he did not before the illness.

Can the line that splits the successful Houllier period and unsuccessful period be drawn on 13th October 2001 – the day Houllier was hospitalised – or is the situation perhaps not as black and white as some people think? Could it be that there was no line at all – that we, in fact, had the same Houllier all along?

In this piece, I will look at the main things Houllier is perceived to have done wrong following his return from illness and consider whether there is evidence that his judgement deteriorated or whether these 'mistakes' were symptomatic of his overall performance as manager including before the illness.

Before that, I want to examine the statement of Chris Bascombe’s above. Did Houllier really preside over three successful years and two years of failure?

Three Years of Success

The first argument against that statement is that Houllier held the title of manager for six years, not five. He is often and understandably excused his debut season as it began with the farce of him sharing management responsibility with Roy Evans. However, Roy had quit by early November and Houllier was sole manager for the remaining 5 months of the season. Liverpool were still at that time in the UEFA Cup and FA Cup and had 26 League games remaining in which to improve from their position of 8th in the League Table (not 12th as Phil Thompson claimed in his autobiography). As it happened, Houllier managed just two more fixtures in each of the cups prior to elimination and improved the League position by one place to 7th.

Clearly it would be harsh to crucify Houllier for the failures of that campaign. The squad contained Evans’ players, not Houllier’s and the difficult transitional period under the new manager had been made more difficult by the board’s failure to remove the previous manager before appointing his replacement. However, there is plenty of evidence that Houllier hindered rather than helped the progress of the team during this particular campaign. After all, virtually the same squad had finished third in the previous campaign before Houllier’s appointment. While the consensus had been that Evans had taken the team as far as he could and was incapable of leading a sustained title challenge, no one thought it imminent that the team was about to drop to mid-table mediocrity. Suddenly Houllier was telling us of his “five-year plan” to improve this side sufficiently for it to challenge for the title. Should a team that finish 3rd in 1996, 4th in 1997 and 3rd again in 1998 really need 5 years to improve sufficiently to compete for 1st place? How did the Frenchman get us to stop talking of final pieces in jigsaws to celebrating a 4th placed finish in 1999-2000? The answer is that his team underachieved so gloriously in 1998-99 that any improvement felt like an achievement.

It’s not as if Houllier was powerless in 1998-99. There was no transfer window in place at this time. We all knew we were light-weight in defence. Houllier signed Rigobert Song... No impact. We knew we lacked consistency and a bit of steel in midfield. Houllier signed Jean Michel Ferri... and played him twice from the bench. Meanwhile, Houllier seemed set on alienating the players he had inherited ahead of shipping out most of the established first team regulars in the next two summers.
The “five-year plan” was an ingenious piece of propaganda by Gerard. Not only did it buy him time in the job but it effectively laid the blame for the failings of 1998-99 at the feet of Roy Evans. “This is the mess he’s left me to work with” Houllier seemed to say. And if we’re honest, we fell for it.

After a summer of heavy investment in 1999, results improved and a fourth place finish was achieved in 1999-2000. Compared with 7th the previous campaign, this appeared to be a massive achievement and Houllier was quick to hail the improvement in League position as evidence of progress. In reality, this was still a place lower than Evans’ average League position over his final three full seasons as sole manager. Liverpool had missed out on 3rd place and Champions League qualification by 2 points having failed to win (or score in) any of their final 5 games. One win from home games against Leicester and Southampton or the final away game against Bradford would have secured the third Champions League spot. This season was an improvement on a terrible previous season but to call it a success (with early exits in both domestic cups) is overstating things.

No one can argue that 2000-01 was not a successful season. Three trophies were won and Champions League qualification was secured for the first time in the Premiership era. The third placed finish was an improvement on fourth from the previous campaign and there were plenty of highlights including home and away League wins over Everton and Man Utd. We can debate the luck Houllier’s team rode on its way to winning the Worthington Cup, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup but history shows they were won.

2001-02 was also a success of sorts. For the first time under Gerard Houllier, Liverpool mounted a genuine title challenge although ultimately finishing above Manchester United (for the first and only time to date in the Premiership era) was not enough to win the title. This was also the season in which Gerard suffered his illness and was missing for 5 months. Houllier left the team in seventh place in the League. On his return, Phil Thompson handed back a team that immediately went top after winning 1-0 at home to Chelsea. The question is, how much was the title charge down to Houllier given it only materialised after his absence and ultimately extinguished following his return? How much was Houllier’s illness, with Thommo’s rallying calls to “Do it for the boss” actually a motivating factor behind the team’s improvement? Of course, we’ll never know how the team would have fared had Houllier not taken his leave of absence but my guess is that it would have been an inferior campaign.

