Liverpool’s museums boast the fastest- growing visitor numbers in Britain. There is the Liverpool Museum, the Museum of Liverpool Life at the Pier Head, and at Albert Dock are the Beatles Story and the Merseyside Maritime Museum.
Now there is a new attraction. On Thursday night 39,149 people went through its doors. You can find it near Stanley Park, in L4, and its name is Anfield. There, preserved in a petrified state, is what used to be a great football club. Liverpool FC. Winners of 18 English championships and four European Cups.
Now, 29 points behind leaders Arsenal, closer in points to the bottom of the table than the top, they say success would be finishing fourth in the League. Thursday’s Uefa Cup defeat of Levski Sofia was hailed as a sign that good times might be returning. That in itself is a sign of how bad times have become. When did a moderate win over moderate opponents in a moderate competition start being big news for the club of Bill Shankly, Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish? Wednesday’s return leg in Sofia should be fairly straightforward, and there are hopes that the Uefa Cup could be Liverpool’s salvation. But revival can only be real if it is sustained. The painstaking job of building on Thursday’s result begins today with an awkward task at Elland Road against a Leeds team rediscovering a redoubtable streak. There should be caution about seeking too much succour from Thursday’s performance.
Liverpool’s impressive victory over Newcastle in the FA Cup four weeks ago also raised hopes, but it was followed by just one win in their next three Premiership games and an exit in the next round of the FA Cup against Portsmouth. Why should we think Liverpool will do a better job of building on a good result this time? “I believe in quality — of attitude and football,” was manager Gerard Houllier’s response to that question. “If your attitude is right, if the focus, concentration and team discipline are there, you can build. I told the players on Thursday, ‘You don’t have to prove anyone wrong, you just have to demonstrate how good you can be’.”
In fact, Liverpool were not good for 65 minutes against the Bulgarians, but it was the extent of his side’s turnaround during the last 25 minutes of the game, once Steven Gerrard had broken the deadlock, that encouraged Houllier to believe a wider turnaround is possible. Gerrard’s reaction to scoring, when he bee-lined straight to the dugout to embrace his manager, suggested the players reciprocate Houllier’s faith. The Frenchman ended the most severe week of scrutiny of his Anfield reign in defiant mood.
Is it simplistic to assume his future as manager depends on qualifying for the Champions League? “Yes. Yes,” was his firm reply. Would he expect to remain in his job, even if his team finished outside the top four? “I think we will achieve our target. There’s competition between four, five, six teams and it’s very exciting,” he said.
Does he see himself still at Anfield in one, two or three years? “Yeah. I’m not only working for the next game. I’m working for two or three years down the line. You have to have vision, and I’m already thinking of next season.”
Houllier, even leaving aside his comeback from major cardiac surgery, could never be accused of lacking courage. His and Liverpool’s immediate future depends on players showing similar guts. Yet resolve has not always been Liverpool’s foremost quality in the past two seasons.
One indicator of a team’s mental strength is the ability to hold a lead. Since the start of the 2002-3 campaign Liverpool have dropped 30 Premiership points by drawing or losing games after they scored first. Arsenal have ceded 22 points in that fashion. Manchester United, who have not lost a League game in which they scored first since 2001-2, have ceded just eight points.
Another indicator is how good a side is at coming from behind. Only eight times in Houllier’s five seasons in sole charge have Liverpool lost the first goal in a League match and won. United, in the same period, have done it 18 times, Arsenal 16. Newcastle United did it nine times in 2001-2 alone.
Liverpool, to the outside observer, need a few more like Gerrard, whose defiance was the difference on Thursday, just as it was when the team scraped a draw at Bolton three weeks ago, and in many other games this campaign. “You (the press) protect the players,” Houllier remarked cryptically on Friday, although the character of his team is something he is prepared to defend. “I told them after we lost at Portsmouth, ‘Don ’t worry, people will be on my back. They won’t be on yours. Just make sure you focus on the next game’. And that is exactly what happened.
“Someone mentioned that what you saw from us on Thursday was a siege mentality, and I think that’s right. When the house is attacked, what you do is make sure you get together. You don’t run away. You stay strong. We did.
“Two things have kept me strong. The first is my board. Rick Parry (Liverpool’s chief executive) and the chairman have been very supportive. The second thing has been the players. They can feel what we’re doing and see the vision of this club. I have faith in them.”
Houllier puts Liverpool’s inconsistencies down not to mental weakness but physical fragility. “The number of times I’ve gone into a game this season missing seven, eight, nine players. Michael Owen was out for three months. Milan Baros six. At some stages we haven’t even had a fit full-back.”
All along he has asked to be judged only once his first- choice side was available. So Thursday, when Baros made his first start since breaking his leg in August, was when the judgment should start.
Baros was lively, but his performance contrasted with Owen’s. Apart from missing three chances in rapid succession at the start of the second half, the England striker did little inside his opponents’ box.
The quest to turn him into a more rounded footballer has seen him do more work in deeper positions, but Liverpool need Owen’s goals, and his scoring record has progressively diminished since 2001-2, when his goal rate, not the frequency of his forays into midfield, made him European Footballer of the Year. Uncertainty about his playing role might be one reason for Owen’s uncertainty about extending his contract at Anfield.
Owen also sees getting back into the Champions League as important to his career. It is certainly important to Liverpool, who have committed themselves to signing Djibril Cisse for £14m this summer and in the longer term spending £80m on a new stadium. It all adds to the pressure on Houllier. But “life and death is pressure. If something terrible happens to your children — that’s pressure. Football’s just a game”.
Sometimes you wonder at Liverpool, where most of the players and Parry himself avoid interviews, whether too much pressure — at least in media terms — falls on Houllier. Yet it is a burden he takes upon himself: “I try to be a barrier between what’s happening outside and what’s happening inside. I know it (outside criticism) can affect the players. The better the barrier, the more we can concentrate on our task. Some of the criticism has been unfair. Liverpool don’t have a divine right not to lose games.
“The press have to live and have to write but put it this way: one day it (criticism) falls on Manchester United, one day it’s Newcastle, one day it’s Aston Villa. And Chelsea — they have a season ticket for that. Poor Claudio (Ranieri) . . .
“Don’t think that even if we finish fourth I’ll be happy. The target is to finish first — at some stage. But this season, look at the injuries we’ve had. Then an international player misses a penalty (Owen at Portsmouth) and it changes the world. I don’t think I’d have been a better manager if Mic-hael had scored that penalty.”
Houllier, if for his dignity alone, does not deserve to become a museum piece.