Red Odyssey by Jeff Goulding

Author:Jeff Goulding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2018-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

The Fall and Rise of a Sporting Empire

Liverpool Football Club

1990–2017

Kenny Dalglish rocks the Reds as exhausted hero bows out at Anfield

To those on the Kop he was simply King Kenny. The bedroom walls of Kopites everywhere were like shrines to the man. As a player he could do no wrong, as manager he conquered all before him and as a man he carried a city through not one, but two tragedies. Then on 22 February 1991, he broke our hearts.

Dalglish left Liverpool three points clear at the top of the table and still in the FA Cup. His team had just fought a titanic battle against Everton in one of the craziest derbies ever witnessed.

Four times the Reds had gone ahead, only to be pegged back each time. The game ended 4-4. As a performance it was unrecognisable and so too was the man sat in the Reds dugout.

As he sat in the press conference in which he dropped the bombshell, he had the look of a broken man. History had caught up with him. The pressure of carrying the club and city for so long had proven to be unbearable.

We now know the full extent of the mental turmoil he was suffering but at the time many of us just didn’t see it coming. We should have. I was at work when the news broke. I remember my boss took a call and I heard her say, ‘You’re joking!’ She looked stunned, hung up the phone and announced to the whole office, ‘Dalglish has resigned.’

We were all gobsmacked. Even the Blues looked genuinely dumbfounded. As we left work we passed Echo billboards and shook our heads in disbelief. It was so difficult to process.

Kenny later admitted he just needed a break. Had the club asked him to come back in the summer, he would have. Instead, they approached Graeme Souness. How many more trophies and cups might Liverpool have won if they had called Kenny instead? We’ll never know.

There are some who point to the fact that Kenny made some mistakes in the transfer market before he left, that Liverpool were running out of steam and they needed to rebuild. Maybe so, but I’d have backed a fully fit and refreshed Dalglish to sort things out over anyone else.

It’s hard to pick one moment that epitomises Kenny’s contribution to this club. Would it be his goal in the 1978 European Cup Final, or the one that clinched the championship at Stamford Bridge? Maybe it’s winning the double or helping to defeat Everton in two FA Cup finals.

His contributions to the club are legendary. He created perhaps the most flamboyant and entertaining Liverpool side in modern history, with the likes of Barnes, Beardsley and Aldridge lighting up the footballing world. They were a joy to watch and at times simply unbeatable.

However, it is perhaps his service to the city of Liverpool itself, in the aftermath of Hillsborough, which marks him out as someone special. It is for this and so many other reasons that his decision to resign devastated so many people.

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