Over the years, when Steven Gerrard has let his mind wander towards the future, he has occasionally allowed himself to fantasise about one day becoming Liverpool’s manager.
He has imagined having Jamie Carragher or Xabi Alonso as his assistant, has thought about how the club’s Melwood academy could best be run to find new local heroes, like him, has toyed with what aspects of the five Liverpool managers under which he played he would adopt.
The nurturing tough-love of Gerard Houllier, Rafa Benitez’s emotionless ice-cold tactical mastery, the maturity and honesty of Roy Hodgson, the sheer blind loyalty of Kenny Dalglish, Brendan Rodgers’s warm man-management.
In fact, Gerrard gave much thought to management long before taking his first managerial job at Rangers and creating a formula that produced instant results. Many pages of the former England and Liverpool midfielder’s 2016 autobiography, My Story, are devoted to analysing and dissecting his former managers’ approaches and tactics: what worked and what didn’t, their successes and failures, the difficult choices and tough decisions.
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Gerrard clearly always knew it would take many years before he would have the experience to manage a club the size of Liverpool, that it was likely he would first stand in the opposition dugout at Anfield – as he will on Saturday afternoon as Aston Villa manager, long before he may get the chance to lead them.
Houllier — “One of the nicest men I have met in football,” Gerrard writes — was the manager who gave Gerrard his debut on 29 November 1998. As the 18-year-old stood trembling on the touchline, Houllier kept it simple and told him to “keep the ball for us, keep your position and see the game”. And that was all it needed to begin the career of one of England’s great midfielders.
Gerrard appreciated the way Houllier nurtured him through those tricky early years, a kind man at heart but one who could also be harsh. When Gerrard was done for drink driving at 19, Houllier let rip before eventually calming down and saying, “If your mates want to go to a nightclub, let them. By the time you’ve finished your career you can buy a club of your own.”
But sometimes, in Gerrard’s view, situations were not always handled correctly. He remembers in November 2002, aged 22, being summoned to the manager’s office during a slump in form. Houllier was flanked by two assistants — Phil Thompson and Sammy Lee — the goalkeeper coach Joe Corrigan and head scout Alex Miller.
Gerrard had stormed straight down the tunnel after being subbed against Tottenham and with his form plummeting Houllier confronted him, surrounded by his staff. “What’s eating you, Steven?” Houllier said, before questions flew at him from everyone. Gerrard believes had it been one-on-one he might’ve opened up to Houllier about his parents separating and how it was affecting him. But Gerrard waited until they had finished, then stormed out.
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Even in the colder approach of Benitez and Fabio Capello, who Gerrard played under for England, Gerrard can see the positives. He didn’t mind playing for a more distant manager, is sure in some cases it drove him on. “I learnt from BenÃtez that it’s not really important to be close to your players. An edge can sometimes help.”
For all his admiration of Benitez’s tactics, Gerrard identifies many faults with the approach to the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul — the greatest night of both their careers.
Gerrard was shocked Didi Hamann was left on the bench, that the 4-4-1-1 formation — with only two central midfielders — left them exposed to AC Milan’s diamond that included at its sharpest points Kaka, Andrea Pirlo and Clarence Seedorf. He was surprised Benitez waited until half-time, already three goals down, to make changes. And he even defied Benitez’s orders to play as a No 10 in the second half, dropping deeper to avoid the grip of Alessandro Nesta and Jaap Stam.
Hodgson replaced Benitez in 2010 but though he lasted only six months at Liverpool, and managed four bleak years as England manager, Gerrard has great respect for the way Hodgson treated players like adults, that he understood footballers did not want to be locked in hotels during long international tournaments, that provided they put in the effort on the pitch and behaved off it, they could do as they wished. “He’s a very good person and honesty shines out of him,” Gerrard writes.
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Hodgson introduced Gary Neville — the former Manchester United defender a fierce rival in their playing days — to the England staff and Gerrard considered it the perfect link between players and manager, was impressed with Neville’s tactical awareness and the way he encouraged players to be more vocal.
Gerrard identifies Hodgson’s faults, too. He does not believe he got signings right, that Christian Poulsen and Paul Konchesky were never going to make it at Liverpool. But concludes that even though training sessions could be disappointing “Roy got more out of me than any other England manager had done before”.
After Hodgson came Dalglish, a manager who was a hero of Gerrard’s father, now coaching his son in a second spell, 20 years after his first. Dalglish formed part of a line of managers, from Bill Shankley to Bob Paisley, to Joe Fagan to Dalglish, who “took care of Liverpool for more than three decades”.
But Dalglish as Gerrard’s manager lasted less than 18 months, and Gerrard was injured for much of it. Dalglish had to deal with the racism storm involving Luis Suarez, who was banned for eight matches for comments made to Patrice Evra, and handled it badly. Deep within that incident, however, Gerrard discovered the extraordinarily difficult decisions managers must make, when Dalglish stood by his player in the face of fierce criticism.
“Above all else, Kenny will protect his players to the hilt,” Gerrard writes. “Maybe such loyalty is sometimes ill-advised – but it’s one of the reasons I love the man. His love for the club and what he’d be prepared to do for it have always inspired me. For a player to know that he’s got that level of backing from his manager is inspirational. It was another example of the Liverpool way of instinctively defending our own.”
Rodgers, too, who replaced Dalglish, quickly found himself managing a delicate situation involving their star striker. Suarez had downed tools after being refused a move to Juventus, the Uruguayan insisting the club had reneged on an agreement to let him leave. The player gave a tell-all interview and Rodgers banished him from first-team training until he apologised to the club and its supporters.
Gerrard knew Rodgers was a decent man from the first time they met, saw how he embraced Liverpool’s traditions, but the Suarez situation provided a glimmer of ruthlessness that Gerrard believes all managers must possess.
“You don’t become the manager of a huge club like Liverpool without having a hard, even ruthless streak,” Gerrard writes. “You need to be prepared to make tough decisions that will cause some hurt.”
Broadly, Gerrard likes the idea of a sprinkling of Benitez’s tactics on a spoonful of Rodgers’s warmth, yet there are three defining attributes that unites them all. “My managers over the years have been diverse personalities, with their own style of working, but they have all passed down the same simple message. They instruct you to be professional and to work hard and be a team player. Those three values are shared by all of them.” They could also be the values that one day lead Gerrard to the job of his dreams.
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