Whenever the question used to be asked in the glory days of the 1970s and 80s as to what was the secret of Liverpool’s enduring and seemingly never-ending success, the answer invariably was there was no secret.
Fitness, simplicity, consistency of approach and fundamentally having good players were often offered up as explanations for why trophies flooded in to Anfield more regularly than anywhere else, with the general perception being the Reds largely adopted the same conventions as their rivals but merely executed them better.
That is why there was a genuine sense of shock across football in the summer of 1985 when Liverpool appointed Kenny Dalglish as the club’s first ever player-manager in the wake of Joe Fagan’s retirement, as unusual a role in the modern game now as it was back then.
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It proved to be a masterstroke with the Scot leading his side to the league and FA Cup double in his first season in charge and cementing his legend over the next five years as one of the most significant figures in the club’s history. He won two more championships and another FA Cup, with one of the most attractive teams to watch Anfield had ever seen, before his shock resignation in 1991 as the pressure caused by his incomparable leadership in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster took its toll on his health.
It sparked a sustained decline in Liverpool’s fortunes and, as the decade began to draw to a close in the summer of 1998, the Anfield board plumped for a similarly leftfield and unconventional managerial decision which turned out to be far less successful. Following the deeply disappointing spell in charge by Dalglish’s eventual replacement, former European Cup-winning captain Graeme Souness, chairman David Moores had handed the reins to the Scot’s assistant Roy Evans who - after becoming the youngest ever coach in the Football League at the age of only 25 following a short-lived playing career with his boyhood idols - had undertaken a number of roles and been a key figure in the fabled Anfield Boot Room.
The initial signs were good with silverware returning to L4 after a three-year drought when the League Cup was secured in the softly-spoken Scouser’s first full campaign in charge. And, with the Anfield board backing the manager with big money talent like British record £8.5m signing Stan Collymore, energetic midfielder Jason McAteer, Czech star Patrik Berger and former Manchester United stalwart Paul Ince, alongside home grown talent like Robbie Fowler and Steve McManaman, Evans’ side carved themselves a reputation as one of the best and most exciting young teams in the country.
Chronic inconsistency and defensive frailties, however, meant doubts persisted over their ability to deliver when it really mattered and translate that undoubted promise into silverware. An abject FA Cup final defeat to Manchester United - rapidly establishing themselves as the pre-eminent side in the new Premier League era - in 1996 was followed the following season by the most credible title challenge since the club’s 18th championship was lifted in 1990 and a run to the semi-finals of the European Cup Winners Cup. But a woeful end to the campaign saw them finish empty-handed again while somehow managing to finish fourth in what had been a two-horse title race and miss out on what would have been a first qualification for the Champions League. Although there would be a slight improvement in league position in 1997/98, it was only to a distant third behind double-winners Arsenal. And, with Liverpool’s Premier League points tallies having declined for each of Evans’ full seasons in charge, the feeling that the Reds were again in decline and in need of a new approach was unmistakable.
The burgeoning ‘whole new ball game’ ushered in by the formation of the Premier League six years earlier had seen an increasing continental influence make its mark in English football, with Arsene Wenger’s achievement in leading the Gunners to glory barely 18 months after taking over at Highbury - having arrived as an unknown coach from Japan, where he had been managing Grampus Eight - having not gone unnoticed at Anfield. A perception persisted that Evans’ low-key managerial style was not so effective in handling the egos and new demands of this new, money-inflated and hard-nosed era of football, while the more scientific approach increasingly being adopted by many of the Reds’ rivals was making Anfield’s homespun and time-served methodology look rather dated. With the Liverpool board and Evans both said to be in agreement over the need to strengthen the management and coaching staff given Ronnie Moran’s imminent retirement, there was one candidate who stood head and shoulders above the others in the eyes of Anfield chief executive Peter Robinson, who was drawing to the end of his own 35-year association with club.
