Time for the King to show them how it's done

Time for the King to show them how it's done

It has been a great week to be a Liverpool fan.

I have lost count of the number of times I've heard someone say "It feels like we've got our club back" this week. I've said it myself. But it does. It really does. The announcement that Roy had gone to be replaced by Kenny has had such an immediate effect on the club and on the fans it is like someone has flicked a switch.

There has been a swirling cloud of negativity and division engulfing the club for the past two seasons, since the credit crunch bit and Hicks and Gillett's true colours were exposed, through to the desperate performances on and off the pitch by Roy Hodgson and his team. For as long as decisions have been made by those with an eye on the balance sheet and not the team sheet, wrong decision after wrong decision has been made at Anfield. Until this week. Until the owners took responsibility and made the decision which should have been made in the Summer. The club has been crying out for leadership for some time, and returning the club into the hands of Kenny Dalglish was the only sensible route to be taken out of the 'crisis' in which we found ourselves. The tedious comparisons with Kevin Keegan's return to Newcastle have been made, but they ignore the fact that Dalglish has a far superior record as a manager. But more than that, if this appointment had only been made with an eye on giving the fans what they want (which it wasn't), and on providing a uniquely popular figurehead around whom the club can unite, then for the time being it is hard to see anything wrong in that.  

For the first time in what feels like a long time I cannot wait for the match. The last few months of the Benitez Years were tortuous, and that's coming from someone who was a huge supporter of his. It felt like the end of an era, and with Hicks and Gillett hovering over the club like a cloud of noxious gas it seemed like it would be a long long time before Liverpool fans had anything to smile about.

And then came the Age of Roy. I don't think I enjoyed a single Liverpool game whilst Roy was manager. It felt like support out of duty, out of obligation, not out of love. It felt like you were witnessing the slow decline of the once mighty Reds, death by a thousand cuts, however you want to put it. Roy didn't look like a Liverpool manager, he didn't sound like a Liverpool manager and his team didn't play like a Liverpool team. How Roy's reign will be remembered is a subject for another day, but I reckon it will be remembered slightly differently in the pubs around Anfield and in the stands to how it will be recalled in the editing suites of the mass media. Paul Hayward of the Guardian reckons he leaves without a stain on his record. Show me a football fan who agrees with that and I'll show you an Evertonian! Apparently Roy was turfed out by a popular revolt, let down by the fans who should have backed him as they always used to. The common thread which runs through analyses which feature this line of argument is a failure to consider why the support for Roy (which was never at a high level to begin with), ebbed away so quickly. Even his most ardent cheerleaders in the media (Patrick Barclay, I'm looking at you) would struggle to deny that Roy never appeared to grasp the size of the job he had been given, and never appeared to even attempt to understand the mentality of the club or its fans. All too often his words sounded hollow and contrived when speaking of the club he purported to lead. It is a sad state of affairs when the appearance of the Liverpool manager before the cameras makes you cringe, but that is what it had come to. Allied to football which played to the strengths of the manager and not to the strengths of the team, to a craven tactical approach (especially away from home) and to a record which will always remain anchored at the wrong end of Liverpool's record books, it was only a matter of time before the fans turned. To many it was clear as early as the defeat at Manchester City in the second week of the season that something was desperately wrong, and it is a blessed relief that he has been put out of his misery as early as he has.

Mercifully Roy's reign was over before it had really begun and now Kenny has returned. Barring a win at Old Trafford (which was always unlikely, however much that pains me to say), he couldn't have done much more with his first few days back in the hotseat. The twinkle in his eye as he strode out of the Old Trafford tunnel; the wit in his words as he faced the media for the first time on Monday; the humility with which he pledged to serve once again the institution which, in his own words, has given him so much. All of these and more have lifted a club which has seemed adrift for so long. His return has moved grown men (and women too no doubt) to tears, has put a smile back on every Liverpool fan's face. I know I had a grin as wide as the Mersey when he took his place in the dugout on Sunday, and I know it'll be there tonight as well. Unlike Roy, he looks and sounds like a Liverpool manager. He doesn't have to try to understand the club because the club is part of him. That instinctive understanding of the club has been obvious throughout his media appearances and interviews this week, and it will be there in the team's performance tonight.

There is no doubt that Kenny has a long road ahead, even to the end of the season, but for the first time in a long time tonight's match feels like a beginning, not an end. I don't think many people who don't follow a club closely will know what it has been like to be a Liverpool fan for the past few years. Not many will have followed a live blog of High Court proceedings which felt far more climactic than (nearly) any match. Not many will have felt the pain of watching the club you love treated with such disdain. To know beyond doubt that the club is in the hands of a man who will understand that and much much more is better than any victory.

Welcome back King Kenny, now show them how it's done.