Other Premier League games
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GH had a way of brownnosing individual players he thought he had to keep onside at any cost. It's why Fowler was edged out in favour of Owen and it's why Stevie got the armband off Sami. We did need Stevie and Owen badly, but I was still never happy about the favouritism they were shown at the expense of other players who were important to us too..
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All managers have favourites, and it's arguable that Houllier's treatment of Fowler was actually a very, very brave thing for any Liverpool manager to do - regardless of whether he was right or wrong - because this was a Toxteth-born terrace hero who came into the team at 18 and was one of the best strikers to ever play for Liverpool. he was literally "God".
He could never have done it had supporters not considered him a hero.
We all felt we were on the up after the treble. I can’t remember whether Fowler was sold after the treble or the season after when I think we came second, but either way I remember lots of supporters upset but grudgingly accepting that Houllier knew what he was doing. Before our team became a bit shit..
It was effective, until Heskey just turned from being unplayable into a quivering, weak minded, sack of shit, and Owen was either injured or unsure of his own body because of fear of imminent injury.
He did drag Liverpool’s training methods into the 21st century, overseeing the construction of Melwood etc. and for that we had to be grateful. The next step up, finding genuinely high quality players, proved to be a bit too much for him, unfortunately.
He also won the UEFA cup, FA Cup and League Cup in the same season, for which I'm also rather grateful for, as well as signing Didi Hamann, Sami Hyypia, Steve Finnan, JAR, Markus Babbel and Stephane Henchoz
Adjusted.
That he did, indeed.
No. Carragher played a lot of his football under Houllier at LB, where he was a regular starter. Houllier preferred Hyypia and Henchoz as his CB partnership.
He did play a few games at RB and CB, but he wasn't trusted in the middle too often.
I suppose there was a load of contributory factors, but the most obvious on-field ones were the signings of that utter cunt Diouf and the almost equally hopeless Diao, which really compounded his reputation for a rather mixed-bag approach to signings. Some wonderful; so many dreadful.
Carragher to centre-back was Thompson’s idea. But Houlier did embrace the idea.
It's a question of degree. Managers can't really help having favourites, I accept that, but the extent to which they should actually treat them as such is another matter. The Fowler thing is arguable either way and, while it was a brave thing to do, there's "brave/necessary" and "brave/stubborn". For me there were ultimately too many occasions, starting with his decision to junk Anelka in favour of Spit the Dog, when GH strayed too far over that line.
I profoundly disagree. He was tremendous during the 6 months he spent with us and galvanised our attacking play - one particular performance of his, against Newcastle at Anfield, was one of the best individual performances I've ever seen from a Liverpool player. He was reportedly so keen to stay that he offered to take a pay cut to do so, and it was also said that others at the club were staggered by GH's decision.
I think his point was that if he'd stayed longer, we might have seen some of the less savoury and/or impressive displays, as he was certainly not entirely consistent.
As it is, he's become one of the greatest "what if?" lost goalscorers in LFC history, after scoring 5 goals in a 20 game Liverpool career
I actually didn't want the guy beforehand, and you've referred to some of the reasons why, but once he'd arrived I became a convert. Opposition defences doubled up on him precisely because he was in such blistering form, and others around him benefited big style. It's no accident we were second that season, IMHO of course.
Oh yeah, I really liked Anelka; he was quick, skilful and was also pretty versatile in that he was capable of playing wide, centrally or deep
Well, it's fair to say that none of us knows for sure what went on, but that conflicts with the (quite widespread) scuttlebutt at the time.
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