Premier League 
/ Richard Aikman / 25 March 2012 / Leave a Comment 
"How many league matches do Liverpool have to lose before Dalglish’s credit runs out? Does he need to win the FA Cup to consider this a successful season?"
They won the Carling Cup but have lost five of their last six matches and are floundering in the league. So why does the Liverpool manager retain staunch backing from fans and pundits? Richard Aikman puts the boot in where others fear to tread.
For Liverpool the season gets stranger and stranger. There is more silverware in the trophy room, an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley awaits, but league form lurches from bad worse. Were it any other manager at the helm, the natives would be getting restless, but as it is Kenny Dalglish who is in charge, normal rules don't apply.
Once upon a time, any form of silverware would serve as job insurance for another season, but in an era in which the Champions League is the all-important money-spinning holy grail for Europe's leading clubs, the League Cup is small beer.
Even the FA Cup has lost much of its lustre, last year's 1-0 victory for Manchester City against Stoke a lowlight in the calendar both in terms of the quality of the match and the outcome. There was a time when the FA Cup was all-important, when two thirds of the nation's television output was devoted entirely to the build-up to the big day. After a long affair, however, the romance is gone.
Heads are now only really turned by the Champions League. The anthem, the floodlights, the Camp Nou, the kudos. Nothing else really compares, except perhaps for winning the title. And Liverpool, despite the vast sums have spent, seem as distant from that as ever.
So the question is, just how many league matches do Liverpool have to lose before Dalglish's credit runs out? Does he need to win the FA Cup to consider this a successful season? Would defeat to Everton in the FA Cup semi-final, assuming they overcome Sunderland in the last-eight stage, cause the board to review their coach's position?
These are genuine questions, not barbed pot-shots designed at denigrating a manager's name. The fact remains, though, that Liverpool have lost five of their last six matches - the last two defeats coming against relegation-embattled clubs - in their worst run since January 2005. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if Roy Hodgson was still in charge?
Hodgson, incidentally, is second favourite to Harry Redknapp for the England job after yet another example of miracle working at West Brom. The former Inter Milan and Blackburn coach never stood a chance at Liverpool because he was in charge of a club in the process of being sold, had minimal backing in the transfer market (he spent £24m and recoupled £26m) and was having to work under the shadow of his eventual successor, the then academy director Dalglish.
King Kenny, meanwhile, has spent £117m (£76m recouped) on seven players who have so far failed to deliver (unless you count a League Cup which Birmingham won last season before getting relegated). The Reds are seventh in the table, just two points clear of Everton and Sunderland - and three of Norwich and Swansea. Indeed, Dalglish's league record this season reads as follows: W11, D9:L10, or in other words W37% D 30% L33%. Hodgson's read: W7 D4 L9 or W35% D20% L45%. Under anyone else's tenure, this would be a disaster.
BBC pundits Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson seldom hold back when putting the boot into teams in the mire, but both former Liverpool team-mates of Dalglish were conspicuous by their absence from Match of the Day last night. It seems that not even the neutral media are prepared to damage the legacy of a living footballing institution.
At least Dalglish had the good grace to front up to the press, unlike Roberto Mancini, who sent his stooge David Platt out to field questions form the press after a 1-1 draw at Stoke that handed the title initiative to Manchester United. A sharp man with a quick tongue, Dalglish normally holds his own against anything reporters throw at him, but the wily Scot was scraping the barrel on Saturday, when he passed the Wigan reverse off as "the price you pay for success". Seriously, what?
"'If you play Sunday-Wednesday-Saturday it's going to take its toll," claimed the 60-year-old, presumably referring to the herculean triumphs against Cardiff and Stoke.
"Whether that's the price you have to pay for success or a demanding TV schedule, I don't know. We're disappointed because a lot of the final balls in good positions we didn't deliver. Put that down to tiredness."
Didn't Liverpool concentrate on buying young players like Andy Carroll, Jordan Henderson and players in their prime like Stewart Downing, Charlie Adam and Luis Suarez so that they could endure the rigours of a long season? And how on earth does Dalglish think his side would fare if his team actually got into the Champions League, if his multi-million pound squad can't handle minor domestic cup assignments?
No one wants to see more managerial casualties in a business which places too much stock in short-term results and Dalglish, like everyone, should be given time to make his stamp on the side, but managers should also all be judged with equanimity and at the moment the silence that has greeted King Kenny's recent failings has been deafening.
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