Gerard Houllier had been a friend of Robinson’s for over 20 years and a Liverpool supporter since spending time in the city as a teaching assistant at Alsop high school in Walton in the late 1960s. The Frenchman had spent many happy hours on the Kop during this time, the first game being a 10-0 victory over Irish minnows Dundalk in a September 1969 UEFA Cup tie he attended with his friend Patrice Bergues - who he would later bring to Anfield as a coach - and to who he would vow after the game that he would one day return to manage the club. A decent amateur player, Houllier had ended up in education having left university to care for his father but returned to football at the age of 26 with small provincial Le Touquet, who he led to successive promotions before joining Lens, who he took into the top flight of French football and the UEFA Cup. A move to Paris Saint-Germain followed. In the French capital, he led PSG a first ever league title in 1986, and two years later he was assisting French national team coach Michel Platini as technical director before taking over the reins himself in 1992. His spell in charge famously ended in acrimony when his side failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup finals in the United States after a shock home defeat to Bulgaria, after which he lambasted David Ginola for an error that led to the visitors’ last-minute winning goal, but he remained as technical director, a role which included coaching of France’s junior sides and was widely credited for his role in France’s 1998 World Cup triumph on home soil in which young players like Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet and Zinedine Zidane had played such an influential part.
Houllier had first been considered for a role at Anfield as far back as 1991 following Dalglish’s departure and newspaper reports linked him with a move to Liverpool in the summer of 1997 following Robinson’s admission the club would consider a foreign coach. He had reportedly been courted by the Football Association to become their technical director before Howard Wilkinson and, with coaching structures beginning to evolve, there was a suggestion a similar role at Anfield could be created for him. But a move then was always unlikely with the World Cup finals in France only a year away, the Independent presciently writing: “The difficulty for Houllier will be in tearing himself away from the French Federation at this time, though it could be that Liverpool are willing to wait a year for him. Then comes the other difficulty: whether and how Houllier and Roy Evans would work together.”
Twelve month later the landscape for both Liverpool and Houllier had changed considerably and, with the Frenchman being linked with moves to Celtic and Sheffield Wednesday, a chance phone call from Robinson to his old friend set the wheels in motion for what would eventually become an Anfield revolution.
"The board and Roy Evans agreed we needed to strengthen the management and coaching staff”, Robinson recalled. “We discussed names that might have been suitable, when I noticed in the papers that Gerard was considering offers from a couple of British clubs. He had figured in our discussions because Roy was always very impressed with him, but we didn't think he would leave France so, when I read that, I thought this is certainly the man for us.
"I picked up the phone and said, 'I'm just ringing to congratulate you on wherever you go'. I was fishing, of course, and then told Gerard that whatever club he was going to, it was the wrong one. I told him he should be coming to Liverpool. He then told me he was not committed and would we be interested? I said we would, and I was on a plane to Paris the following morning. We had several hours together discussing possibilities. I had known Gerard for many years and we had kept in contact over a regular period. I had always regarded him highly and had recommended him to Spurs in the Eighties, but my great friend at Spurs, Irving Scholar, felt it wasn't right to bring in a foreign manager at that time.
"Back at Liverpool, we all had a meeting and decided Gerard was the right man. The chairman, Roy, Rick Parry and myself went twice to see him, and the result was we came up with a joint managership idea. I must say that wasn't my idea and I did have reservations, but everyone wanted it to work and the two participants were very enthusiastic. They felt it could work.”
Less than a week after France’s Zidane-inspired World Cup final victory over Brazil in Paris, an Anfield press conference was called and, to the astonishment of the assembled media and countless Liverpool supporters all over the world, Houllier was announced as joint manager alongside Evans, the club’s first outside appointment since Bill Shankly’s arrival almost 40 years earlier.
“I took the job on the condition Roy stayed,” Houllier insisted. “It is an excellent opportunity for us both and I believe, with our mutual respect and expertise, we can fulfil the expectations surrounding this club from the players, the fans, from everyone. There will be shared responsibility and it might take time to get things right, but we will make the best of it.''