When all is said and done, Houllier inherited a team that had finished 3rd in 1998 and after four years and £81.35m spent (£33.675m net), that team peaked in second place in a season that the Frenchman himself predominantly missed. Finishing 4th, then 3rd, then 2nd appeared to be progress but only when compared with the 7th placed finish in Houllier’s first season. Before then, under Evans, we had finished 3rd, 4th, 3rd – an average of 3rd place. 4th, 3rd, 2nd also averages at 3rd place. Evans was forced out of the club because this was deemed unacceptable. Houllier achieved the same and it was hailed as success. In Evans’ final three seasons, his team averaged 68 League points per season while the Champions in those campaigns averaged 78. In Houllier’s three seasons, generously excluding 1998-99 and including the whole of 2001-02, his team average 72 points while the Champions averaged 86 points. In other words, Houllier was achieving an average of 4 points more per season than Evans while the gap was widening between Liverpool and the title winners.

Was this really the ‘success’ we replaced Evans in order to achieve? No. The truth is we were dazzled by the glory of the treble of cups after a decade in which we won only an FA Cup and a League Cup in finals against lower division opponents. We were taken in by talk of five-year plans and progress measured against one truly awful season that we were told was the fault of the previous manager. I would call it one year of success, one decent season and four seasons of disappointment and underachievement.

Transfers

The summer of 2002 was a key turning point in Houllier’s tenure. Signing El Hadji Diouf for £10m has to rank as arguably the worst piece of transfer business in the club’s history. That Houllier declined to sign Nicolas Anelka because of fears about his character made his decision to pay over the odds for a cheating, disloyal scumbag who would spent the next two years gobbing in rival supporters’ faces all the more baffling. To compound the error, Houllier also signed Salif Diao for £4.7m and “the next Zinedine Zidane” aka Bruno Cheyrou for £3.7m. Those amounts may not sound huge compared with today’s transfer fees so to put them into context, Diouf became Liverpool’s second most expensive player ever, Diao cost fractionally more than Gilberto Silva who joined Arsenal that same summer while Cheyrou cost more than Joseph Yobo who joined Everton that summer as well as Marcus Stewart who joined Sunderland two seasons after he had won the Premiership’s golden boot with Ipswich.

Of course, Houllier also wanted to sign Lee Bowyer for £9m but eventually Rick Parry pulled the plug on the deal due to the outraged reaction by supporters. Again, I point out that Nicolas Anelka was not signed due to concerns about his character but Houllier was happy to bring in a racist thug who soon after would be sent off for having a punch up with his (black) Newcastle teammate Kieron Dyer in the middle of a Premiership match.

It was terrible business and it seriously undermined the supporters’ faith in Houllier’s judgement. Houllier had one chance to redeem himself in the summer of 2003 but Harry Kewell, Steve Finnan (who eventually went on to become a good signing) and “French gems” Anthony Le Tallec and Florent Sinama-Pongolle failed to arrest the side’s slump towards mediocrity. As a final insult, Houllier left us committed to bringing in Djibril Cisse for a club record £14.5m depriving his successor of funds with which to operate in the transfer market himself.

Certainly Houllier’s record in the transfer market post-recovery was atrocious but was it really so much better before?

Houllier’s first four signings included three players who would make a minimal impact on the football club – Jean Michel-Ferri, Frode Kippe and Rigobert Song – and Djimi Traore who would at least achieve some success with the club despite being, by common consensus, crap.

Look at the team Houllier inherited from Evans: James/Friedel; Heggem, Carragher, Staunton, Bjornebye; McManaman, Ince, Redknapp, Berger; Fowler and Owen with the likes of Matteo, David Thompson, Riedle and an up and coming Steven Gerrard on the bench. Should that squad really have finished 7th? Did Houllier really need to make so many changes the following season?

Out went James, Ince and McManaman (although the latter was enforced). Riedle, Friedel, Matteo, Bjornebye and Thompson would follow within a year while Staunton, Heggem, Redknapp and Fowler had also been moved on before Houllier’s triumphant return against Roma.

Over the following two seasons, Houllier spent nearly £57m on 18 players to assemble the squad that would win the treble of cups in 2001 but, with a few notable exceptions, those players would have no more than a short-term impact with most being moved on within 3 seasons.

