Agendas totally out the window as Neil, Nick O”Prey, Paul Cope, John Gibbo and Andy react to the departure of Kenny Dalglish as well as being joined by the Speil Magazine to talk about the Kicking and slot machines online Screening festival.
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Direct link to The Anfield Wrap on City Talk #10 podcast download
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Gotta say I was disappointed with this one lads. Seems to be a jump to the tired and easy option of blaming everything on the owners.
How exactly could they have fired Kenny that would have been dignified in your eyes?
So they didn’t have something on the website before it was leaked. They had to fire our communications guy he was so terrible.
So they flew Kenny out to Boston. How do you know that wasn’t to ask him if he could work under a new DoF and Kenny refused?
And you’re wrong about Steve Clark. He is staying on for the time being.
Andy I felt the way I think you seem to have immediately after hearing the news but I came to the conclusion that I was just sad for Kenny rather than thinking anything was lly done wrong by the owners. This is really the reason I was nervous about his hiring in the first place. The only way for him to leave without losing at least some of the shine off his LFC career would be a hugely unlikely title challenge. Otherwise he would always be let go at some point and it would always be difficult to take.
I’ll finish with one point. There was much discussion about a lack of a club philosophy. If that is what you think is right for the club then it seems like Kenny/Clarke and perhaps Comolli were not fitting the way our youth/reserves were playing. If the owners get Txixi as DoF and bring Martinez or promote Borell/Segura as manager will you give them the credit for at least trying to implement the kind of philosophy you claim to want?
Well put Jonno, there was never going to be an easy way for Kenny to leave, and I felt the nerves when he was hired as well. It’s taxing trying to deal with the “cult of Kenny” against those with a more general, and longer lived, love of the club. I know we’re all fans but I have felt at times that ‘some fans were more fans than others’ and Kenny was being set up to either be the solution to our 20 year problems, or tarnished, and I don’t like to see what I hold precious being aired, let alone being wheelied down the street. That’s what Rafa’s are for.
ferd
Have to agree with Jonno, Andy seemed riled up about the sacking but that’s the thing with sacking someone, it’s never going to be nice is it?. I dont really know how you expected there to be a good or dignified sacking for Dalglish?.
Again I agree with Jonno that all the blame was lumped onto the owners for a hasty dismissal yet on Monday’s pod it was pretty much an all round agreement that if they did dismiss you’d understand it and if they didnt, you’d understand it. Having grown up with Kenny as my idol it’s a sad day but this was always always the downside. I think Andy even touched on it at the start of the season with a quip about hoping Dalglish did better than 7th otherwise there’d be calls for Benitez. Pretty prescient.
As for the future, I suspect its locked into a form of Txixi as DoF + Borrell +Martinez. My worry there is Martinez had a good last 9 games of the season and realistically yes he kept Wigan up, but is that all the progression he made?, kept them up. Personally I’d go for AVB, I think the guy was chronically shafted by both Chelsea and the UK Media ( sounds familiar) and he is in no way, a bad manager. But what do I know!!??
I’m with jonno on this one. I can’t see how there was ever going to be a dignified way of doing this- after all he got the sack because he didn’t do a good enough job, this isn’t a pep guardiola-like situation where he was stepping aside after a sustained period of success. The owners took the emotion out of the situation, acted quickly, and now they can get on with exactly how they believe the club should be run.
That said, appreciate what you guys do. TAW is still by far the most intelligent discussion surrounding LFC.
Appreciate the feedback mate
Just on the subject of Clarke, he’s gone, it’ll confirmed after legals are all settled possibly after he returns from holiday
Wanted to add my voice to that. Wonderful pod. Wonderful dialogue.
Absolutely livid mate. Just wrote a comment which probably was a bit long but i put a fair bit of effort into it. i put the wrong CAPTCHA code in. It took me to a page telling me i’d put the wrong code in and to use the browsers back button. When i went back it was erased. Bearing in mind these codes can be misread i reckon you need to sort it mate. Gutted.
Mate, write the piece in notepad, then copy and paste it in. This has happened to me in the past; at least if it’s in notepad, you can have as many attempts as you like
Good point mate. I’ll know for next time.
Agree with Jonno … No attempt to even contemplate that Kenny brought the sacking on himself. Did he request meeting brought forward, and therefore had to be in Boston, or was that report erroneous ?
Did Kenny challenge FSG, thinking they would back down, and then was surprised when they didn’t ?
Maybe he knew he was gone and went into this thinking, I’m gonna make ’em look bad over this ?
Point is … none of us know what exactly happened … and blaming solely FSG is childish. Adults should look at all sides, and be able to recognise the wrongs from everybody.
Kenny may be king, but he’s no saint, and it’s entirely possible he caused the firing, rather than got “knifed” as Andy said.
Great podcast, as an exiled red living in the USA, it’s great to hear proper football talk.
In my opinion the club made the right move despite how difficult it was. They obviously didn’t wanted to sack him and asked him to move ‘upstairs’, which to me shows they are at least somewhat thinking about the fans/image of the club.
