Kenny Dalglish

[Zatman]

If I had to compare Dogleash to anyone it would be Graham Taylor in the sense that the landscape of football has changed since his Mk I and his comeback as Mk II. It appears as though his football and management are from a time gone by. He shouldn't have come back, though I don't blame him for wanting to. It's just that hindsight is 20/20.

same could be said with Houllier

[CI]

Wasn't King Kenny hanging around the training ground when Hodgson was in charge

It's always a bit unhealthy when "legends" come back to "save the day"

[Zatman]

Is a cheque book manager, one who can win the double at his first attempt by spending only £350,000 on one player and bringing in 2 small fee transfers (letting 4 players go in the process) ?

Dalglish's first season at Liverpool, he managed that buying Steve MacMahon from us, the other players that came in were reserve keeper Mike Hooper and Gary Ablett who they loaned straight back to Hull. He actually let Phil Neal, Michael Robinson and Bob Bolder go.

but you fail to mention he took over one of best teams in Europe at the time. If guardiola left barcelona and Eck took over and only signed James Collins on a Bosman and still won double it wouldnt make him a top manager

[bickster]

Wasn't King Kenny hanging around the training ground when Hodgson was in charge

It's always a bit unhealthy when "legends" come back to "save the day"

He was already working at the club, in fact he was part of the team that chose Hodgson, even though his actual recommendation was "employ me". ;-)

[bickster]

That seems to be the type of manager you want isn't it Richard?

No not really as I have never rated him.

I can see that you do however.

I don't see that you can argue with his record. 4 League titles (at two different teams) and 2 FA Cups including A Double, Liverpool's first. Never rating a manager with that record is an argument of a one eyed man.

Is a cheque book manager, one who can win the double at his first attempt by spending only £350,000 on one player and bringing in 2 small fee transfers (letting 4 players go in the process) ?

Dalglish's first season at Liverpool, he managed that buying Steve MacMahon from us, the other players that came in were reserve keeper Mike Hooper and Gary Ablett who they loaned straight back to Hull. He actually let Phil Neal, Michael Robinson and Bob Bolder go.

but you fail to mention he took over one of best teams in Europe at the time. If guardiola left barcelona and Eck took over and only signed James Collins on a Bosman and still won double it wouldnt make him a top manager

He took over a team in disarray and at a really low ebb following the Heysel Stadium tragedy and whatever you think of the blame involved there, that in itself was no mean feat. To actually win the league in those circumstances and spending so little was an achievement not to be sniffed at.

[blandy]

Good manager, good person, good bloke. Top man, IMO.

[VillaGoMarching]

I'm not old enough to remember Dalgleish first time round and don't really remember what he was like managing Newcastle/Blackburn but was he always such a pompous self serving clearing in the woods? I mean he often tries to make interviewers look like pricks on tele, and if anyone dares to criticise Liverpool or something they're doing, he gets his back up and starts on the attack.

Was he always like this? I mean he even makes old taggart seems reasonable.

[The_Steve]

Genius

[privateer]

That is outstanding!

[TrentVilla]

I think the below taken from The Guardian is one of the best articles I've seen on the man and the manager.

No wonder Liverpool people sometimes feel isolated and victimised. Only last week the release of government papers under the 30-year rule revealed that in 1981, in the wake of the Toxteth riots, the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, suggested to Margaret Thatcher and their cabinet colleagues that the troubled city was a hopeless case and should be allowed to fall into a state of "managed decline". Hardly surprising, then, that when a figurehead like Kenny Dalglish comes along, offering solidarity and the comfort of a certain kind of indisputable success to a section of Merseyside, they rally to his standard.

As he celebrates the first anniversary of his return to the manager's office at Liverpool Football Club this weekend, Dalglish can see himself as the living embodiment of his club to a degree perhaps achieved by no other figure in the history of the English game. The events of the last few days, and perhaps most of all his extraordinary statements after the defeat at Manchester City on Tuesday night, served only to cement his special place in the affections of Liverpool's supporters.

There have always been two ways of looking at the Luis Suárez affair: Liverpool's way, which is also to say Dalglish's way, and the rest of the world's. Never has a football club chosen to estrange itself so thoroughly from the opinion of the rest of the nation. Outsiders simply cannot understand why the club should go on piling sandbags against the doorway even as the foundations of the bunker are being undermined, defending what an official judgment has now deemed to be the indefensible. On Wednesday Suárez issued another brief statement that managed to express a form of regret without coming close to being a genuine apology.

Dalglish, a great player for the club from 1977 to 1985, its player-manager from 1985 to 1991, and its manager once again for the past 12 months, nailed his colours to the mast of Suárez's defence from the outset and showed no signs of modifying his stance either when the guilty verdict was announced three weeks ago or when the 115 pages of the findings of the FA's independent commission of inquiry were published last week. Showing the kind of unconditional support for the player that might normally be expected from a parent, a close friend or even a team-mate, he seemed to be presenting the view from the dressing room rather than adopting the more reflective approach that might have been expected from someone at the head of a large organisation with an employee whose conduct had been subjected to the sporting equivalent of a police charge.

