Ring of Fire

by Simon Hughes

  Houllier uses five words to describe the 2000–01 squad that achieved an unprecedented cup treble and qualified for the Champions League for the first time since its inception by finishing third in the league. He also reminds me that by winning the UEFA Cup, he is one of only two Frenchmen to lift a European trophy as manager – the other being Luis Fernández in 1996 when he led Paris Saint-Germain to the Cup Winners’ Cup, beating Liverpool en route.

  ‘My players were generous, talented, believing, ambitious and resilient,’ he says. ‘They used to enjoy themselves. In training, you could feel the camaraderie. A good atmosphere developed very quickly. There was pleasure and performance.’

  When he became Liverpool’s manager, the club could afford to appoint different coaches who specialized in fitness, goalkeeping, defending and attacking.

  ‘Before training, I would hold a meeting and tell all of my coaches what I wanted,’ Houllier adds. ‘I would then watch what was happening and only get involved when there needed to be an intervention tactically.’

  Yet, the responsibility of leading the club took over his life. It was part of the job description to be obsessed, to treat it as a ‘mission’.

  ‘Yes, you have to be 150 per cent focused,’ he continues. ‘It’s not a job; in fact, it’s a mission. There are times when you lose and you have to try to show you are not affected. You have lost? OK, next game. Don’t waste your time and your energy on what went wrong. It sends out the wrong message. Some managers watch videos. But I had faith in my players. I liked to use video more to show what the players had done right rather than what they had done wrong. You cannot do anything about the past.

  ‘There are times when you need to recharge the battery and do something different, whether that’s going for a meal with some friends or going to the cinema. But you can’t have much of that. On the outside, people see the end of the season as a time when football shuts down. Managers do not.

  ‘I remember a quote from Bill Shankly about the most important day in a manager’s year being the day after a season has finished. Everybody else at the club goes on a break. But you don’t. You are preparing again for the next challenge. You have to put the season in the past, learn lessons from what went wrong and get on to the next stage. I’d always done that. This is the most important time. You have to change the team. And success – to a large degree – is determined by the players you sign and the players you sell. So there is no time to relax.’

  Houllier is adamant that it was genetics – thin arteries run in his family – rather than stress that caused him to suffer from high blood pressure, contributing towards him being rushed to hospital at half-time of the game between Liverpool and Leeds at Anfield in October 2001 with chest pains.

  During a busy summer, where he was again active in the transfer market, Houllier had not taken a rest before the start of a season where Liverpool won the Charity Shield and the European Super Cup, before starting well in the league. Normally, he’d take a short break in the first week of September when most of the players were on international duty. Instead, he went scouting, back to France, where he watched Anthony Le Tallec and Florent Sinama Pongolle: players he would later sign from Le Havre.

  He did not know what was happening when the chest pains began during the game against Leeds.

  ‘It happened at half-time. If it had happened at the end of the game, I would not be here now talking to you,’ he says starkly. ‘At full time there was unbelievable traffic around Anfield and the ambulance would not have got through. At half-time, this was not the case. I was very lucky.

  ‘I thought I had the flu. I wanted to have some vitamins and return to the game. But Dr Waller, the club doctor, stopped me. He was very insistent. He knew me. He wanted to take my blood pressure and quickly decided we should go to the hospital. After that, it was a matter of luck. There are only three cardio specialist hospitals in England and one of them is in Broadgreen, just a few miles away. The traffic meant we were there in less than ten minutes.

  ‘Again there was more luck. The surgeon who usually operates on such illnesses was meant to be spending the weekend taking his daughter to Leeds. Instead, because he was tired, he stayed in Liverpool. So he was close by – a succession of lucky moments.’

  Houllier immediately underwent an operation to repair his aorta. It was a procedure that was expected to last nine hours but stretched to eleven and a half. It was uncertain whether he would live.

  ‘Again, the next day the team was flying out to Kiev for a Champions League match. Imagine if it had happened on the plane. I would have died.’

  During his three-week stay in hospital, he was up on his feet and walking around, and he had a television installed in his room so he could keep up to date with the latest football news.

  Phil Thompson soon started advising him on team selection and other issues. He insisted Rick Parry keep him abreast of important football-related developments. In December and January, Houllier was involved in the signings of Abel Xavier and Nicolas Anelka. While Houllier was convalescing, Anelka flew to Corsica to meet him.

  David O’Leary, the Leeds manager, regularly received calls from Houllier, often at curious hours. O’Leary described him as a ‘night owl, working away at night’. O’Leary later publicly suggested Houllier should quit football management. ‘I’ve told him,’ he said, ‘this job isn’t conducive to coming back after an operation he’s had.’ At the Liverpool Echo Sports Personality of the Year dinner, Houllier told the audience there were people who thought he should forget about football entirely. He then added, pertinently, ‘Maybe I should forget about breathing.’

  Doctors had told Houllier that he should take eleven to twelve months off work. Instead he officially returned in less than five. He was fifty-four years old.

