The origin of the Dalglish/Ferguson rivalry

[G Richards]

I don't think the rivalry is quite as fans see it. Kenny certainly respects what Ferguson has done in the game as a manager, but he never has, and never will, fawn over him in a sycophantic way. I don't think they are bosom buddies and nor should they be, given the clubs they lead. But I think it is a good deal more cordial and respectful between the managers than it is between the fans.

 

Ferguson knows Kenny was one of the great players and he can't touch him on that. He also knows that Kenny knows how to build a team and win the league. He knows that Kenny is loved in the game and he knows that he can't get the better of him in the press.

 

Next season will be interesting.

 

We will win the title.

[castle_red]

"No one can come here and wave a magic wand"

 

Roy, time to abandon your tlw account now.

 

Or Darren from Thetford?!

 

Just watch the games, the signs are obvious. Kenny has us playing a way where the level of individual players is less important, so we can go head to head with squads containing more superstars. That's why we've done so well with so many first team players missing, and the youth players have slotted in like £10 or 15mill signings. Ridiculous man management, plus you just know him and Comolli are going to get it right in the summer. Our football's irresistable just after a few months.

 

I don't think the rivalry is quite as fans see it. Kenny certainly respects what Ferguson has done in the game as a manager, but he never has, and never will, fawn over him in a sycophantic way. I don't think they are bosom buddies and nor should they be, given the clubs they lead. But I think it is a good deal more cordial and respectful between the managers than it is between the fans.

 

Ferguson knows Kenny was one of the great players and he can't touch him on that. He also knows that Kenny knows how to build a team and win the league. He knows that Kenny is loved in the game and he knows that he can't get the better of him in the press.

 

Next season will be interesting.

 

We will win the title.

 

Agree on all points.

[Redexile]

We have had plenty of false dawns, I think people who think we'll be challenging for the championship are setting themselves up for dissapointment, try to get back in top 4 which will be very hard

Kennys done great of course but under no pressure or expectation

 

If you believe that then you need to go and do a bit of research and know your history a little bit better.

There is always pressure and expectation at Anfield. In the last week we have heard Carra stating that 5th place is not acceptable at Liverpool. Man City spent a shedload of money this season and yet I am confident that if we had 5 or 6 games to go we would overhaul them. If we spend wisely in the Summer there is no reason why we cannot challenge for the title regardless of what the Mancs and the rest do.

[The Special One]

I heard Kenny shagged his wife and satisfied her in a way she's never been satisfied before.

[Juan Galonso]

The whole "rivalry" thing is overstated in my opinion. Whilst they may not be bosom buddies, they have never apart from one exception directly after a match at Anfield in 1988 had a problem.

 

Ferguson did the Foreword in Dalglish's autobiography in 1996 and in Kennys latest book he talks quite respectfully of Ferguson especially directly after Hillsborough when Ferguson sent a group of United supporters here to pay their respects with flowers off the club.

 

It adds to the intrigue though that two old heads will be going toe to toe next season and it just feels "right".

[Razoray]

The whole "rivalry" thing is overstated in my opinion. Whilst they may not be bosom buddies, they have never apart from one exception directly after a match at Anfield in 1988 had a problem.

 

Ferguson did the Foreword in Dalglish's autobiography in 1996 and in Kennys latest book he talks quite respectfully of Ferguson especially directly after Hillsborough when Ferguson sent a group of United supporters here to pay their respects with flowers off the club.

 

It adds to the intrigue though that two old heads will be going toe to toe next season and it just feels "right".

 

Is correct and didn't Kenny need knee surgery in '86 which prevented him from going to Mexico? He was also a manager and probably wanted the summer to prepare for the next season.

Granted Kenny must also have thought the Ferguson was a buffoon if he had Miller, McLeish and David fucking Narey ahead of Hansen in the squad.

[Kopite]

Kenny's got his number and has always had it. Had the King stayed as manager in 1991 I'd wager that the gap it titles would have increased, we certainly wouldn't be behind.

[fruitbat]

i think the king is by far the better at mind games too

 

the only time whiskey nose has had the upper hand on other managers is when the king wasnt around.

 

take the first game back at the luner stadium, the king waited in the tunnel for five or so minutes after the we had gone onto the field, he then walked out with fergie. the mancs aren't going to hurl abuse as fergie walks out.