The signings of Hyypia and Henchoz for a combined £6.1m stand out as transfer masterstrokes while Hamann was also a good signing though not cheap for the time at £8m. Gary McAllister was an inspired capture on a Bosman free but beyond those, it’s hard to credit any of the other signings as successes. Club record signing Heskey had one excellent season followed by a decent season but was crap in his final two seasons at the club. Despite his contribution in Istanbul, Smicer flopped for much of his Liverpool career. Camara and Meijer came and went within a year. Westerveld – not cheap at £4m for a goalkeeper – was callously ditched after just two seasons. Diomede barely kicked a ball for the club in 3 seasons despite costing £3m. Babbel suffered a freak illness that curtailed his Liverpool career after just one season. Arphexad made just 5 first team appearances. Barmby arrived for £6m but lasted only two seasons starting only 2 Premiership games in his second campaign. Ziege lasted only one season before leaving for a loss of £1.5m. Litmanen and Vignal made few appearances while £1m Daniel Sjolund never played a first team game. Igor Biscan at £5.5m was a dreadful signing.

Of those 18 players the club received sell on fees for just 5 and in each case the fee represented a loss compared with the fee paid. After spending £56.85m, the club recouped only £20.35m making a net loss of £36.5m. That was the true price of our cup treble.

After that Houllier’s erratic spending continued with £6.25m on Chris Kirkland on the same day as £4.85m on Jerzy Dudek (the pair left for a combined £3.5m – a net loss of £7.6m). All these players were signed before Houllier’s illness.

Of the players who departed under Houllier most did so for less than their market values. Several players left for nothing including Steve McManaman, Phil Babb, Brad Friedel, Steve Staunton, Jamie Redknapp, Bernard Diomede, Pegguy Arphexad, Patrik Berger, Vegard Heggem and Abel Xavier. Of those, Steve McManaman had the highest potential market value (estimated as £11m at the time). Perhaps his departure was not strictly Houllier’s fault but he was the manager before and at the time when Macca signed for Madrid on a Bosman. Paul Ince and David James were both sold for less than their market values. James was sold to Villa for £1.8m who made a profit of £1.7m when they sold him to West Ham after two seasons. James still fetched £1.2m 7 years later in 2006 when he moved from Man City to Portsmouth.

Perhaps before Houllier's illness there were no catastrophes of the magnitude of Diouf and Cisse but you can compare £5.5m Biscan to £4.7m Diao or £3m Diomede to £3.7m Cheyrou or even £5m Kewell as equally poor signings. While £6.25m might not leap out as a massive fee, it was a lot to spend on a goalkeeper and that fee, paid for Chris Kirkland, remains the highest fee we have paid for a ‘keeper to date. Pepe Reina cost less! Kirkland made just 45 appearances for the club and, let’s be honest, the man was born to concede goals.

In conclusion, Houllier’s performance in the transfer market was consistently unimpressive throughout his tenure and though he made a few excellent signings, these were exceptions to the rule.

Houllier himself might point out that, like his successor Benitez, he never had the financial muscle to pay ‘top dollar’ for the world’s top players like some of his rivals. Until the signing of Cisse for £14m which was completed after Houllier’s dismissal, the Frenchman’s record signing was Emile Heskey for £11m. Up to the same point Manchester United had signed 6 players for fees in excess of £11m while Chelsea had 8 (most of which were signed ahead of Houllier’s final season). Arsenal, Tottenham, Leeds, Newcastle, Fulham and Man City all had more expensive record purchases than Houllier.

Perhaps Houllier could argue that if he’d had the funds of his rivals, his record on the transfer market would have been better but then, had his team not failed to qualify for any European competition in 1999 and for the Champions League in 2000 and 2003, and had it not been eliminated at the first group stage of the Champions League in 2002-03, the club would have generated far greater income which, perhaps may have increased his transfer kitty. Similarly had any of his signings actually increased in value whilst at the club, he might have been able to trade up as Benitez later did when selling Sissoko at a profit to finance the purchase of Mascherano.

It was also Houllier’s decisions to spend his average annual transfer kitty of £21m on a number of players rather than investing it in on maybe one or two proven superstars. For example, the £18.4m spent on Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou in the summer of 2003 might have been used to purchase Hernan Crespo who in that same summer moved from Lazio to Inter for £16.6m or Fabio Cannavaro who also joined Inter from Parma for £14.75m at the same time. For the combined £21.5m spent on Barmby, Diomede, Ziege, Vignal, Sjolund and Biscan in 2000-01, Houllier might have purchased the following players who moved that same season: Frank Lampard for £11m (West Ham to Chelsea), Robbie Keane for £12m (Inter to Leeds), Pablo Aimar for £13.6m (River Plate to Valencia), Tomas Rosicky for £18m (Sparta Prague to Borussia Dortmund), Rio Ferdinand for £18m (West Ham to Leeds) or Sylvain Wiltord for £13m (Bordeaux to Arsenal).

