Liverpool Football Brand

I have a good friend Robert, who as a teenager growing up in Liverpool in the seventies and eighties lived and breathed the unfolding brilliance and tragedy of the Anfield era from Paisley to Dalglish.

Then his life changed dramatically and he moved to Michigan USA, where he's been for the last twenty years.

Suddenly, his teenage son loves "soccer" and NBC have brought the Premier League to Rob's TV screen. So he wrote to me for a "read in" on his old club. 

"Could Liverpool finish in the top three? Do they have a strong attack, average midfield and good defence? Is the fixture schedule flattering to their current third place league position?", he asked with renewed zeal.

Rob's understanding of LFC from childhood is so deep, I thought he'd appreciate my historical long view here. This is what I replied to him:

Liverpool have two world-class players and a dozen competent ones. 

One of their world class players stands as a legacy to the city's fifty years of elite football culture, socialized from birth. The other is a legacy to Liverpool's decade-long flirtations with the Champions League, now firmly over.  

This dated badge conveys too many messages

Liverpool FC is a top brand, not a top club. The flowery, over sentimental design of the current badge conveys heritage, suffering and possibly a hint of blasphemy as the club moves into areas of pseudo-religious worship which the city's churches used to house. 

In the era of slick, stripped-down imagery, the badge is far too complicated with messages of memorial and Bill Shankly which fade into past history with every month that passes.

There'd be much of modern Liverpool Shankly wouldn't give a fig for even if he's the single biggest influence on their brand values.

Truth is Liverpool is able to leverage its brand communication around the globe more effectively than its brand of football can.

With 13 official Twitter accounts, @LFC now tweets in more languages than any other club in the world and has seven more accounts than Barcelona and eight more than any other club in England. Everyday, fans around the world can read tweets from the club in English, Arabic, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, Portuguese and Turkish.

If football is in the business of selling dreams to supporters, Liverpool is better than most at doing that. 

I don't begrudge Fenway selling more style than substance. In fact, they're to be applauded for embracing the new media age like no other.

But it does create a conflict of interest at the heart of the business model which needs addressing if they keep failing to qualify for Europe or winning anything:

Future success on-field may not matter as much if the club continues to build a global fanbase and new revenue from telling a great story to sponsors and investors via electronic media.

A team photo with any old trophy will do (even a preseason one) for iinternational fans content with chanting surnames and buying merchandise. 

But it's most important fanbase here in the UK won't stand for it. 

The PRoblem with Liverpool FC

Warm & cuddly on the outside. Hot & clammy within.

If Liverpool played as poorly on the pitch as they do off it they'd be relegated. They've learned nothing from the first Suarez Crisis, have badly mishandled the second and been left chasing the game.

Kenny Dalglish set the bar high with when he joined the players in wearing a tee-shirt supporting the Uruguayan following the racial fracas with Patrice Evra.

And King Kenny took it up a notch when he firstly failed to make sure Suarez shook hands with Evra at a subsequent game against Manchester United and then gave a churlish and childish post match-interview in which he claimed he had seen nothing.

Perhaps Dalglish would have given the benefit of the doubt but most of his interviews, pre- and post-match, were cut of a similar cloth.

Let us be clear about it. Dalglish won the League Cup and reached an FA Cup final. He was not fired because he was a poor manager; he went because he had no idea how to handle modern management and was a public relations liability.

Churlish, Childish, Dalglish

So Liverpool swept out the old regime, including their long standing press officer, and brought in a more forward facing (I believe that is the phrase) team.

Fat lot of good that did.

Before the club had a chance to bask in the rays of openness following the transmission of Channel 5's “Being Liverpool” they were turfed out of the deckchair when their new communications director threatened a blogger. Jen Chang, an American, lasted less than seven months before he was shown the door.

So far so idiotic.

Chang’s successor is Susan Black. Her appointment was announced on April 18th. Three days later Suarez bit Branislav Ivanovic.

The initial apology with quotes from Suarez, managing director Ian Ayre and Brendan Rodgers was a textbook response but as the Crisis unfolded Liverpool and Black have been caught out of position again and again.