Whilst our history is and always will be amazing, it has in someways held the club back over the last twenty years. For a club with Liverpools fanbase it is nowhere near where it should be in terms of finances and brand. People talk about the Liverpool way but as Kenny found out football has moved on considerably both on and off the pitch since the 1980s.
The next few appointments are going to be massive for the club, in particular the director of football role, to me that will indicate FSGs vision far more than who the manager is.
Thanks for doing this. Glad you are keeping going all summer. Not ready to talk about what just happened yet myself, too raw, so kudos for pulling it off. Thanks also for the tip about DJ M-Rock. If anyone is going to the Toronto match and liked his stuff you can catch him live here:
F-STOP
Every Saturday 10pm-3am
420A Wellington St. W, Toronto, ON.
And no I wasn’t asked to promote him, just thought that Beastie Boys mix was the business.
Less then 12 month’s ago, club owners gave a manager a 3 year contract. They let him spend £100m~ and this manager won 1 of three possible trophies – the first the club had won in 6 years – and came within a gnat’s chuff of winning a second. The general consensus was that the style of football was an improvement on what had come before and stats showed that the team had been a stranger to luck for most of the season. The team in question finished 8th, but could point to victories in all competitions against every team that finished above them bar one (Spurs) – again, a significant improvement on the year before when the club found it difficult to buy a win against any team in the top 10.
The lowly league finish was at least in part attributable to the fact that following the daylight robbery of home defeat against Arsenal that effectively signalled the end of any top 4 aspirations, the club had been treading water in the league for the last 12 games with nothing more than pride at stake.
We won’t even mention the fact that the club’s best player for the previous 18 months missed 2/3rds of the season through injury, or that the season was blighted by off-the-field problems that must surely have distracted both manager and team to varying degrees.
As Rafa might have said, these are the facts. I challenge anyone to analyse the data above and then construct a logical, coherent argument for why the manager in question should be shown the door? if it happened at any other club on the planet, we’d look at each other and shake our heads and congratulate ourselves for supporting a a club where such idiocy could never take root. Well, guess what? While you were all staring at your Rome ’77 programs and deluding yourselves that Liverpool have a God-given right to finish above the likes of Spurs and Newcastle, it has.
I just wish FSG had been at the MUFC helm in 1987.
John Barnes is right. Liverpool will improve next season whoever the manager is. We’re worth an extra 10pts simply on the basis of laws of average luck applying in a way they never appeared to want to in 2011/12. My mum could take over this squad and steer us to 6th. You’d have to assume Lucas would be back, which in turn allows Gerrard to be effective in parts of the pitch that hurt the opposition. The new recruits would all be better off for having one season under their belts. Suarez could maybe behave in a way that meant he didn’t miss nearly a quarter of the season and our most expensive signing is at last starting to show the form that prompted his purchase. Henderson will kick on and then there’s whoever we bring in to remedy one of the worst chance:goal conversion ratios in Europe.
Question is, who do you want to steer the ship?
Do you want the guy who knows the football club inside out, who is one of only 3 managers to win the top tier English league with different clubs, or the guy who kept Wigan up who can point to the same number of managerial honours as my milk-man? It’s a toughie.
Dalglish should have been given another season at least. Not because I love him; not because he signed my wedding card even though my wife sent it to Celtic when he was at Newcastle (kudos to Celtic for passing it down to Kenny at NUFC); but because common-sense demands it.
My take is that FSG have a bigger plan for taking LFC forward and they don’t want an club icon casting a shadow over everything they are trying to do. Of course the would have preferred a top 4 finish for the money it would have generated, but once it became clear this wasn’t going to happen I think they are quietly content that the gap between LFC and 4th was 17 points ad not 2. I firmly believe that even if we’d snagged the FA Cup and been pipped to 4th on goal difference, KD would have walked the plank. It would have been more difficult for FSG to sell, but they’d have tried to sell it nonetheless.
All in all, thoroughly depressing.
Something in me was exstinguished on Wednesday 16th May when FSG finally lost their “Nice Guys” personna and sacked Kenny Dalglish.
What a dilemna we find ourselves in with modern day football in that it’s not WHETHER you win a trophy its WHICH trophy you win and the greatest trophy of all these days isn’t a trophy at all (well not if you finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th).
Yes ladies and gentleman roll up, roll up for the spectacle that is…………………..finishing in a CL slot !
Forget Flag Days at Wembley or Cardiff, biting your nails as they do the draw for the Cups, replays and penalty shootouts to see who goes into the pot for the next round, away days at Carlisle, Rotherham or Yeovil where the home end is half full of Reds, pitch invasions from over excited fans at the end of giant killing acts, John Motson’s sheepskin coat on a cold January Saturday, ticket ballots, White van man trips to far flung places………………
Forget all that cos it’s consigned to history and a time when football meant something other than £30 million pieces of silver …….
There’s still a lot to come out reagrding the sacking and why KK flew to Boston.
To be fair the lads are discussing what they perceive to have happened but obviously with a bit more logic than say, I would down the boozer with my mates.
Keep it real boys and I’ll keep listening and promoting