The fact that Houllier’s three most expensive acquisitions (Cisse, Heskey and Diouf) were hardly the most successful - two were outright flops - suggests that had greater funds been available, we would simply have ended up with more expensive flops.

Tactics

The allegation is that post-Houllier’s recovery Liverpool played some of the most boring and negative football seen since the Souness years and possibly even before. The team seemed to be largely set up to play on the counter-attack utilising the pace of Owen and the (ever fading) strength of Heskey. The back four featuring Hyypia, Henchoz, Carragher and another lacked pace so tended not to push high up the pitch while their defensive shield Didi Hamann was never renowned for his creativity or goal threat.

But was this down to increasingly negative tactics by Monsieur Houllier? I would contend that in 2001-02, we were equally negative and displeasing to the eye yet with infinitely more success. Could it be that by 2002-03, opponents had sussed our tactics and learned how to combat them? Team after team would come to Anfield, line up defensively and our counter-attacking game plan was stumped. We had no natural wide players to get in behind full-backs, no players with the skill to dribble through defenders and few players with the quality to deliver an incisive pass through a crowded penalty area. When the pressure was on us to break teams down, we struggled.

Was this only the case post-recovery? We were pretty defensive and negative in 1999/00. We accepted this at the time because for the first time in 10 years we were defensively solid which in turn helped us achieve results while we also reasoned that had Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler not spent so long on the treatment table that campaign we would have carried a greater goal threat. By 2000/01 we seemed to have improved as an attacking force but was this down to tactics? I believe the difference between 2000/01 and 2002/03 was less to do with the tactical approach and more to do with having greater quality in the squad. The creativity of players such as Gary McAllister from open play and particularly from set pieces, plus the energy and directness of Nick Barmby and the width that Markus Babbel brought from full-back all gave us an extra attacking edge that we had lost by 2002/03.

Though our football was considered to be better during our treble-winning season, it should be noted that we predominantly played counter-attacking football throughout that campaign. It won us some memorable scalps against teams who would attack us such as Man Utd (a), Arsenal (h), Roma (a) and Arsenal again in the Millenium Stadium, though it should also be noted that each of those teams outclassed us on the day only to be hit by sucker punches. That season, we also struggled to break teams down who did not come out to attack us – the best example being Birmingham in the Worthington Cup Final – and attracted some criticism of our style of play. In particular Johan Cruyff said of us "Liverpool are just like Bayern Munich. They're all about name and prestige but, in football terms, we're talking about two horrible teams. You might think I'm exaggerating but in my opinion a team are horrible if they are incapable of stringing three passes together.” Anyone who saw the 0-0 we played out in Porto which the press labelled “Snore Draw” would find it hard to disagree.

One of the biggest criticisms of Houllier’s teams concerned their inability to win from losing positions. By my count, Houllier’s Liverpool recovered to win League games having gone behind on only three occasions post-Houllier’s return (Tottenham (a) and Charlton (h) in 2002-03 and Birmingham (h) in 2003-04) which suggests any opponent who took the lead against Liverpool was likely to at least draw if not win. However, in 2000-01 and 2001-02, Liverpool won only once after falling behind in the League suggesting that Houllier’s team never had the know how to break down opponents defending a lead.

If 2001-02 proved anything, it was that fans will accept any style of play as long as it keeps delivering wins but no one will accept bad football and bad results which is what we had after Houllier’s return.

I believe those bad results came because of a combination of fielding inferior players and opponents adapting to our limited tactical plan.

Team Selection

It was 9th April 2002. Liverpool were level on the night and 2-1 ahead on aggregate with an away goal in the bank. 30 minutes remained at the Bay Arena. All we had to do was prevent Bayer Leverkusen from scoring twice before the final whistle and a Champions League Semi-Final spot was ours. Earlier in this campaign we had kept clean sheets in the Westfalen Stadium against Borussia Dortmund, in the Stadio Olimpico against Roma and in the Nou Camp against Barca. Houllier, having declared we were “ten games from greatness”, then made a tactical substitution. Dietmar Hamann off, Vladimir Smicer on. Leverkusen scored three more and we were five games from winning sod all.

To this day, no one can understand why Houllier did it. Was this, as some people suggest, the first sign that during his illness, Houllier had lost the plot? The highly dubious decisions continued the following season when for a Champions League away tie against the reigning Spanish Champions (managed by one Snr Rafael Benitez) Houllier selected Diao at centre-half and omitted Owen and in-form Baros in favour of Heskey and Diouf. Then throughout the 2003-04 season he continually selected Igor Biscan at centre half. Was all this bad judgement only in evidence after his return?