Evans, who reportedly initially thought Houllier was coming in to supplement the backroom staff, maintained he too was completely on board with the new set-up, adding: “The titles of joint manager will cause concern for some and we know there will be problems we have to iron out, but I am looking forward to the challenge and I don't think we've anything to fear. Gerard and I will complement each other because we have the same philosophy about the way the game should be played. I have knowledge of the traditions at Liverpool, like the Boot Room mentality, whereas Gerard can bring his expertise on European and world football to the club.''
Joint managers were not completely unheard of at the time. Former Liverpool goalkeeper Ray Clemence and ex-Anfield reserve Doug Livermore had been in charge of Tottenham Hotspur together for a short-lived spell earlier in the 1990s while Alan Curbishley and Steve Gritt at Charlton Athletic along with Bruce Rioch and Colin Todd at Bolton Wanderers had worked under similar arrangements. None had proved particularly successful, however, so there was a fair degree of bemusement around football that a club of Liverpool’s stature should take such a gamble.
But, amid the raised eyebrows, there was a fundamental acceptance among many Liverpudlians that something had to change and it could perhaps be crazy enough to work. The reputation of French football and overseas coaches in general had never been higher and, with the Reds’ latest new young buck Michael Owen having scorched into the public consciousness through his stellar performances at France 98, Houllier’s reputation as a disciplinarian was felt by many to be exactly what Anfield needed. For all the exhilarating football of the previous years, the ‘Spice Boys’ tag that Evans’ Liverpool had been labelled with was proving difficult to shake off, and the hope was the Frenchman’s remit to evolve the culture while over-hauling the players’ training and diet and keeping a close eye on their day-to-day lifestyle, would complement the Bootle-born Evans’ deep knowledge of the club and its values, and balance out what was felt by some to be an overly lenient approach by the former Boot Room boy to this new breed of professional footballer in the Premier League era.
On the face of it, the new managerial team got off to an excellent start. A win in the opening game at Southampton was followed by a creditable draw at home to champions Arsenal before a resounding 4-1 win away to Newcastle United in Ruud Gullit’s first game as the Geordies’ manager where Owen continued his World Cup form with a stunning first-half hat-trick to send the Reds top of the league. Victory over Coventry City at Anfield maintained top spot but defeat at West Ham United the following weekend precipitated a poor run which would not see another league victory until late October by which time signs that the new system was not working and was unlikely ever to, which had already been evident for some time behind the scenes, were becoming evident.
The defeat at Upton Park had seen the first major selection fall-out between the new managers with Evans wanting to stick with the same side who had won so impressively at St James Park but Houllier wanting to bring in an extra defender, Steve Harkness, in place of German forward Karl-Heinz Riedle, to counter the threat of the Hammers’ attack. The Frenchman got his way but Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat. Riedle, who replaced Harkness early in the second half with the Reds already two goals down, scored a late consolation, causing the initial tensions to widen and grow into resentments.
As early as the club’s pre-season tour that summer, differences in opinion had led to confusion with Evans giving the players permission to go out for a drink but Houllier forbidding it. The Frenchman’s introduction of heart-rate monitors in training and modernisation of the players’ diet had largely been accepted but insistence that only red wine and not white should be allowed at meal times did not prove popular, nor was his habit of making seemingly innocuous minor changes to things like what times the team bus would depart, which left Evans feeling undermined. Further disagreement followed over where to play new Norwegian signing Vegard Heggem, who had been one of the pair’s first joint signings that summer, and Evans increasingly began to feel he was being left with the lion’s share of the more unpalatable tasks of their shared remit, being left alone to tell Jason McAteer he was being dropped after a poor run of form and saying he had later found Houllier in the boardroom, claiming to have forgotten about their joint obligation to speak with the player together.