Given what we know of the Liverpool manager's nature, it is hard to suppress the feeling that this affair may be as much about Dalglish versus Sir Alex Ferguson, and Liverpool versus Manchester United, as Suárez versus Evra and the FA. The rivalry between Anfield and Old Trafford exists at a special level of intensity, heightened last year when Manchester United finally fulfilled Ferguson's promise to eclipse Liverpool's record of 18 league titles, 12 of United's 19 having come with Sir Alex at the helm. Dalglish's readiness to stand up and defy the man at the other end of the East Lancs Road is among the factors that bind the supporters to his leadership.

His presence during virtually all the major dramas studding the club's history over the past three and a half decades – all except the miracle in Istanbul, perhaps – gives the 60-year-old Glaswegian a special place, perhaps a unique one, in the supporters' hearts, making him the only true heir to the kingdom established by Bill Shankly and consolidated by Bob Paisley. There was glory when he won three European Cups and five league championships as a player and then guided them to three more league titles as player-manager, including their last to date, in 1989-90. But he also played in the 1985 European Cup final at the Heysel stadium in Brussels, which took place while 39 Juventus supporters lay dead or dying, and was managing the side four years later when 96 of their own supporters perished in the Hillsborough disaster. The degree of pastoral care he displayed in the aftermath of the latter tragedy, attending many of the funerals with a sombre dignity that was found to be affecting far beyond the boundaries of the club and the city, set a standard for behaviour in such circumstances.

Yet he has not always been beyond reproach in his dealings with the outside world, where his surliness with strangers and a willingness to make others look foolish are not always seen as endearing, and in recent days he has struck a series of discordant notes. Indicating his support of Suárez via Twitter after the verdict was announced, his paraphrase of the words of the club's famous hymn – "Let's not let him walk alone," he tweeted – seemed to outsiders to represent a cheap exploitation of the song's noble sentiment. He was criticised for allowing his players to warm up for a match in T-shirts proclaiming a collective belief in the player's innocence. And on Tuesday night his barefaced refusal to accept the commission's report appeared to fly in the face not just of a willingness to live by the law but of sheer common sense.

Asked to comment on the findings after the match in Manchester, he chose to reopen the dispute over what Suárez had meant when he addressed Patrice Evra using the word "negro". When a reporter pointed out that the commission had noted that it was "simply incredible" to suggest that the word was not used in an offensive way when the two players were clearly arguing, Dalglish responded: "There's a lot of things we'd like to say and a lot we could say but we'd only get ourselves into trouble. But we know what has gone on. We know what's not in the report and that's important for us." Later he added: "It's unfortunate that we can't be more forthcoming." Surely if he felt that a procedural injustice had been committed, which was apparently the subtext of his words, he should have said so.

If he had read the entire report, he showed no signs of recognising the scrupulous care with which it had been put together by Paul Goulding QC, Brian Jones and Denis Smith. Producing their tour de force of forensic investigation after 40 hours of listening to and evaluating evidence, during which they paid equal attention to Evra's accusations and Liverpool's clumsily handled defence, the members of the commission went to great lengths to explain the nature of the burden of proof in a case such as this, and how it differed from that in a criminal trial; the work they had done, with the assistance of various experts in linguistics, to establish the varieties of nuance that may be contained in the use of the epithet "negro"; and the reasons why, having reached the conclusion that Suárez's testimony was unreliable, they felt able to find him guilty.

By choosing simply to take Suárez at his word, and ignoring the assembly of evidence in the case, Dalglish showed himself to be capable of an immaturity surprising in a man of such experience, making him appear a less substantial figure than the one who demonstrated such a sure touch as he placed a blanket of consolation over the victims following the tragic events of 15 April 1989.

Not that he has lost an iota of stature with his Liverpool constituency, whose outpourings of faith in Suárez and diatribes against everyone outside the club have been considerably augmented in volume and intensity by the use of social media. Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere now allow the loudest – or at least the most numerous – voices to have the biggest say in many arenas, and nowhere more so than in football. And it should not be thought that he has been acting without the knowledge and approval of the club's owners, John W Henry, Tom Werner and the Fenway Sports Group, who are said to have been kept in touch at every stage.

Dalglish's own use of Twitter to communicate his feelings about the verdict exemplifies his ability to speak directly to supporters who feel that their idol is one of them. It was no surprise when he was welcomed back with such delirious joy last January. His return, combined with the arrival of new owners, seemed to blow away the miasma created by the toxic regime of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, which reached its nadir with the sacking of Rafael Benítez and the short, unhappy reign of Roy Hodgson. "Dal-glish! Dal-glish!" the Kop roared, convinced that he was the only man capable of putting an end to a period of humiliation and making them champions of England once again.

And so they stand together, drawn by even tighter bonds as they rage against the world, by no means unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the experience of fighting for justice, even if on this occasion it is a justice only they can perceive.

Here

[TRS-T]

Liverpool fans are deluded.

[Richard]

That seems to be the type of manager you want isn't it Richard?

No not really as I have never rated him.

I can see that you do however.

Never rating a manager with that record is an argument of a one eyed man.

and as you know I have four

[Jon]

Hate Liverpool FC, their fans, and Dalglish.

Deluded, precious pricks.

[Stevo985]

I have no opinion of Dalglish before his most recent sitnt.

I'm too young to remember his previous liverpool days, and my memories of him at Blackburn and Newcastle are basically neutral.

But since he's taken over at Liverpool thsi time around he's come across as an utter prick. Everytime I see him interviewed he seems to be being an arsehole.

[Designer1]

He was quite good in Scully.