In 1999-2000, with five League games to go we were in second place ahead of Arsenal and Leeds (both of whom we had beaten home and away) and in pole position to claim a Champions League spot. We capitulated. Failing to score again that season, we drew two and lost three, gifting the two remaining Champions League qualifying places to Arsenal and Leeds. One win from those 5 games would have been enough for us to finish third. For our final home game of that season facing a Southampton side that finished 15th in the table having lost 11 away games conceding 40 goals in the process, Houllier inexplicably selected five defenders and three strikers. Fowler and Redknapp who had missed most of the season through injury were thrown back into the first team while Michael Owen was left out of the squad. The midfield consisted of Redknapp and Berger. The match was drawn 0-0.

In 2000-01, club record signing Emile Heskey was on a hot streak with 12 goals in his last 12 games. Liverpool faced newly promoted Ipswich Town at Anfield before a League Cup tie at home to Fulham then of Division One. Houllier ‘rested’ Heskey. Ipswich won 1-0. Their goalscorer Marcus Stewart described the reaction in the Ipswich camp on learning of Heskey's demotion. "We were very surprised," he said. "If he had started, who knows what would have happened? All the lads were delighted." Houllier subsequently claimed he would have "done it again" denying that his tactical change had any bearing on the result.

These examples stand out as really bad tactical decisions by Houllier but there are plenty of others, some of which he got away with. For example, not using Michael Owen in the Worthington Cup Final against Birmingham when we needed to put the game to bed; leaving out in-form Gary McAllister for the FA Cup Final against Arsenal, and using Igor Biscan at right-back in the Merseyside derby (he was sent off). I am sure there are plenty more but the point is, Houllier was no more a tactical genius before his illness than he was afterwards – he just got away with more gaffes before.

Verbal Diarrhoea

"At some stage, the club will win the title and win the Champions League under me. That's for sure," declared Houllier in January 2003. The club had just failed to win for the eleventh consecutive League game turning a potential title challenge into a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful scrap for fourth place.

"It's not a crisis," he emphasised. "We have young players who just need time and patience to develop."

The word “crisis” is over-used in football where the media tries to sensationalise everything but when Liverpool can’t win a game of football in eleven attempts, it is a crisis.

Houllier tried to convince us this was normal saying: “We've had three good seasons, finishing fourth, third and then second, and won trophies along the way. This season is what happens sometimes when you are making progress. We reached a phase of plateau.” This was odd. Last season we were “ten games from greatness”. Our own manager had apparently gone from expecting us to win both the League and the Champions League to telling us it was a normal occurrence for the same team to go so long without winning and to fall so far from the summit of the table.

It was utter nonsense and insulting to the intelligence of supporters famed throughout the world for their knowledge of the game.

As Houllier’s team deteriorated further and further over the following season, we heard more and more nonsense from him. Over the course of the 2003-04 season, supporters were regularly being told by Houllier that their eyes were deceiving them. According to Houllier, we weren’t watching one-dimensional turgid football bereft of creativity and lacking the nous to break down any team that stuck 10 men or more behind the ball but were witnessing a side on a par with Brazil at their finest being denied only by sheer bad luck. “We created [X] chances”, “We won [X] corners”, “We had [X] shots on goal” (usually from distance) bleated Houllier.

Cup failures such as the 2-0 home defeat to lower division Crystal Palace were dressed up as a “blessing in disguise”. In his programme notes for the final game of the 2003-04 season, Houllier declared that finishing fourth was a “massive achievement”. Remember Evans finished third, fourth, third in his final three seasons and it was not deemed good enough. Houllier had spoken of his five-year plan to take Liverpool to the summit of the League and after five years he was telling us fourth was a “massive achievement”.

If the results and performances hadn’t made Houllier’s position untenable in the eyes of Liverpool supporters, these ludicrous statements had. He had become an embarrassment and many felt he had “lost the plot” but was this ‘verbal diarrhoea’ a symptom of madness or was it a more cynical attempt by a devious human being to deflect blame from himself and remain employed in a role he in which he was obviously failing?

I would suggest the latter and on that basis, Houllier certainly had previous form predating his illness.

Cast your mind back to the 3rd April 1999. In Houllier’s debut season as Liverpool manager amidst the thrill of winning a Merseyside derby for the first time in 5 seasons, Robbie Fowler responded to sick taunts from Everton supporters by using the pitch markings to simulate snorting cocaine. It was ill-advised though completely understandable (and actually quite funny at the time) but, of course, the politically-correct brigade immediately jumped on the bandwagon with Bitter Blues, who were more pissed off with the fact Robbie’s brace had led to them losing than with his goal celebration, and Robbie was earmarked for a public flogging.