  ‘We needed to beat Roma 2–0 at home. In my place, Phil [Thompson] had done a fantastic job. I asked him whether he thought my presence for this game would help – maybe bring something that people did not expect. So I told nobody. I did not want the press to focus on me before; I did not want the players to be distracted.’

  When a frail-looking Houllier appeared in the dugout moments before kick-off, the roar seemed to emerge from the guts of each Anfield stand.

  ‘We won 2–0,’ he smiles. ‘I have spoken to Fabio Capello [the Roma manager] since and he told me that when he saw me, he realized Liverpool would win. The reaction from the players was spectacular.’

  In the short term, Houllier had chosen his moment well. And yet history suggests he came back too soon. The first sign of his judgement not being quite what it was came in the Champions League quarter-final when Liverpool were defending an aggregate lead in the second leg against Bayer Leverkusen, only to decide to replace the defensive-minded Didi Hamann for Vladimir Šmicer, an attacking midfielder. The result was a 4–2 defeat.

  ‘I tried something different to try to upset the opponent,’ Houllier reasons. ‘We’d have played Manchester United in the semi-final. It would have been more of a problem for them than it would for us.’

  He mentions again that success in football is often determined by recruitment and sales, and it is particularly important to get the timing right. Before Houllier’s illness, his record was strong in this field. Afterwards, it was not. Houllier reasons that his judgement had not abandoned him but flexibility had. He was on strict instructions to rest more frequently and rather than flying somewhere in Europe to watch a target immediately after a Liverpool match, he would go home to Sefton Park and spend the evening with his wife Isabelle instead.

  ‘The initial decision was mine: which type of player we needed and in which position. The scout would provide a list, maybe with some new names. We saw the player several times and then sent different scouts. We’d enquire discreetly about personality. “Is he a team-thinking player or too individualistic? Does he work hard in training?” You have to be careful. We were misled with two or three players. You buy a player and learn when he arrives that he likes to
go to nightclubs. You have to take advice from the right people, of course, but ultimately as the manager you are accountable. If the player fails, it should be your responsibility. It’s your call. I always made the last call.’

  Towards the end of the 2001–02 season and into that summer, Houllier was told he must rest rather than devote the amount of time that he had to recruitment in the years before his illness. He is talking about record signing El Hadji Diouf, Senegalese compatriot Salif Diao and French midfielder Bruno Cheyrou when he mentions players that later ‘did not lift the team to expected levels’. Houllier admits relying on the opinion of Patrice Bergues, who had been Diouf’s manager at Lens, when he recommended the forward. ‘We could have done better,’ he admits.

  Houllier had taken Nicolas Anelka on loan from Paris Saint-Germain in December 2001. In spite of Anelka’s chequered past, when he had supposedly struggled to fit in to the social structures at Arsenal and Real Madrid, there were no reports of problems in relation to Anelka’s behaviour at Melwood before Houllier decided a permanent deal was not going to happen, choosing to sign Diouf instead.

  ‘First of all, it was a good idea to sign Anelka – to help us finish the season before,’ he begins to explain. ‘I didn’t keep him because his representatives were very unfair to Liverpool as a club. We’d resurrected his career.’

  Houllier’s friendship with Laurent Perpère, the Paris Saint-Germain president, had led to a compromise between the clubs over a transfer fee. That prompted Liverpool to deal with Anelka’s financial adviser and the meetings, though intense, went reasonably well. Liverpool soon suspected, though, that someone, somewhere was negotiating with other clubs on Anelka’s behalf.

  Houllier explains what happened next: ‘They wanted so much money it would have raised a problem within the changing room in terms of the wages he was earning. So we told them we couldn’t go that far. We managed to reach a compromise. But then I heard there was a chance he would go back to Arsenal. At the same time, he was negotiating with Manchester City and this, I believe, was an attempt to drive up interest, create a competition and increase his earnings. I felt that I was not going to win. I feared that if I kept him and he did well, there would be another round of negotiations soon after to try to increase the value of his contract. If he was unhappy, he might try to leave for another club. The process had taken too long and, ultimately, it did not deserve the energy.

  ‘I was right about Anelka because he’s had half a dozen clubs after leaving Liverpool. He’s moved around too much. Other managers had the same problems. At least I had the courage to withstand the pressure of those representing him. From a football point of view, it would have been interesting to keep him. He was gifted. But from the club’s point of view, it was a danger. As a manager, I thought about the club and the stability of the dressing room.’

  Diouf struggled for goals, was shunted out on the right wing and was banned for spitting at a Celtic supporter during his first season as a Liverpool player, with Houllier warning him at the time that ‘the stigma of what you did will follow you around for the rest of your career’.

  Jamie Carragher said that in Diouf’s first week training at Melwood, he realized the player did not possess the speed to be a success in the Premier League. Houllier cites a different issue.

  ‘Diouf should have worked but did not,’ he insists. ‘The top of the roof is mental. You build the house: physically, technically and tactically; Diouf, he understood tactics. But you are half the player without the right mentality. Stevie and Carra – they had the roof.’

