---
title: "Dalglish"
canonical: "https://readliverpoolfc.com/articles/feature-writers/dalglish/"
type: "post"
language: "en-GB"
author: "James Owens"
section: "Feature Writers"
published: "2013-09-20T10:48:34Z"
modified: "2013-09-20T17:04:59Z"
---

# Dalglish

There is something unbefitting, even slightly sad, about the cover of Kenny Dalglish’s latest book.

The sight of a man widely regarded as one of the greatest players these Isles have produced, and one of only four managers to win top division titles in England with two clubs promoting a book chronicling his achievements and memories clutching a 2012 Carling Cup winner’s medal seems wholly insufficient.

Kenny’s final season as Liverpool manager gifted us three trips to Wembley, and I was fortunate enough to be there on each occasion. I also attended both legs of the Carling Cup semi-final defeat of Manchester City, and the FA Cup fourth round defeat of Manchester United, and though the competition is hardly fierce, the memories of those days and nights in the capital, at the Etihad, and at Anfield are unquestionably my happiest and most cherished since the Benítez years.

Yet to see the greatest living figure in Liverpool’s history, a man whose significance goes so much deeper than the 23 major honours he helped the club to win, pose with a medal earned merely for winning the lesser of the two devalued domestic cups feels almost inappropriate. It’s akin to watching [The Beach Boys promote a new greatest hits compilation by collaborating with Status Quo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcPEbbgC0Zc).

In [*Kenny Dalglish: My Life*](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kenny-Dalglish-My-Life-Scrapbook/dp/1908695552), which goes on sale next Wednesday, Kenny defends his record during his final season and-a-half in charge of the Reds, insisting that winning one domestic cup and reaching the final of the other after six trophy-less years were achievements “[beyond any expectations](https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/liverpool-kenny-dalglishs-new-book-2285892)”. Reflecting on the ultimate Jekyll and Hyde campaign, he acknowledges that the eventual eighth-placed Premier League finish was not anyone would have hoped for, but asks how many league points fans would swap for three visits to Wembley.

But if the truth be told, the frustration and disappointment of Kenny’s second spell in charge isn’t so much the fact that we finished eighth in the league as the main *cause* of finishing eighth, because the principal cause of our poor 2011/12 league campaign was also a major factor in another season of mediocrity last year. It’s also the reason why, only now, in early stages of the 2013/14 season, can we dare hope that we might finally be able to challenge for a top four finish for the first time in five seasons, a target which should have been attainable two years ago.

It was January 2011 when Kenny quite literally flew in from a cruise ship in the Persian Gulf to lift the club out of the lowest footballing ebb anyone but the seasoned few old enough to have watched Liverpool before Shankly can recall. His impact was almost immediate, with the squad that collected just 25 points from 20 miserable Premier League matches under Roy Hodgson ultimately recovering to finish sixth, the final tally of 58 points more than respectable in the circumstances, with the 33 points gained from the final 18 league fixtures under Dalglish good enough for the 70 point-total often sufficient for a top four finish if the same form were extrapolated over a full 38-game schedule.

Number crunching aside, there were some stunning performances along the way, with United and City comprehensively outfought and outclassed by scores of 3-1 and 3-0 respectively at Anfield, scintillating five-goal routs at the expense of Birmingham City and Fulham, and the tactical masterclass which saw the Reds inflict a devilishly satisfying 0-1 defeat upon Chelsea in their own back yard just six days after the departure of Fernando Torres for Stamford Bridge on January deadline day.

And yet before any of those memorable victories were recorded, even before Kenny’s team enjoyed the last laugh over Chelsea, the first and most costly of the mistakes that would ultimately condemn the King’s second reign to a premature and disappointing end had already been made in the wake of Torres’s exit. His name was Andy Carroll.

Granted, Luis Suárez also joined from Ajax on what was one of the most dramatic deadline days since the introduction of the transfer window, but given that the Uruguayan was a target prior to Kenny’s return as caretaker manager, and even before the arrival of Director of Football Damien Comolli, neither man can take much credit for that particular deal.

