King Kenny Dethroned: An American Revolution At Anfield?
So farewell then, Kenny Dalglish. The Liverpool manager leaves the manager’s position at Anfield in a curious position, having reminded supporters of the club what winning trophies feels like – it seems scarcely credible but is nevertheless true that this year’s League Cup final was the clubs first at the new Wembley Stadium – but having failed in the Premier League, where no amount of white-washing could mask the fact that an eighth placed finish was unacceptably modest. Indeed, the club has only finished as low as this in a final league table on two occasions since the mid-1950s. That he should stand and fall on league position when he won the club a trophy and got them to another cup final is, of course, a sign of the times. Qualification for the Champions League is everything these days, and the relative lack of consistency amongst the teams that finished above Liverpool in the final table this season indicates that this season was a nettle which could have been grasped. For the clubs that Liverpool would consider to be their contemporaries, this has been a far from vintage season and the team still fell a long way short of them. Dalglish’s season came to be defined by this and two other issues: the amount of money spent by Liverpool on players and the Luis Suarez incident (and the club’s reaction to it)....
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