"It was really nothing," said Houllier. "Rigobert said they did this at Metz and the players were doing it in training. Robbie was just pretending to eat the grass. I spoke to Robbie about it and also to the referee, and he said he would not be putting it in his report. You can say it was inadvisable in the circumstances but when your heart is going at 180 these things happen. It was certainly not a response to the Everton fans."

Whether you believe Houllier was justified in trying to protect his striker, the fact remains that Houllier told an outright lie in an attempt to deceive the watching world. Was this so different to regularly claiming his team deserved to win games in which they had never looked like scoring a few years later?

In August 2001 Liverpool lost 2-1 away to newly promoted Bolton Wanderers. Houllier left the world in no doubt over who was to blame for the shock defeat.

"I'm absolutely disheartened and gutted," he said. "I really feel sorry for the players, who played a really good game of football but were very unfortunately let down by that blunder.” That blunder was made by Sander Westerveld who allowed a speculative shot from Dean Holdsworth squirm under his body in the 88th minute. Undoubtedly it was a howler by Westerveld but was it fair to lay the whole of the blame on the goalkeeper? Did the team and indeed the manager not deserve a share of the flak for only being level with the Premiership’s new boys up until the final minutes of the match? Had those players really played “a really good game of football” only to be “let down” by Westerveld? What must Westerveld have felt to be so publically blamed for the defeat by his manager?

Houllier went on to say: "Nobody needs to say anything to Sander to deepen his sorrow. There will be other days and other nights when he will save us." Actually, Sander never played for the team again and before Liverpool’s next match, Houllier had signed two new goalkeepers in Jerzy Dudek and Chris Kirkland.

"Jerzy Dudek is a proven international," declared Houllier. "I can confirm he will be the No 1 goalkeeper." I guess nobody needed to say anything to Sander to deepen his sorrow after that!

All this very cleverly deflected any responsibility for a shocking performance and result from the manager. It was all the fault of the goalkeeper but thankfully the manager had done something about it.

It was a similar story post-recovery when Liverpool failed to beat Basle in Switzerland resulting in elimination from the Champions League. Again, this was not the manager’s fault; it was Steven Gerrard’s. Houllier told reporters that Gerrard had started to believe his own publicity and it had gone to his head. He said he was becoming “impatient” with the out-of-form midfielder and that he needs to stop reading his own hype. Gerrard was promptly dropped for the next home game (in which Liverpool failed to break down a Sunderland team that would that campaign take the fewest points of any team in Premiership history). The papers the next day all focussed on Gerrard rather than the team’s or the manager’s failure to qualify from a relatively easy group.

It was true that Gerrard had been out of form but could failures to beat Basle at home and away along with an inability to avoid defeat home and away to Valencia be caused solely by one individual player? Was Gerrard directly responsible for the three first-half Basle goals conceded by Jerzy Dudek who just days earlier had dropped a clanger at the Riverside to gift Gareth Southgate an unlikely match winning goal and who would soon be gifting Diego Forlan the softest goal of his career? Was the manager not culpable for only having Salif Diao or Igor Biscan in the squad as potential replacements for Gerrard?

This game of blame-shifting actually began as soon as Houllier arrived at the club. Whenever Liverpool lost it was Roy Evans’ fault; not Houllier’s. It would take Houllier 5-years to undo the damage Evans had done to our club such was the extent of his mismanagement. That 5-year plan was the ultimate excuse – for 5-years at least. Where did this figure of 5 years come from? Why not 6 or 7? Why not 2, 3 or 4? Or why not take the team from 3rd to 1st as he was employed to do?

Houllier was adept at deceiving the public, embellishing his own achievements whilst shifting responsibility for his failures. When Champions League qualification was missed in 2000 after the team failed to score in the final 5 games (soon after Houllier made striker Emile Heskey the club’s record signing), we were told to focus on the improvement from the previous season and the overall progress of the squad.

A year on from missing out on the Champions League by losing away at Premiership newcomers Bradford, Houllier’s men faced a similar scenario needing to beat Premiership newcomers Charlton on the final game of the season to seal qualification. With Liverpool competing in the FA Cup and UEFA Cup Finals before their final League fixture, Houllier spoke of three Cup Finals. Actually, we had two Cup Finals and then needed to beat a poor team who, unlike Bradford the previous season, were already safe from relegation. However, by hyping up the game and placing it on a par with the FA Cup and UEFA Cup Finals, it gave Houllier a potential excuse. Champions League qualification would not be won or lost over the course of the season but in a one-off Cup Final immediately after two other Cup Finals. Had Liverpool failed to win one or more, Houllier could have pointed to the exceptional demands of playing three Finals in a week while the fact Liverpool would be strong favourites for the games against Alaves and Charlton made it likely he would be basking in more triumph than failure. As it was, we won all three matches and the hype over the League game against a crap team with nothing to play for made our 4-0 win at the Valley seem far more impressive than it actually was and totally deflected attention from our failure to impact the title race that season.

