Liverpool: £100 million=1 point

Kenny Dalglish is a legend at Liverpool. I'm not disputing that fact, but if you look at why he is a legend most Liverpool fans will say because of the things he did as a player. Yes he won trophies as a manager, including the 1986 double (with Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan's team), but when he left Liverpool the downward spiral had definitely begun. I was always sure that the effects of Hillsborough had a massive influence on his decision, but this theory doesn't hold up when you consider how quickly he was accepting Uncle Jack's cash at Ewood.  Was he just astute enough to predict what Liverpool were about to go through in the 90's and jump before his reputation was tarnished. A wise move on the face of it, as  I haven't heard the Anfield faithful singing about Souness recently, despite how highly he was rated as a player! 

Liverpool have got themselves in a situation now though. By appointing Kenny as manager in January 2011, the new owners immediately got the supporters onside, but they now have have the ultimate unsackable manager.
On the face of it they have been repaid. Liverpool already have a trophy in the bag, but lets look into this a little deeper to see how successful the last 14 months have been:

On January 3rd 2011 Liverpool were 11 points behind the Champions League places. On March 10th 2012, having just been rolled by Sunderland, Liverpool are 10 points off the Champions League places. The cost of this one point improvement is significant. Carroll, Suarez, Downing, Adam and Henderson are all Premiership quality, but I'd argue that only Suarez was Champions League quality. Henderson may get there eventually. Carroll could be a top striker, but not at Liverpool, where the players strengths do not fit with the club. Surely this is the sort of thing that you'd expect to have been researched before parting with £30 million. Compare this with Martin Jol's tracking of Pavel Pogrebnyak, a player he had been monitoring for 5 years. Downing and Adam are mid table players at best, capable of playing well, but not with the consistency needed for the top 4. Lets look at it this way, were City, Spurs, Arsenal or Utd desperate to sign any of them?

Roy Hodgson was a failure at Liverpool, everyone knows that. Hodgson is a master of getting the best out of a smaller team, but could not cope with the expectation at Liverpool. He got ruined by the press and most notably some of the 'expert' pundits on TV. Yet these same people are not jumping on Dalglish's back even though £100million has got the club no closer to the promised land. Kenny has the media all sewn up. They seem incapable of criticising him. Of course this may be due to the fact that if Alan Hansen says anything anti Kenny then he may have to find a new golf partner. They are as far away from the Top 4 as they were when Hodgson was sacked, and £100 million has seen them scrape past Cardiff to win a trophy, thanks largely to the players brought to the club by Benitez. Their players have shown no sign of improvement, they are still incapable of consistently beating the lower ranked teams and their tactics still seem to be 'Lets hope Gerrard or Suarez can come up with something.'

I'm not calling for Kenny Dalglish to be sacked, Liverpool need to back their manager as it will take years for them to catch up. I would just like him to be held to account for the fact that Liverpool have made zero progress in 14 months. A lot of it is Kenny Dalglish's fault, will somebody please mention this fact!

Dave Rogers @NoLeftFoot

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