Some interesting views on our future. I really have this positive gut feeling for the foreseeable future but I will keep my expectations intact this time around and so should you. We all expect a top4 finish that is fine but I think we should be calm going into this summer. I am praying everyday that the club makes the right signings this season and makes good decisions whether to keep Kenny in charge or not. If everything falls nicely in place, we could be a decent team next season, I will not expect a top4 finish tho because with our squad now I can't see it happening again as other clubs (United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs) are looking to strengthen again and have already started(Podolski, Marin). I'm hoping this gut feeling I have is realised soon.
I'm still on the fence re: Kenny staying or going. What I'm not on the fence about is that we must review this season, analyse it, and identify where our strengths and weaknesses lie. We must then buy players that either complement these strengths or help shore up the weaknesses (preferably both, but such players tend to have heavy wage demands so I wouldn't expect them to sign for us). The reason I doubt Dalglish and his coaching team is that for far too long we ignored obvious squad issues, correctly identifying only one aspect (that Skrtel was becoming better than Carragher).
My thinking along the "Dalglish should go/stay" line is this: Last season we needed a father-figure to come in an stabilize the ship. Dalglish was the only choice, and he succeeded at the task remarkably well. This season we needed the same kind of manager, the same arm around the shoulders father-figure, because we made a significant number of squad changes, including being forced to retool the midfield due to injuries to Gerrard and Lucas. A tactician like Benitez may have given us better results, but not perhaps without treading on someone's feelings in the process, something to be avoided when talking about the ages of the players we have.
So the question is "Do we need the same kind of manager next season?" The squad looks a bit more settled, and now we need someone with a more analytical side to get the best out of the players. Dalglish does not strike me as an analyst, but he has Steve Clark at his side supposedly for that, and has either been ignoring the man's advice or has felt the advice was incorrect. However you don't see too many players being critical of the manager (not that they would do so openly, but one can read between the lines), so I think Dalglish still has his finger on the pulse of the feeling within the squad despite our league position. A new man replacing someone they respected, someone who helped them break a 6 season trophy drought, might take 6 months to be accepted by the squad, by which time it may be too late to save the season (again).
I have never believed that change for change's sake was wise, and while I fully appreciate that finishing outside the top 6 is a failure of the mandate of a LFC manager, replacing Dalglish seems unnecessary at this point. In the last 20 years, only Benitez had us qualify for the CL season by season, and we had so much deadwood to clear 12 months ago that maybe our top 4 aspirations were too lofty. There is no difference between 5th and 10th if you win a cup, after all, and it was clear that the players lost heart after the Arsenal game - where we outplayed them, but lost, and with it went the 4th place carrot.
So if Dalglish can learn to heed tactical advice, or if we make the correct decisions regarding our tactics regardless of who thinks them up, I don't see why we can't be a better team next season with Dalglish in charge. It's not like we finished outside the top 10 and lost in the first round in each cup - that kind of manager you sack immediately. We performed at around 75% of our potential in the league, and near 90% in the cups. Dalglish has been average, not poor, and I think we're largely over our growing pains.
Before I'm accused of sentimentality let me just say that I have no problem with Dalglish being replaced - there are sufficient negatives to take from the season that suggest he's not the best man for the job. But there are positives that some people all too readily ignore in their crusade against a manager who has not done as badly as many like to believe - a belief driven by their own 'sentimentality' that this manager sank the club two decades ago. I prefer to judge Dalglish on the 18 months he's been at the helm, and that I still find myself optimistic at this stage of the season suggests to me that sacking him is not necessarily the only way forward.