To hear the players talk, you would think that game at the Valley was the Champions League Final itself. After the FA Cup Final Michael Owen actually said: “Two Finals to go – a UEFA and a Champions League – and if we can win that then what a season!” Do Charlton fans even know that they were beaten Champions League Finalists?

Houllier undoubtedly had a devious side which was never in greater evidence than in the Houllier versus Fowler saga.

Robbie Fowler wrote in his autobiography he “felt like [Houllier] was trying to get me out almost from the start” of his time at Anfield. It’s Fowler’s theory that Houllier’s early conflicts with Evans had alienated the Frenchman from the established players, most of him felt a loyalty to Evans, to such an extent that Houllier had determined the solution was to “clear out” the squad he inherited and work with new players instead.

It was easy to move out players like Paul Ince and David James, whose inconsistent performances and prima dona personalities had made them unpopular with the fans. Meanwhile, no fan would shed a tear over the departures of players like Neil Ruddock, Jason McAteer and Steve Harkness. McManaman’s exit was forced by the player himself while Rob Jones and Mark Wright were forced into retirement through injuries. Other than the kids (Owen, Carragher and Murphy) and some of the foreign players who were perhaps more used to and willing to adapt to a more professional environment, only Fowler and Redknapp escaped the early cull of established players.

Fowler was idolised by the fans and, despite evidence that “God’s” effectiveness was on the wane, Houllier knew there would be uproar if he sold him. He therefore instigated a smear campaign designed to undermine his number 9. Houllier used the Liverpool Echo’s Chris Bascombe – then a young journalist new to the role of covering LFC – to publicly criticise the striker. Bascombe was forbidden to praise Robbie and instead continually questioned his place in the team and at the club.

With Fowler ending 2000-01 in fine style, Houllier suspended Fowler from the first team over a non-incident when Phil Thompson overreacted to Robbie kicking a ball into an empty net in training. Houllier publicly declared Fowler would not play again until he had apologised to Thompson. Fowler felt he had done nothing worthy of an apology and so an embarrassing impasse was reached. With a treble of cups won in the previous season, Houllier’s popularity with Liverpool fans was at its peak and he knew it.

"What is he thinking about?" asked Houllier. "He knows what he has to do. He is acting as if he wants away." It was ingenious by Houllier. In one corner is our peerless manager with the club’s interest at heart and in the other is a fan’s favourite who might be planning to leave the club. Hadn’t Robbie’s best mate Steve McManaman recently ditched us on a Bosman? If Macca could do it, why not Robbie? Fowler’s character was being damned while the player himself was denied an opportunity to demonstrate his value and commitment to the club on the football pitch.

In the end Fowler was sold while Houllier was lying in a hospital sick bed. It was perfect timing. Who could criticise Houllier while there were still genuine concerns for his health? Could anyone say for sure that it was even Houllier’s decision under the circumstances? £11m seemed like good business for a player who was not actually a regular starter in the first team (which was ultimately because Houllier declined to select him!).

I cannot let a commentary on Houllier’s verbal diarrhoea pass without mentioning his outrageous claim that Bruno Cheyrou would be the next Zinedine Zidane. The expectations such bold proclamations heaped on the relatively unknown player did little to help him when he struggled to be even the next Vladimir Smicer while hindsight shows it to be a prime example of Houllier’s flawed judgement. This regrettable Houllier quote was delivered post-recovery but the hopelessly inaccurate over-hyping of players had been in evidence as early at 1999 when we were told that Djimi Traore was the next Marcel Desailly.

Following his return from illness in 2002, Houllier declared: “In sports you cannot programme success. You cannot plan success. You cannot say it will happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but you can prepare for it. All I can tell you is every single day, as I say, we prepare for it.” Great speech but what did it actually mean?

If anything, it was more comprehensible than the following statement made in 2001 after securing the treble: “I knew when they would win some trophies. I didn’t know whether we would win three in the same year but I knew we would and I think that you need to have a vision and that vision is not a dream, it’s just a target that I would say, you know, aim for the moon and maybe you will land among the stars.”