Matters reached a head ironically in the wake of what was arguably the finest result of the ill-fated partnership. After defeat to Leicester City at Filbert Street on the final day of October, Liverpool travelled to Spain for the second leg of their UEFA Cup second- round tie with Valencia having only managed a goalless draw at Anfield a fortnight earlier. The La Liga side, managed by Claudio Ranieri and a growing force in European football who the following season would reach the first of two successive Champions League finals, looked firmly in control of the contest after taking the lead on the stroke of half-time through Argentine striker Claudio Lopez, with the Reds showing little sign of being able to grab the away goal that would take them through to the next round. That was until, with only nine minutes remaining, a jet-heeled Owen run to the byline saw the England striker pull the ball across to Steve McMananman whose thumping far post header levelled the scores.
With the home side now suddenly needing to score again to qualify, they poured forward in desperation, but Berger crashed home a trademark left-footed drive from 20 yards on 86 minutes to seal Liverpool’s progress, although inevitably even that silver lining brought an additional cloud, with a David James own goal as the game ticked into stoppage-time increasing the tension and a late flare up seeing red cards for both Reds skipper Ince and McManaman along with Valencia’s Amadeo Carboni.
Despite the late controversy, it should have been a result to give the entire club a much-needed shot in the arm. But in the dressing room after the match Evans observed Houllier rifling through the players’ discarded shirts and taking three of them, which he said he was going to give the match officials - who were all French - despite referee Gilles Veissiere’s controversial decision to dismiss two Liverpool players, which would have damaging implications for the next round. Heated words were exchanged with Houllier said to have then changed his story by saying the shirts were actually meant for Valencia’s contingent of French players before throwing them down in fury and storming out of the dressing room. It was the point of no return for Evans and after a home Premier League defeat to Derby County the following weekend and another Anfield loss three days later to Tottenham, watched by only 20,772, Evans resigned his post bringing to an end 35 years of service to the club he had supported as a boy.
At an Anfield press conference and close to tears, Evans pointedly said: “I'd like to thank the chairman and board for the support they have given me. I have felt over the past three or four weeks that things have not been working out. I dispute the theory that my time here has been a failure - fourth, third, fourth, third in my seasons here is not failure. That record is second only to Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. It is not a matter of one man taking the blame. It is what is in the best interests of the club. I went into the partnership with Gerard with my eyes open and hoping it could work. It hasn't worked. Results have not gone our way. It is not about the relationship between me and Gerard. It had nothing to do with personalities. It just did not work out. You just feel it is not the right formula for players. They do not know who the boss is. It would be easy to stay, but to give Gerard and his team a chance, you have to walk away. I know I could have stayed here, but I decided to make a complete break. I didn't want to end as a ghost on the wall.”
A visibly moved Liverpool chairman Moores added his own tribute to Evans, saying: “Today is a sad day for Liverpool and me personally. We have agreed by mutual consent that Roy and Doug Livermore, his assistant, are leaving the club. I would like to pay tribute to all he has done for the club for 35 years. I offered Roy another position at the club but he has chosen to have a break. I could talk for hours about Roy and my respect for him.”
Houllier, now in sole charge of the team with former Reds’ European Cup winning captain Phil Thompson swiftly announced as his new assistant, described spending time with Evans that morning before his exit was announced as ‘one of the saddest and most emotional’ days. He later revealed that he too had come to the conclusion that the partnership would never be able to work as all involved had initially hoped it would and had even suggested at a board meeting that Evans should finish the season in sole charge before handing over the reins.
“It did not work because we had different opinions on how the team should prepare and maybe how players conducted themselves,” he told the Athletic years later. “I was the hard one and Roy was the easier one. We’d put a session on and some players would say, ‘Roy, I’m staying in the gym …’ It didn’t work, anyway. It worked at the beginning. But soon it did not. Picking the team was not the main problem. I went to speak to the people. I said, ‘It’s Roy’s team’. If Liverpool still wanted me in the summer, I would come back. But Rick Parry stepped forward and made a point about how the players would feel like they were the rulers if that happened.”
