They know favoured players can get away with a lot. Look at Roy Keane. He gets himself suspended from a Champions League final - it nearly cost Manchester United that match in 1999 - and deserts his Irish colleagues on the eve of a World Cup and, last week, surrenders to a mad impulse to tread on Porto's goalkeeper, incurring a red card that will cause him to miss a finely balanced return at Old Trafford. Yet the fans will chant his name on Tuesday week. Owen, like Keane, has earned the right to tolerance - after Portsmouth, it was even argued that he had fluffed his kick out of subconscious sportsmanship - and thus Houllier, his entitlement apparently used up midway through his sixth year at the club, had to walk alone.
Four days later, Houllier's name was sung on the Kop and it must have sounded like a male-voice choir to a Welshman abroad. Fate had been kind. Instead of kicking him when he was down, it had sent Levski Sofia to Anfield and spectacular goals from Steven Gerrard and Harry Kewell gave his team an excellent chance of staying in the UEFA Cup, the only trophy they can win this season. And so to their main task: the quest to return to the Champions League, resuming at noon today at Leeds, where victory will require more than on Thursday yet is imperative if the critics are to be kept at bay.
They come in all shapes and sizes and, while no space will be wasted here on the sick daubers, some of the old pros probably did Houllier a turn by pitting their credibility against his. Neil Ruddock, for instance. He had a nice left foot and, if he could have made it work in conjunction with his right at a speed likely to make a tortoise glance anxiously over its shoulder, he might have been worth keeping. Houllier let him go - and, of all the deals he has done, some undoubtedly misconceived as Ruddock states, the sale of Ruddock himself is one never held against the Frenchman. The last thing a talented kid like Gerrard needed to see when he came in for training was a centre-half with a barn-door backside and a barrowload of prattle. The most recent sighting of Ruddock was in a jungle with some other ersatz "celebrities", playing the fool for a living, and convincingly, as if he had found his role. Then there is Ian St John. Now he really could play. He did a lot for Liverpool in the Sixties. But I used to be a Boy Scout and that doesn't mean that, a few decades on, I can tell the difference between one knot and another.
Newspapers have to be filled, however, and the steady drip of conventional wisdom is part of popular culture. "You keep strong for the board and the players," said Houllier on Friday morning, "As long as you enjoy working for and with them, there's no problem. The rest goes with the territory." Rough it can be. As an ambulance rushed Houllier away from Anfield in 2001 for what turned out to be 11 hours of life-saving surgery, there was a clump on the roof; a photographer had clambered aboard. Arsene Wenger's welcome-to-England pack included twisted whispers about paedophilia. The rest must be accepted and football, I sometimes think, is one of our democratic institutions. When a regime has been in power for a few years, it is judged by increasingly harsh criteria - in this case, Arsenal, Manchester United and now Chelsea - and the manager held accountable. But such a process does not work without an element of legitimacy and Houllier cannot complain, any more than a Prime Minister, when his poll rating is at an all-time low.
A lot of people say he is ruining Owen through his tactical approach, which is certainly open to allegations of patience to a fault, although on Thursday the England striker had six chances - some self-made - before Gerrard scored and ran to the bench to proclaim the players' feelings. "After Portsmouth," Houllier said, "I told them 'Don't worry. The critics will be on my back - they won't be on yours. Just make sure you focus on the game coming up'. And that's what happened. I try to maintain a barrier between what is happening outside and what is inside." It would not, he seemed to concede, survive for ever. "If people systematically, regularly, have a go at the manager, whether it is Alex Ferguson, Bobby Robson or whoever, it has an effect on the team."
A problem apparent to the outsider is that, while Houllier continues rebuilding for the future, an ever-growing number of the critics are living in the past, when Liverpool were the Manchester United or Arsenal of the day. Houllier never had the opportunity of preserving that. Liverpool were heading for what you might call Tottenham status when he arrived, initially to share with Roy Evans. The old players may sigh, but competition has never been tougher at the top of English football.
So it is still a longish haul Houllier envisages. As he puts it: "The players know what we're aiming at. Whether it's fourth, fifth or sixth place this season, the target is to finish first at some stage. You need vision and already I'm preparing for next season." The thought that he might not be at Anfield, should the team fall short of the Champions League and that admirably supportive chairman David Moores lose faith, has clearly been suppressed, hidden behind one of those barriers. A bad result today would revive the critics. "It's a fine balance," he acknowledged. "So I keep my feet on the ground." Someone looked under the table and Houllier joined in the laughter. "Anyway," he said, still bearing what looked remarkably like a pressure-free smile, "it'll be a good result."