The truth is, Houllier told white lies and manipulated others perceptions of his team throughout his time as manager. It was inevitable that the longer it continued – particularly with the team disappointing on the pitch – that people would become wiser to it.

Conclusion

So overall I believe Houllier’s reign can be split into just one period – six seasons of failure to turn Liverpool into title winners – the job he was appointed to do. In one season his team won three cups but underperformed in the League during the same campaign. Aside from that, the only respectable League campaign coincided with the manager’s absence.

Could another manager have achieved more had the board made a different appointment in 1998? I believe that many could have and that, not for the first time that decade, the board made a bad decision.

Had they bothered to do some thorough research on the man they entrusted to run our club, they would have seen that he was unsuitable, unqualified and that many of the man’s flaws we subsequently witnessed during his time at Anfield had been in evidence long before.

Prior to his appointment as Liverpool manager, Houllier had been extremely unpopular in his home country having presided over France’s failed campaign to qualify for the 1994 World Cup Finals. This, of course, had not been Houllier’s fault according to the man himself. Houllier laid the blame for an unsuccessful two-year campaign (which included home and away defeats to Bulgaria and a home defeat to Israel) on David Ginola for failing to complete a pass to Eric Cantona in the final home game. Someone in the French FA must have been convinced as they rewarded his failure with a move upstairs from which he continued to take the blame for poor results during Platini’s tenure. After all, Platini was a national hero whereas Houllier was the patsy who couldn’t qualify ahead of Sweden and Bulgaria.

Here as early as 1994 was evidence that Houllier was (a) unable to succeed in a high-profile job, and (b) unable to accept responsibility for his shortcomings preferring instead to find scapegoats. Sound familiar?

The board went for Houllier because, at the time, all things French were in vogue – at least as far as football was concerned. Wenger had just led Arsenal to the League and Cup double using modern continental techniques and a host of French players and France had just become World Champions. Liverpool leapt onto the bandwagon.

We were told that Houllier was the mastermind behind France’s World Cup success. As their ‘technical director’, his contribution was recognised with the award of a special medal. Rumours that it was inscribed “I did my best” and filled with chocolate are unconfirmed.

The truth, as Robbie Fowler concisely put it was: We’d signed the French Howard Wilkinson. The man had failed as a manager and been moved upstairs where his reputation was enhanced by the achievements of others.

He was a bad appointment and a bad manager.

Phil Thompson defended his and Houllier’s record at the club saying: “We came back to win trophies and we did that. We also sorted out the discipline which had become a major issue and that achievement should not be under-estimated. We took the club from the front pages to the back pages and left a physical legacy in the shape of a wonderful training ground... We nurtured the likes of Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen, Sami Hyypia and Jamie Carragher.”

They won the treble and it deserves to be acknowledged as a great achievement that brought a lot of pleasure to Liverpool supporters at the time but, as Istanbul subsequently proved, the glory of that season would have been eclipsed by a single League title or Champions League win. That was the success we craved. The treble was ultimately like a nicotine patch for an addicted smoker.

Regarding the claims of nurturing Gerrard, Owen, Hyypia and Carragher, it should be pointed out that Owen pissed off as soon as Houllier and Thompson were sacked as they had failed to tie him down to a long-term contract and failed to deliver the success or lay the foundations for imminent success that might have convinced him to stay at the club. Did Sami Hyypia really need nurturing? This was not a rookie youth player. Meanwhile Gerrard and Carragher both developed into far better players under Rafael Benitez than they ever did under Houllier.

The physical legacy that was the training ground was not built by the hands of Houllier and Thompson. They did not pay for it. They were not its architects and did not obtain planning permission or hire the builders. They just happened to be at the club at the time of a project that would have been undertaken irrespective of who had been in charge.

They may have inherited discipline problems but far from establishing a new culture with the same set of players, they simply made wholesale changes to the playing staff booting out any player they considered to be undisciplined. Any manager could have done the same. This was not on a par with Arsene Wenger turning round Tony Adams and his drinking buddies at Highbury. The equivalent would have seen Houllier flog Adams to Middlesbrough for £1m with Keown, Parlour, Winterburn and Dixon following hot on his heels – and he would have won nothing.

The true Houllier legacy is that he failed to do the job he was recruited to do taking the team from 3rd place to 4th in six seasons; he left the squad in arguably worse shape than the one he inherited; he wasted the talents of Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Sami Hyypia – all of whom deserved to win a League winners’ medal in their time at Anfield; he wasted serious amounts of money and left the coffers bare for his successor; he deprived Benitez of the chance to either work with Owen or sell him for his true market value in order to reinvest in the team, and he insulted the intelligence of Liverpool supporters leaving a bitter taste in the mouth.