They have made the same mistake they did last time of treating Suarez as special case. Everybody knows that if a fringe player had behaved in the same way Liverpool would have dismissed him instantly but, blinded by the short termism of protecting their investment, they mollycoddle the star and excuse his behaviour.

Brendan Rodgers comparing the Suarez bite to a tennis player smashing a racket was ludicrous. If Susan Black coached him or prompted him to say that she should be next out of the door.

Then Suarez, having been banned for ten matches, issues a statement with the mealy-mouthed whiff of victimization.

“.......whilst ten games is clearly greater than those bans given in the past where players have actually been seriously injured.....’” 

Ayre makes it a hat-trick of own goals, again presumably with Black’s input, by making it known that the club fine imposed on Suarez would be donated to the Hillsborough Family Support Group.

How crass. If in doubt let’s invoke the memory of Hillsborough as everybody sympathizes with us. Everybody that is, except the relatives of the victims of Heysel.

 

Liverpool FC: a Comolli of errors

The Kop relies on elephantine memory

There's no doubt Kenny Dalglish is relying on his legendary status to remain as Liverpool manager at the moment.

Here was a man in his first year as player-boss who claimed the Reds the double, clinching the league at Chelsea and scoring the winner. Real Roy of the Rovers stuff from one of Britain's greatest ever players.

And of his second coming amid the dying embers of the Gillett, Hicks and Roy Hodgson gloom, which Kopite wouldn't have called for the Messiah back then?

But how long can King Kenny's credit last? Six defeats in seven games has left the summer's big spenders out of Europe and out of touch of the big sides. Liverpool FC a big brand? Yes. A big club? Measured against the new arrivals at football's top table in the form of Tottenham and Manchester City? it's highly questionable.

Not even Roy could match King Kenny's '86 triumph

During the latest defeat at Newcastle, I was surprised to see Steven Gerrard shoeing Dalglish off the pitch in a "stop interfering" kind of way. Gerrard is about the only one at Anfield with the status to do such a impudent thing to the gaffer - and it was telling.

But the blame for Liverpool's plight can't entirely be placed at Dalglish's door. It's transfer policy which has been a major let-down too - and that's squarely the responsibility of Damien Comolli.

Jordan Henderson, Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing and Andy Carroll have yielded just six goals between them. The quartet cost owner John W. Henry an eye-watering eighty million quid in the summer.

Comolli talking a good game with the owner.

They're all British too. Now, I'm not battering the reputations of home-grown players. Indeed, the English backbone of Chelsea and Manchester United has served them rather well over the years. But the contention of building a new team from the British Isles is misguided when as a Premier League club, one can attract the best of the world.

It's just not true that British players settle in better or faster. A high-level professional from Togo or Tel Aviv is just as reliable. But Comolli seems to think so.

Without qualifying for the Champions League, the best players, whatever their nationality won't be Anfield-bound anymore. Without them, Liverpool will become Premier League also-rans. Despite splashing out in the summer, that's what they've become this year.

As with other victorious Carling Cup managers, trophy glory doesn't guarantee job security and sometimes it's the straw that breaks the back of relegation.

Let's not forget Juande Ramos has still won one more piece of silverware at White Hart Lane than Harry Redknapp, but the Spaniard was taken out in a midnight cloak and dagger exit months later.

Alex McLeish steered Birmingham City to the League Cup last year - but at huge cost to the Second City's Second Club, as they were relegated. Next thing you know, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire for Big Eck when Aston Villa came calling.

So it's a results business whether you're Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish, former Spurs boss Glenn Hoddle or Newcastle's Kevin Keegan (twice). And if things don't turnaround fast, I can see the passwords to the Liverpool bank account reset for a new manager this summer. Kenny's got to be the on the edge.

But it's not just players that lose managers their jobs these days. It's Directors of Football too.

More on Dalglish at Anfield here. Click here for Dalglish: Never Go Back (written back in January last year)

Never Go Back: Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool's caretaker

Watching Kenny Dalglish face the media ahead of Liverpool's derby with Everton, I wondered how closely he's really watched football since he last managed in the nineties? Has he just been a casual observer?

Here, didn't you used to be Kenny Dalglish?

His instincts honed by playing and managing great players seem blunted after years of swannying through boardrooms and sponsor meetings.

Liverpool are languishing below midtable: send for the Messiah!

