Kenny Dalglish may have got the Kop rocking again after turning Liverpool’s season around but, as Sam Coare writes, the new manager’s success owes a lot to one of the best assistants currently in the business, Steve Clarke.
The dugouts at Anfield are funny things. Unlike at their Premier League counterparts, where you’ll often witness huge Formula 1-style racing chairs set far more than a mere swords’ length apart, they are cramped into a tiny cubby-hole which sees managers, substitutes and staff sit atop each other on plastic less comfortable than that found on the Kop.
The technical areas border each other, substitutes warm their toes while attempting to not tread on another’s, and coaches pass instruction through tatty notebooks, rather than have their opposite numbers gain insight. There, enemies are kept disconcertingly close, friends share each other’s laps.
While Kenny Dalglish has quite rightly claimed the headlines for stirring Liverpool to life on route to collecting a three-year contract, that first-team coach Steve Clarke, the man he’s kept closer than any other in such tight surroundings, has been rewarded likewise is of an importance that should resonate true with fans of a club so entrenched in the Boot Room culture of old.
The world’s finest managers have always been united in their ability to boast trusted allies either side of them on the bench, and Scousers need not look far for proof as to the influence that rifts in the set-up can prove.
The last two regimes, to a degree, collapsed due to the backroom-staff-shaped cracks that appeared.
Benitez’s wobbles began not with ‘facts’ but with the departure of his long-time partner Pako Ayesteran, a fitness specialist who dominated training sessions and was considered the grounding voice of reason in Rafa’s ear.
Roy Hodgson, meanwhile, put much faith in his oft-derided Fulham cohort Mike Kelly: a man brought along from Fulham to sing from the Hodgson hymn sheet, even if no one at the club could really put their finger on exactly what he offered. Unsurprisingly, he too was bundled out of the door in January.
Dalglish would not be making the same mistakes. Just 48 hours elapsed between the announcement of his return and Clarke’s arrival. He’d picked his staff before even a first XI.
Once declared good enough to hold even the top seat at a big club by Jose Mourinho, Clarke commanded a million-pound salary on his transfer to West Ham under Gianfranco Zola in 2009, only to leave the club with the Italian in June 2010.
There he was charged with building a strong defence under the guidance of a former mercurial front man who demanded a fast-paced, passing game – a brief that’s been mirrored at Liverpool.
His is a style specifically introduced to counter Dalglish’s attacking instinct (he’s previously quoted as saying that having the same ideas as the manager “doesn’t work”) and while the King has got the frontline firing in style, Clarke has gone about his task of tightening the porous defence with aplomb.
Under Hodgson, a shaky Liverpool shipped 27 goals in 20 Premier League games (1.35 per game); since being paired with Clarke, Dalglish’s 17-game tenure has leaked just 16 (0.94 per game).
Given that two of those games were played within five days of Clarke’s arrival, if we can afford him the luxury of a week to find his coat peg, get his desk in order and locate Melwood’s loo before being able to make an impact, a Clarke-drilled defence has yielded just 12 in 15.
Eight clean sheets have been kept in the process, the current top four each played once with just a penalty and a last-minute consolation their contribution to the ‘against’ column, and a pair of teenage full-backs entrusted with shackling some of the world’s finest forwards.
Crucially, though, such resilience hasn’t come at the expense of attacking fervor. Dalglish has brought 35 goals at over two per game. But take note of the impact Clarke’s defensive charges have in the style that Liverpool now attack with.
Against Fulham last Monday night, for instance, a marauding Glen Johnson – shifted from the left to right to offer more of a threat going forward – clipped a delightful cross for Maxi Rodriguez to hammer home, while the Argentine drove home his hat-trick after collecting collected a stray ball targeted at the man leading the attack on that occasion – 18-year-old fullback John Flanagan. Under the previous regime, neither would have had the license to cross the halfway line - attackers were attackers and defenders were defenders. Both, under Dalglish, are collective responsibilities.
Liverpool now press high and pass short, where but six months ago they’d drop deep and lump it long. While giving an extra half-yard back to an ageing Jamie Carragher and restoring confidence in a shell-shocked Martin Skrtel, Clarke has urged them once more to be footballers.
In September of last year, Daniel Agger openly criticized the direct style he was being encouraged to play and Pepe Reina was said to be so dismayed at his instruction to play as a more “English” goalkeeper and slow the game before kicking high and deep that it was driving him from the club.
That Liverpool’s defence now starts from the front and attacks from the back is a culture shift driven by Dalglish. That its transition has been so seamless and its effectiveness so emphatic is a huge plus for Clarke. Their opinions may differ, but as long as Dalglish can squeeze up along those claustrophobic Anfield benches enough to keep Clarke at his side, their designs for silverware will stay the same.
You can follow Sam on Twitter @samcoare, for assorted sporting ramblings.
Tags: Kenny Dalglish, King Kenny, Liverpool, Roy Hodgson, Steve Clarke