Houllier’s first game in sole charge would see Liverpool’s third home defeat in a week as three late Leeds United goals condemned the Reds to a 3-1 loss but in time his methods and approach began to bear fruit, an unprecedented cup Treble arriving in 2001 along with qualification at last for the first time for the Champions League, although despite a record points tally of 80 the following campaign, the Frenchman was unable to end the club’s league title drought, his reign ultimately being hampered by the life-threatening heart problem he suffered during a match against Leeds in October 2001.
Might things have been different had he been given the opportunity to do the job on his own terms right from the start? We’ll never know but it is clear from comments made by players who operated under the joint-manager system at the time that the fundamental uncertainty the very nature of it imposed made it doomed to failure.
“How could it work?” Fowler later said. “Who had the final say in team selection? Who was in charge? The players didn’t know, and straight away that made it unworkable.”
Another of those who had came through the Anfield ranks was even more scathing of the set-up - and Houllier, given his loyalty to Evans - and those who thought such a bizarre arrangement could ever work.
“It was a weird situation and it was a situation that all the lads knew wasn’t going to work – even though none of us had to say it," David Thompson told the ECHO’s Blood Red podcast in 2020. “We knew it was softening the blow for Roy to be shown the door, even though Roy had been so unlucky – he was millimetres away from being a very successful Liverpool manager. We just knew. I had a lot of loyalty to Roy, he’d given me my debut and I liked him as a man and as a person. It was the same with Ronnie Moran. They told you how it was. I just didn’t feel I was getting that from Gerard and maybe I didn't have enough confidence or enough maturity in myself to say, ‘I could build a relationship with this guy’, and I think I decided early on that I didn’t like the situation or that I didn’t get on with him. It’s not that I didn’t like him. He had good ideas, and I loved training with Patrice Bergues. He was an amazing coach, and their training sessions always kept you wanting more. They were of an exceptional standard. I wish I had a little bit more maturity at the time to hold out and be a bit open with Gerard to tell him I was not comfortable playing on the right (of midfield) or ask for the opportunity to show that I was a better player in the middle.”
For Evans, only 50 years of age at the time of his Anfield departure, it was a sad conclusion to his life-long association with the club he had followed from the terraces as a boy before signing as an apprentice in 1963, and ultimately the end of his serious involvement in the professional game aside from brief spells with Fulham, Swindon Town, Wales and Wrexham. His frustrations at how things had played out revealed themselves when he was interviewed for a BBC documentary followed the end of Liverpool’s 30-year wait for a league title in 2020 when he said: "If you call people joint-managers, then from that start, you're going to have a problem. Obviously, he's not my favourite man in the whole world but that's life. I don't blame him in any way, shape, or form. In football, sometimes, it's a ruthless business and sometimes you've got to look after yourself and possibly, he was better at doing that than me.”
Following Houllier’s death at the age of 73 later that year, Evans sent a heartfelt message of condolence to the family of ‘a gentleman I had the greatest respect for’ and a more reflective interview around the same time revealed he in fact partially blamed himself for allowing such an unworkable situation as the joint manager idea to be imposed.
“Looking back in hindsight it is very easy to say that it was the wrong decision," said Evans. "Even if they had said they were sacking me that would have been better than what they did. The game was bringing in ideas from Europe at the time so the idea was probably decent enough but I should have been stronger. Okay, bring him in as director of football or some other title if you want but you cannot make him the manager. It just did not work. It was not anyone’s fault and it is certainly no disrespect to Gerard because there was no way he was going to turn Liverpool down. But it was an impossible situation for both of us.
“When you start talking about team selection and one of you wants to pick this player and the other wants to pick another player then it causes problems. I would pick one team and Gerard would pick another. Someone has to have the final say. That is where it fell down. The players are not stupid. If they have been left out of the team and they think it is my decision then they would side with Gerard. The ones who thought they had been left out because of Gerard would side with me. It was not easy at all. I walked away of my own accord. I wasn’t sacked or anything like that. I walked because I just didn’t think it was the right thing. There was a lot that went on and you have to live with that but I should just have been stronger at the very start. That is life at the end of the day. Football is a cut-throat industry.”