Apart from the obvious platitudes on the urgency of winning matches, the Reds legend/caretaker boss declared that getting sent off these days was easier than it used to be.



"Nowadays if you say 'Good morning' to someone you've got a chance of getting a red card. It's a wee bit different to a few years ago. You can't blame players for being passionate and committed. They've been highly criticised for not being passionate and committed. If there is a bit of understanding from the officials I'm sure it would ease things along a wee bit."

That's almost an accidental "back in my day" reference - and the game's moved on in light years since he was in the box seat.

It was after a classic four-all draw with Everton one month off twenty years ago that Dalglish sensationally quit Anfield.

King Kenny in his famous I Quit News Conference: 1991

Dalglish just couldn't take the strain of Heysel and Hillsborough anymore, but kept his feelings private until two days after that unforgettable game.

But twenty years on, amid fan cries for him to step into the breach to replace Roy Hodgson, he faces upto the same club who prompted his resignation. The Kop urged his return to the manager's office as Hodgson foundered through defeat after defeat. But at what cost to his status as Liverpool's number one legend?

The late Malcolm McLaren was invited to be part of "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here" only last year. Agent and old friend, Mark Borkowski successfully persuaded the punk impresario not to do it. McLaren pulled out just a day before filming was to start.

Borkowski told McLaren that all he had was his credibility and it would be shot if he took part in the reality TV show.

Dalglish has no hope of galvanising the team into any decent shape as caretaker boss, let alone as manager in his second spell.

Clearly a diminished figure in his Liverpool tracksuit to the one who so gracefully donned the colours and patrolled the line decades ago, even the most ardent Kopite must wonder what statement the club is really putting out by bringing him back - even in the interim.

Yesterday's man for yesterday's club?

"Be careful what you wish for, it might just come true" is the old saying most befitting of the Kop's wishes to see Dalglish back. Where next for this famous club?

Hodgson's a dead man walking at Liverpool

Hodgson: holding on but for how long?

I'm sorry to say this about a good man, but Roy Hodgson's reign as Liverpool boss will be a short one.

Hodgson, who steered modest Fulham to the Europa League Final and a mid-table finish last season, simply can't steer the Anfield Titanic round the iceberg.

But home defeat to relegation-haunted Wolves, without a single away win since March and a first victory at Anfield in 27 years, must be close to being the last straw for Hodgson. It's an eighth defeat of the season and their third in four games.

Unfortunately, the damage began in Rafa Benitez' last campaign. Liverpool dipped from Premier League runners-up to seventh place - so failing to qualify for their usual Champions League spot.

The hallmarks of Shankly's Liverpool are all but gone.

And a change of ownership's not yet galvanized anything resembling a recovery.

John W. Henry's adopting a watching brief in his first months as owner - and will be troubled with what's on offer. This is easily the worst Reds team since Bill Shankly shook the club to its foundations and built modern Liverpool.

Not even the era of Graeme Souness was as bad as this. The abolition of the Boot Room was a symbolic low point, akin to the ravens leaving the Tower. 

But even then, as the Reds lost their grip on an annual title assault plus cup shocks at home to lowly Bolton and Bristol City, there was still an FA Cup victory and just the thought that the right manager could restore the trophy culture.

And it duly came to pass; even though the title hasn't returned to Anfield since, Liverpool have won trophies galore in the last twenty years including the very biggest one, the Champions League.

But this time, Liverpool's decline is spectacular. They are fast-becoming instititional also-rans. As the Reds slide down the table and lose their glister and status, Tottenham and Manchester City are fast-replacing them in ways that make them uncatchable. London and Manchester hold more excitement to young men with dreams of the Champions League than Liverpool, with less to offer all-round.

The summer will surely test the loyalty of Steven Gerrard and the commitment of Fernando Torres. Will both be considering life after Liverpool?

Hodgson admits the support has never been there from the Kop, but neither have the results. He cites the popularity of Kenny Dalglish, who he beat for the job, as the reason. Good results would have made life easier though.

But the key fact is, Roy Hodgson is not Henry's man. The ex-Inter and Switzerland boss had a clause added to his contract about severance should ownership change. As sure as eggs is eggs, Henry will trigger it - and soon.

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