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Football News: Learning the lessons from Liverpool's failure.

This season, to the delight of Manchester United and Everton fans, has been an absolute disaster for Liverpool FC. A season that started out with the promise of so much has ended in utter and complete meltdown.

Though, to be fair, Man Utd and Everton have both had seasons below their expectations early on, their seasons have at least improved, while Liverpool have gone from probably title challengers to only just qualifying for European competition for next season.

This summer is vital now for Liverpool's owners, FSG. If they make the wrong decisions now they will jeopardise the whole future of the club that they have pumped such huge sums into.

With a stadium expansion underway, the club desperately needs to have learnt some important lessons from their time in charge, especially in terms of picking the manager to run the club.

They took over a club with Roy Hodgson in charge, a man whose mindset was all wrong for the club, who only wanted to avoid defeat, not win. He never understood Liverpool or the fans at all, the idea that a draw against your local rivals, who have a much smaller budget, would have been a good result sums him up.

They dithered over dismissing him, and that meant they were backed into a corner when it came to replace him, meaning they were left with little option but to go with the fans' choice of Kenny Dalglish. Unfortunately Kenny had been out of the game too long, far too much had changed for him to be able to adapt quickly enough.

Dalglish was unable to cope with the modern media world football exists in, his ill judged attempts to support Luis Suarez eventually leading to his dismissal. This time though, Fenway Sports Group were going to follow their own plan for appointing a new set up and go for a promising young coach under a director of football.

Sadly they lacked decisiveness and ended up settling for a promising young coach as a manager without a director of football. Another lesson to be learnt the hard way, never settle for half measures. Be decisive and go out and get what you want, not be dictated to by someone who has no proven track record of success.

Brendan Rodgers clearly won them over, despite the portliness, despite teeth that were yet to dazzle, despite lacking a tan. Instead he had a plan, a dossier to show them and lots of business jargon. So they dropped the director of football plan, as the dossier showed Brendan could do it all.

Rodgers managed to provide yet another lesson in not settling for half measures, when his transfer nous was shown to be non-existent and FSG saw fit to appoint a transfer committee to help him out. Again a lack of decisiveness being exhibited by a company that is seemingly run by committee.

It is time to take responsibility and appoint people who are willing to accept that responsibility in turn. Right now there is a manager in charge who takes all the credit but shifts all the blame. Bad performances are blamed on the players, and by extension the transfer committee, but good performances are the result of his coaching.

FSG need to pick one man to take responsibility for the club, one man who makes immediate decisions when needed, rather than spends months doing a review to make the same decision. Is Michael Gordon that man?

The months of inaction as Liverpool have lurched from title challengers with Champions League football and domestic cups in reach, to top 4 challengers with Europa League football and domestic cups in reach, to end up as 6th, just about qualifying for another shot at the Europa League and no domestic cups in the cabinet suggests he is not.

The players have let Brendan Rodgers down, there is no doubt about that, but he was the one who lost their support. He was the one who mismanaged players until they no longer wanted to be there, he is the one who plays them completely out of position, even when there are numerous specialists in that position sat on the sidelines completely alienated by him.

It is Rodgers' fault that Liverpool have been so utterly rubbish all season, but it is FSG's fault that they have not accepted responsibility by acting. This time they must get the right man in, or it is time to question whether they have what it takes to run a football club.

Written by Tris Burke May 25 2015 09:38:00