Jordan Henderson arrival sets tone as Kenny Dalglish and Liverpool build for long-term success
Exactly six months ago, Liverpool stood accused of looking to the past to cure the problems of the present. The return of Kenny Dalglish was seen as little more than an attempt to ease the pain of Anfield’s inexorable demise.
How wrong such an assessment was. The Scot’s appointment was not a symptom of a club swaddled by its gilded history. It was evidence of a side with an insatiable, impatient appetite for the future.
Within weeks, Dalglish had seen the club’s transfer record smashed to sign a 22-year-old striker from Newcastle United. In the chaotic aftermath of Fernando Torres’s departure, perhaps the message inherent in Andy Carroll’s £35 million move was lost. It looked a panicked, desperate move, an attempt to lessen the impact, to cushion the blow.
On Thursday morning, after the completion of Jordan Henderson’s £16 million move from Sunderland, there should be no such uncertainty. Liverpool will not win the Premier League title in 2012.
The following season, though, and for a decade after that, the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, expect success. They crave glory. They will, in the words of John Henry when he completed his £300 million takeover, “do whatever it takes to win”.
And they have made clear how they intend to do so. Young talent, bought at a premium if necessary, and preferably locally sourced. First Carroll, now Henderson. Phil Jones, late of Blackburn, soon of Manchester United, would have followed had the champions not flexed their muscles, evidence of the gap which currently exists between the two ends of the East Lancs Road.
Should Liverpool land their other targets, that gulf may not yawn quite so wide in the future. Charlie Adam, of Blackpool, and Aston Villa’s Stewart Downing will be next in line, for £20 million more the pair, lending Liverpool’s side a vision and a width sadly lacking in recent years. But they, as well as José Enrique, the Newcastle left-back, are signings of immediacy.
They are players at the peak of their powers, capable of being drafted straight in to the first team, helping Liverpool turn this season’s sixth place into fourth next time out.
But where FSG, Dalglish and Damien Comolli, the Director of Football, believe Liverpool’s real future lies is in the likes of Connor Wickham, the Ipswich striker who the club hope to bring in as back-up to Carroll and Luis Suarez for around £10 million.
It would be easy to credit Dalglish with instilling that philosophy into Anfield, but in truth Henry and Comolli should take as much credit.
Henry, within three weeks of his arrival, had identified Liverpool’s lack of youth as a weakness that had to be rectified. Comolli’s track record at Tottenham proves that his preferred modus operandi is to secure exciting British prospects.
Dalglish is hardly standing in the way of that process, of course. It was the Scot who was so keen to promote youth into his side at the end of last season, handing John Flanagan, Jay Spearing and Jack Robinson their chance, drafting youth team players like Conor Coady, Raheem Sterling and Andre Wisdom into the first-team squad.
Dalglish is Liverpool and Liverpool is Dalglish. It is unthinkable that the club’s long-term well-being is not uppermost in his mind.
And so he has given his blessing to Comolli to sign the likes of Henderson and Wickham along with the more practical arrivals of Roma’s Brazilian goalkeeper Doni and the Rennes midfielder Sylvain Marveaux, ensuring that the bulk of the money — and impetus — provided by FSG is diverted into securing Anfield’s long-term future.
The instinctive reaction is to wonder where all of these pieces fit into Dalglish’s jigsaw. Henderson and Adam, particularly, prompt the question as to how the Scot will keep all six of his central midfielders happy in a season when there is no Europa or Champions League to pad out the fixture list.
But the Liverpool manager, now ensconced on the throne he wishes he never vacated, may see such things as temporal trivialities.
“We signed him for five years, not five months,” was a favourite refrain of Dalglish on the subject of Carroll last season; expect the same should Henderson, or Wickham, or Adam miss out next season.
True, he may not be able to shoehorn his new £16 million signing into the same side as Steven Gerrard next year. But that is an obsession with the now. Dalglish, that symbol of Liverpool’s past, is thinking of what is to come.