And if the £35 million acquisition of Carroll could be seen as a panicked stumble into a very large frying pan, the £44 million spent on fellow Brits Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson in the summer window that followed was nothing less than a scalded leap into a raging inferno.

Out of the side went free-scoring veterans Dirk Kuyt and Maxi Rodríguez, with the goal-shy Downing and Henderson typically shoehorned into a less-than fluid 4-4-2 in their place, and tasked with providing ammunition for the far-from deadeye duo of Carroll and Suárez. With the glacial Charlie Adam leaving Lucas to spin plates in midfield until his unfortunate knee injury in November, the net result was a team that was considerably more expensive and yet significantly less effective than that which had played some of the best football seen at Anfield in 20 years during the second half of the previous campaign. That Kuyt, Maxi, and the brilliant Craig Bellamy – an inspired free transfer among the big-money flops – were far more likely to start in cup matches than league fixtures probably goes some way to explaining the contrast in overall performance between the two fronts.

Alas, in the Premier League, Kenny’s team could manage only 52 points. There is arguably only one more important figure in Liverpool’s history than Kenny himself, and among his most oft-repeated soundbites is that which holds that a club’s league performance is its bread and butter. In light of Shankly’s famous maxim, and with valid hopes of a return to top four contention after a colossal transfer outlay of £113m, finishing two places lower and six points worse off than a season maligned beyond its halfway point by the [tragi-comic buffoonery and joy-sapping, risk averse ineptitude of Roy Hodgson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHYO3qdFnhg) simply could not be excused.

The memories of those semi-final victories and the defeat of Cardiff at Wembley will live long in the memory, make no mistake, but in an era when Champions League qualification represents the only prospect of competing for the top honours this side of a benevolent oil magnate, no amount of domestic cup success can excuse such regression. Not least when the following campaign began with any hopes of a top four challenge under successor Brendan Rodgers crushed under the feet of the same homegrown white elephants who continued to burden the club and its wage bill having done so much to drag it backwards the season before.

Given a net spent of £40 million, and the reinvestment of an unprecedented transfer income windfall exceeding £70 million, Dalglish and Comolli should have been able to make simple work of improving the squad they inherited. To leave a group of players arguably weaker than that which they found was quite remarkable given the scale of the outlay, and it’s still hard to fathom the reasoning behind investing so heavily in an array of such mediocre and outrageously overpriced players procured from the always inflated domestic market. By way of comparison, think of all the money Tottenham brought in this summer following the departure of Gareth Bale. Then imagine them chucking the lot at Fabian Delph, Matt Jarvis, Jem Karacan and Rickie Lambert. I know. Me either.

In defence of his record in the transfer market, Kenny points out, in his new book, that assimilating seven new signings takes time, and that to do so in a single season was “a huge ask” of the players. In the case of a slow burner like Jordan Henderson, it’s hard to disagree. Though the £16 million Liverpool paid for the former Sunderland midfielder was vastly over the odds, his abundance of technical and athletic raw materials allied with versatility and a cast-iron will to improve and succeed now see him looking like an increasingly worthwhile acquisition.

The rest? Well, if the £63 million trio of Charlie Adam, Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing had so much unfulfilled potential, why are they now playing for Stoke City and West Ham United? When you spend over £60m on three players who go on to sign for Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce inside a little over two years, it’s probably best to wish them well in their struggle to avoid the relegation scrap and acknowledge that you made mistakes. The club may now have jettisoned the worst of the 2011 signings, but only our proximity to the top four come May will tell whether or not we’ve fully made up the ground lost with those costly missteps.

The King’s second reign certainly had its moments, and the two cup runs in particular ensured that it gifted us all more than its share of fond memories. But in the end, the policy of buying largely British players for an approach based on long balls and crossing indicated that it was probably the right time for a new man to take up the mantle. We’d all be thrilled to go back to Wembley with Brendan Rodgers this season, but what Kenny means in our history can and should never be represented by a single winner’s medal.