Feel bad for the fallen king

I think I must be getting sentimental in my old age.

Clubs the size of Liverpool are like football supertankers, and turning them round takes a lot more time than Dalglish was afforded- James Calvert

After spending the past few months seriously questioning Kenny Dalglish’s credentials as Liverpool manager, now he has been sacked I can’t help but feel he may have been a little hard done by.

I thought, possibly naively, that winning the Carling Cup and getting to the FA Cup final would be enough to buy him until the end of the year at the very least, if not another full season at Anfield.

But the club’s American owners obviously saw things differently and acted swiftly to bring Dalglish’s second coming to a swift end. And when you analyse the facts a bit deeper, you start to understand why.

Firstly, and possibly most importantly, there is the club’s exceptionally poor league form. Liverpool only won six out of 19 games at home all season, finishing the campaign behind Everton and a whopping 37 points off the top. In fact, they were closer to relegation than winning a Champions League spot – and that’s just not the Liverpool way.

Then the owners will have looked into Dalglish’s transfer dealings, a particular area in which the king failed to reign supreme, spending large on players who delivered little. Stewart Downing anyone? No, I didn’t think so.

The final factor will have been the way Dalglish handled the Luis Suarez racism affair. It was admirable that he stood by his player on the one hand, but a bit out of line for him to continue to do so once the striker had been found guilty. That only served to drag the club’s name through the mud, something the Americans won’t have appreciated as they watched developments from across the pond.

But despite all that I still expected Dalglish to be given a bit more time. Dalglish was not just another manager but a living legend. And I believed his cult hero status, along with the modicum of cup success, to be his get-out-of-jail-free card.

Clubs the size of Liverpool are like football supertankers, and turning them round takes a lot more time than Dalglish was afforded.

It will be interesting now to see who takes his place. Will it be a big name manager like Fabio Capello, a remarkable return for Rafa Benitez, or will the Americans turn to a young, upcoming prospect like Roberto Martinez or Brendan Rogers?

My money’s on Capello personally.

Whoever takes over needs to be aware of one thing: the rebuilding work at the club is far from over. Dalglish may have started it, but he was nowhere near finished.

And that may mean next season is even less fruitful than this one.

Roy’s steady start

For the most part, Roy Hodgson’s England squad was unremarkable: by my estimate he picked about 20 of the same players Capello would have done had he remained in charge.

However, there were one or two little areas of controversy, namely the omission of Rio Ferdinand and the inclusion of Stewart Downing.

Despite his injury problems in recent years, Ferdinand remains one of England’s few world class defenders when fully fit. And, right now, at this particular moment, that’s exactly what he happens to be.

Ferdinand may not be around the international scene for much longer and can hardly be described as one for the future. But this is not a ‘development’ squad with long-term planning in mind. It is, understandably, a squad chosen for what they might be able to achieve at Euro 2012 and nothing more than that.

And, on that basis, Ferdinand should have been part of it.

Hodgson tried to justify his exclusion of the Manchester United defender by insisting it was a decision taken for football reasons. Which is a bit silly considering Ferdinand has had his most productive domestic season in a long time.

Rumour has it Ferdinand was omitted to avoid any possible confrontations with John Terry over the racism case involving his brother Anton. And if that’s true, how sad that the player with the impeccable record is the one that has to make way for the bad boy of English football.

And talking of ‘football reasons’, what about Hodgson’s other strange decision? How on earth can Downing be on the plane to Ukraine if football has anything to do with the equation?

In 36 league games for Liverpool this season he has failed to score a single goal or register a single assist. And he’s supposed to be a winger for crying out loud! There are goalkeepers with better attacking records than that this season. Possibly linesmen too.

I have nothing against Downing personally, I just don’t think he is as good as he himself thinks he is. And certainly not as good as managers seem to feel he is.

Those two decisions apart, however, I think Hodgson got off to a decent start. There will always be those who think he should have taken this or that fringe player, but until he has had time to get his feet under the desk, it was inevitable he would stick to the tried and tested.

And thumbs up for making Steven Gerrard captain. That’s one decision that should have been made half a decade ago.

Worthy champions

It’s time for me, even if I do it somewhat reluctantly, to give Manchester City the credit they deserve.

I don’t like their owners’ approach to football. I don’t like the way they have bought high speed success. And I certainly don’t like the way their mega finances have further imbalanced the Premiership playing field.

But I have to admire the way the team won the title.

Not only was it the most dramatic end to a season for decades, but City’s was also the sort of dogged, determined, never-say-die performance that ultimately makes them worthy champions.

There are some out there suggesting Queens Park Rangers almost allowed Sergio Aguero to score the winning goal. They have suggested the Rangers players knew they were safe from relegation and therefore allowed City to waltz through their defence and claim the title.

Absolute nonsense.

City won that match, and ultimately the crown they so desperately wanted, purely because they refused to give up, even when they entered injury time needing two goals. And that gritty display is what makes me feel comfortable when I offer them and their fans my genuine congratulations.

I’ve said it before and I don’t mind repeating it again: this was not a classic Premiership season. It was good and it had its moments (not least the last day dramatics), but overall the standard of the league was not at its highest level.

But that should not take anything away from City because winning a league is never an easy thing to do, even when you have spent hundreds of millions of pounds in the transfer market.

On paper, the only things separating the two Manchester teams this season was goal difference. And a lot of that is obviously down to City’s 6-1 victory at Old Trafford towards the beginning of the season.

But the reality is that the difference between the two sides is considerably more pronounced. City will only get better from here on, thanks partly to the experience of winning but also because they will no doubt spend big this summer to build on their success.

On the other hand, United looked almost patchwork in comparison. A team that, if it isn’t actually going backwards then is certainly not moving forward.

Bringing Paul Scholes out of retirement was a masterstroke by Sir Alex Ferguson and it certainly filled a hole in the middle of the park. But it was hardly a move on which future success will be built.

I’m fairly sure that when Wayne Rooney was persuaded to commit his future to United recently, it wasn’t on the back of assurances from Fergie that he would be bringing Scholes out of retirement.

If United want to regain the title, and I think it is fairly safe to suggest they probably do, then the spending policy at Old Trafford must change. It’s all very well for Sir Alex to go on about how the United way is to grow their own stars. But unfortunately they need stars who are ready now, not ones who may be ready eventually.

Manchester City didn’t just win the title last weekend, they laid down a benchmark. They proved that what they already have on their books is good enough to be the best in England. And those books are only going to get stronger.

If the likes of United, Chelsea and Arsenal have any hope of keeping up with them they are either going to have to start splashing the cash or we could end up with one club dominating the Premier League for many, many years to come.

I’ll let you all decide if you think that’s good for the game.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade