Well the review of the Premiership season will have to wait after the news today that Kenny Dalglish's second spell as Liverpool manager is at an end. I have to confess I'm extremely disappointed with the news. This season was remarkably odd and the league campaign was undeniably a disappointment with a quite dreadful second half, but I can't see how a manager who has won a cup and reached the final of another deserves to go and isn't onto something good. Kenny's king status is not even that relevant for me, I honestly think to sack a manager with that record over a season is harsh in the extreme.
Then we come to those mitigating factors in the league. Over 38 games, if you finish 8th you have to say you deserve to finish 8th. But the amount of times we hit the woodwork was truly astronomical, way way above the nearest side (the title winners) and the amount of missed penalties was also in double figures. I also think there were a great many games, particularly in the first half of the season, where Liverpool totally dominated and unlike in many of Benitez's games they created a lot of clear chances. I'm not making excuses, you have to take your chances, I'm just saying it wasn't a total right off in terms of performance.
So what did go wrong? Three words spring to mind - Henderson, Downing and Carroll. £75 million on those players was quite simply a joke. Henderson appears utterly incapable of being a top class player and was an outrageous gamble for someone who had, at best, shown some promise in half a season for Sunderland. Downing has proved what surely everybody always knew, he just hasn't got that extra quality to make him a top player and in his late twenties does not even have youth on side. As for Carroll, I've been his biggest critic all season and I remain unconvinced he will really come good in the long run but to give him his due, he was superb in two recent games against Chelsea to the point where I wondered for a second. But £35 million was truly bizarre for such an unproven player.
And one has to say the amount of goals scored, chances squandered and home wins was simply not good enough. There was no question the league campaign was disappointing and dreadful in the second half of the season and one could argue that Kenny signed the bulk of the players and bar Suarez, Enrique and Bellamy most were disappointments. I remain dubious that Kenny was the sole reason for the signings and suspect Comolli played his part, particularly in terms of the huge fees for which he has something of a track record from his time at Spurs.
But he has gone, so who replaces him? Martinez has been mentioned as have Lambert and Rodgers. I worry that they would have a similar problem to Hodgson and not be so suited to a big, high pressure role but I guess you don't know til you try and to be fair to all three, the football played their sides this season has been an asset to the league. But for today, let's just pay tribute to King Kenny. The man was arguably the club's greatest ever player, a wonderful manager first time around and you know what the second time around he won us a trophy and rescued a season from real utter disaster. I don't think that's too bad a record. King Kenny, farewell. You're welcome anytime and of course you'll never walk alone.
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