  During his last two seasons in charge, the tide of opinion turned against Houllier. It became public knowledge that criticism from former players at this time cut him deeply, though he also mentions several names who had condemned his team long before – even when results were good. Ian St John, who had been one of Bill Shankly’s players, was one of them, snappily referring to Houllier as ‘the Frenchman’ when working as a radio commentator.

  ‘There are things you can control in life and things you cannot control. If asked now, maybe I will say that I paid too much attention to things I could not control. Sometimes I was hurt because it was coming from former players. Even Carra said to me, “Why are they always having a go at us?” We were doing our best for the club and I felt they should have been more supportive. You cannot control the wind, the rain or the state of the pitch when you play away. You cannot control the referee – there is no point trying to change his decisions. You cannot control what is in the press. Everybody is entitled to have an opinion, even if it is not the right opinion and it hurts. You need to live with a thick skin sometimes. But what you can control is the way you are going to react – the way you take it; the way you hold your composure rather than being impulsive.

  ‘We were labelled a defensive team and when you have a label, it is difficult to shake. In 2000–01 we scored 127 goals. I think only two Liverpool teams have scored more goals in one season. And you don’t win anything without a good goalkeeper, a good defence and a good striker. On the pitch, at least, it is as easy as that.

  ‘The next year we finished ahead of Manchester United and with eighty points. In the previous decade, Liverpool had not finished ahead of Manchester United, so when that happens you’d expect to win the title. Unfortunately, that year Arsenal went on an incredible run. Still the criticism came from the same people. They were waiting when the results were not quite as good.’

  The player Houllier really wishes he’d signed was goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar, who was given a tour of Melwood only to agree to join Fulham. Jens Lehmann was his second choice that summer and was close to being bought from Borussia Dortmund along with Tomáš Rosický. Both would later sign for Arsenal.

  As we finished our initial summit at the Normandy, Houllier invited me to meet him the next day in his office. When I arrive, he is thinking about the changes that have happened in management and football.

  ‘The game is younger: the players are younger, the coaches are younger, the people in key administrative roles are younger,’ he says. ‘With youth, you have energy. People will commit their lives to the quest to become greater. From my own experience, I know it is good sometimes to step back and watch. When you do that, you see details: the attitude of the players, the way they react when they lose the ball. By stepping back, you see their form. When you stand in the middle telling everybody what to do all of the time, you gain control but you lose perspective.

  ‘Players need tough love,’ he continues. ‘It is important to be accessible. Players should feel like you are approachable at all times. I remember taking calls at 7 a.m. Their problems became mine. As a manager, you make decisions but you also need to appreciate the human impact of those decisions. You should explain them. For that, you receive the respect.’

  Houllier stops to consider the number of trophies Liverpool have won since his departure in 2004. There have been three in eleven years, a Champions League and FA Cup being delivered by his successor, Rafael Benítez. Houllier won six in five years. ‘So we didn’t do too badly.’

  History, indeed, should reflect better on his reign. Bill Shankly took charge of Liverpool in 1959 – twelve years after Liverpool’s last league title, a period where nothing was won in between. When Houllier was appointed, eight years had passed since the last championship. Although he achieved more silverware than Shankly in a shorter period of time, Liverpool were further away from the title at the point of his departure than they were when he arrived. I ask Houllier what might have happened had it not been for his illness. He seems reluctant to think about it. It seems to frustrate him. He prefers to reflect on the legacy he left behind. He takes me back to the day he arrived at Anfield as manager.

  ‘Look at Shankly; Shankly goes, who comes? Paisley. Paisley goes, then it’s his assistant, Fagan. Fagan goes; Dalglish. Dalglish goes; Souness. Then Roy Evans. I could understand the headlines “GÉRARD WHO?” But the most important thing in any managerial reign is to cons
ider how you leave a club, what shape it is in then. That is more important than what it is like when you arrive. I thought about this a lot at the beginning. They [the supporters] will always remember you if you leave a legacy. I can confidently say I left a legacy for Benítez.

  ‘Number one: me being there before broke from the tradition of the Boot Room. It proved there was another way.

  ‘Number two: Benítez had a team, one that won the Champions League. Twelve of those players were with me the year before.

  ‘Number three: I also left with the team in the Champions League. If we had not finished in the top four in 2003–04, Benítez would not have featured in the Champions League the following year. Also, he had new facilities and a set-up that was Continental in its standard compared to the way it was before I went there.

  ‘All of this, it makes me happy. Had it not been for my illness, would Liverpool have won the league? I wish I knew for certain.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NEIL MELLOR,

  Kirkby Graduate

  NEIL MELLOR WAS twenty-nine years old when his football career was terminated while playing for Preston North End down in the third tier of English football. He fell unchallenged, his knee buckling, never to recover.

  Mellor’s manager at Preston was Graham Westley, who infamously once delivered bad news to his players via text message at nearly two in the morning: who was dropped, who was training away from the main squad. Westley was the only manager, indeed, that Mellor encountered who had never operated at the very top level of the game.