Houllier won the CL in Istanbul 2005

[Woland]

At least he left us in the CL

 

[King Binny]

Tomorrow he returns to Anfield with Villa. It will be an emotional night but also a pressing one.

Injury-blighted Villa have just one win in nine League games under him and lost to Birmingham City in the Carling Cup quarter-finals.

‘It will be interesting to see what the Liverpool crowd is like,’ Houllier says with a smile.

‘I trust them to be good. After all, I didn’t go afterwards to Everton or Manchester United, did I?’

He will surely be welcomed with open arms. He admits that after suffering heart problems while in charge at Liverpool in 2001 that required 11-and-a-half hours of heart surgery for a dissected aorta, his return five months later was premature and he could not devote the same energy to recruiting players.

‘After my illness, some of my signings were not good enough. I didn’t have time to check,’ he says.

‘I saw him in the Toulon Under-21 tournament and we went for him, but we had a wage scale and we weren’t paying the sort of salary he wanted,’ said Houllier.

‘Then Manchester United played a friendly against Sporting Lisbon and all their boys said to Sir Alex Ferguson, “You have to sign himâ€. But I agreed with not breaking the wage structure. I thought it would cause problems in our dressing room.

‘I know some of the signings were not as sharp as they could have been. Maybe we would have won the title with Ronaldo, but we had Harry Kewell, who was outstanding at the time and was very hungry but got a bad injury. After that, he never had the same confidence, the same appetite.’

As Houllier sits again in the Anfield dugout tomorrow, he will recall the ‘very emotional’ night he returned after recuperating from surgery, against Fabio Capello’s Roma in the UEFA Cup.

It will, though, be an event that occurred after his reign that sits most prominently in his mind’s eye: that night in 2005 when Liverpool won their fifth European Cup by beating AC Milan on penalties from 0-3 down.

‘If I had 10 memories to keep when I am finished, one would be when I went into the dressing room in Istanbul,’ he said.

‘Normally, one or two of the players would be a bit shy but they all came over to hug me and say, “Boss it’s your teamâ€. That was something special.

‘I didn’t realise then that 12 of the 14 players came through under me. I said to them, “Go and do your interviewsâ€. They said, “No, they can wait. Sit down. How is Isabelle?â€

‘We won things, we had difficult moments but we were together and they were grateful for the times we had.’ Houllier can’t remember quite how the end came the previous year. ‘When it’s not nice, I try to forget. Probably Rick Parry (then Liverpool chief executive) came to see me but the deal was already done with Rafa Benitez. A few things now add up. It’s like when your wife is cheating, you are the last to know. I think they were a little embarrassed.

‘But I don’t consider that as a dark period. Six years at a big club is sometimes enough. I wasn’t going to sign a new contract anyway because from a health point of view, it was better to have a sabbatical.