A new era at Liverpool offers the chance to restore the standards, unity and identity that once made the club so formidable…
In 2012 there was a Sky excerpt of Jamie Redknapp returning to Melwood to see the training ground he first visited as a teenage player in 1991.
It was standard fare. Everything had been changed and modernised. Time and an enormous income will do that. The all weather pitch at the back of the compound was in better nick, the food was nutritious and, from my own memory, there were no longer holes in the brickwork where kids could have a peek at the players in the sweatbox. Redknapp met with then manager Kenny Dalglish and the two reminisced about his first day at the club.
Redknapp then sees Ronnie Moran in the distance and bounds over to meet him. He says something complimentary about the great man’s legs but Bugsy’s having none of such small talk. He just stares up at him with a light chuckle and says:
‘Don’t come in here with a beard.’
Jamie Redknapp left Liverpool in 2002 and was 39 at the time of the recording.
I love that clip. There’s undoubted affection there, but Ronnie Moran’s first instinct is to tell him there’s something not right. Somewhere, no matter how small, standards had dropped and he was the man to point it out and rectify it.
I’ve been thinking about James Milner a lot this week too. The coverage of Robbo and Jurgen this week has led me down a Millie rabbit hole and, once again, I had a look at his autobiography. Talk about standards.
Jurgen called him ‘probably the most disciplined, stubborn, professional football player I have ever worked with’ and that’s saying something coming from him.
And it’s the little things. Even when the Reds were told they could sleep in their own beds the night before a home game, James Milner would check into a hotel to make sure he was adequately rested and his preparation was on point, even when he knew he was unlikely to start the next day. He was always the last player off the pitch at the dreaded Bleep Test regardless of his age and he never left the pitch without giving his all.
There’s going to be a dig at the players here, isn’t there? On and off the pitch? Well …
Last week I called for a Day 1. Since then, the club have announced the departures of Arne Slot and, unrelated I’d guess, Ibou Konate. There’s talk of Andoni Iraola coming in, but as I write this nothing has been confirmed.
Slot’s dismissal was greeted with joy from some quarters and a whole host of blogs, many of which told the world that he should be respected though they themselves didn’t bother much with that when he was here, infested the usual channels. There’s relief and there’s sadness. I hate it when a Liverpool manager leaves. It means we’re here again.
At best though, I’m ambivalent about this. It doesn’t solve everything as Arne Slot wasn’t the only part of the problem. Standards have slipped across the board.
My overriding thought was that the players and staff of the club can no longer hide behind criticism of the manager and their social media accounts and might have to have a look at themselves from now on. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a bit of player power from time to time, but it’s a bit much when it’s against a manager who’s won the league and every metric of their output is down. By the Brighton game in March, Liverpool had been outrun in 26 of the first 30 Premier League games. That’s fine if they’re keeping the ball for long periods, but that was seldom the case. I’m not having it that a manager would tell a struggling side to do less.
I wish James Milner had been around last season. He wouldn’t be having that. There are standards and there are responsibilities that seem to have been forgotten.
Slot’s exit may have overjoyed the dressing room, but the blame blanket has also been removed.
But that was yesterday.
Day 1 it is then. Standards must be improved and adhered to ruthlessly across the board. There must be no more of ‘It was all his fault’ now. It’s time to stand up and be a part of this club and its future.
The new manager will be up against a Pepless City and a devastated Arsenal team who are about to learn, as we have, that the seasons after a title win are usually the worst. If we can unify what we have and end the senseless bickering around the club, then we might be onto something.
More than anything though I want a Liverpool side where I’m no longer at odds with every single element of it. I’ll never forget the end of the Brendan Rodgers era, a time rife with division, when a mate said: ‘I just want someone we can all get behind.’ We got lucky then.
Liverpool is again at odds with itself and I hope the new man can throw down a template of what is and what is no longer acceptable at this club. Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez had their critics but neither had any time for what passed for the dressing room when they arrived and immediately changed it for the better.
We’re in rebuild mode again but that’s often a good thing. Appraisals across the board, no matter how uncomfortable they are, are occasionally necessary if we want to carve an identity. Liverpool 2026 doesn’t even have one of those.
Football’s really hard and never an exact science, which is why this ‘He spent millions and won nothing’ argument always confuses me, but you can’t go anywhere unless you have buy in. Arne Slot had that buy in and then lost it. Arne Slot was asked to regain the title with half a new team and the others anchored in grief and couldn’t get going. There’s both blame and mitigation on all sides.
But we’re at Day 1 now. A new broom incoming and the opportunity for honest conversations and outcomes. I hope each squad member, the recruitment team and their overlords can at least wonder if they could be doing a bit more. They can.
More than anything I hope the manager has the standards of Moran and Milner.
That would be a start.