 

would fergie have thought about that if the game was at anfield and the game was his first back, probably not

[Brian Damage]

FFS.... were 2-3 seasons away before where any near challenging United.

 

I don't think so. We'll be up there next season. We're coming for you, Baconface.

[chris71]

I heard Kenny shagged his wife and satisfied her in a way she's never been satisfied before.

 

Has Tom R nicked The Special One's log on details??

[William_Ulsterman]

we WILL be challenging next season, for fuck sake look at the stats... only chelsea have taken more points and we are top on goal difference since Kenny took over.. are you blind?

 

City and Chelsea have spent a combined 400 million? and we still hand them their arses under Kenny, so this bullshit about them opening their purses doesn't mean shit. We are only starting to put results together, think what a preseason, a fit Carroll and Gerrard, and substantial funds to strengthen the team will do.

 

Anyone that doesnt think we will finish at least fourth IS deluded. I will delete my account ATK style if we dont i'm that confident, you can hold me to that.

 

No offense redsoxs, but i think you would be better sticking to baseball.

[dennis tooth]

It will if City & Chelsea get their wallets out.... which they will

 

They can't afford to buy Kenny off us if they put all their money together so they have no chance.

[WaltonRed]

Kenny having his number is spot on

[kalvin77]

Kenny's got his number and has always had it. Had the King stayed as manager in 1991 I'd wager that the gap it titles would have increased, we certainly wouldn't be behind.

 

agreed!

[Nunavut Patrick]

Seen too many false dawns to make wild-eyed projections about winning the bread and butter again; too many 'get the signings right in the summer' and 'if we'd signed Damien Duff instead El-Hadj Gaddafi' etc.

 

However, to use the overused cliche (not the Arsenal player) the perfect storm is brewing a tempest in the teapot. Since Dalglish's last reign we have had Souness, Evans, Houllier and Benetiz (cannot put Hodgson in their as he was a defacto caretaker manager whilst we sorted our shite out). They were missing something and it wasn't Gareth fucking Barry. It was the culture of winning.

 

Souness' record speaks for itself, the book on Evans was too nice and let the Spice Boys take over thus the need for the schoolteacher from France to come in and restore order. And restore he did, winning the treble and beating the mancs in a LC final., but success in the Cups is left too many things-- luck of the draw, one off finals, etc. After the League peak (just before the Middlesboro game) we beagan the slide until he needed replacing by another continental manager who came in and worked wonders during the first half of his tenure. And then we began the slide.

 

The one thing that all these managers had missing is the culture of winning. Ferguson is many things, and most of those things are unpleasant, but the one thing he has instilled in Man U is a culture of winning and to win you have to be ruthless. How many teams give up the ghost on the team coach as it comes up to Greyskull? Anfield will be a Fortress next season.

 

Kenny has instilled this in the players. Which is why we see the form table look like this recently for us-- 5-0,3-0,5-2, 3-0..etc. Which is why, three goals to the good at Craven Cottage, we see one of players demanding a penalty at the death of the game. Which is why we see our players still, in injury time, attacking. Make no mistake, if we win next year I will point to the game at the Emirates, where we concede a penalty deep in injury time and do not fold up the tent and pack up but attack them like an Ozark hilbilly attacking a possum he just ran over in his Ford F150 pick-up truck. (With vigour for those unaquanted with the dining habits of the Appalachian peoples of America.)

 

Plain and simple language: Arsenal bottled because we forced that bottle on them. Lucas Levia chased down that deflection, positioned himself and said, 'Go ahead Emmanuel, go ahead and drink from the vintage that is Arsenal Bottling, the squad that was 4-0 up in Tyneside. Oh yes, you fucked that up and now you are going to fuck this up as well. Go ahead and have a snifter of failure that is the last six years. Come on you diving twat, clatter into me and know that the Dutchman will dispatch that penalty like the French Army dispatched your President. Drink it in you diving cheating bottling motherfucker because this is not the Liverpool of yesteryear, this is not the holding crab-sideways passing Lucas of the past but the Lucas Levia of King Kenny's second reign and that sound you are about to hear is the referee's whistle and then him pointing to the spot.'

 

Eboue hardly protested; he just collapsed his hands in his face like a man who knew his fate. Oh, his puffy coated manager made some noises about injury time and it was never a penalty, but really it's just more nonesense from a man whose greatest weakness is his inability to accept weakness in his squad and fix it. Read your history books, it runs in the blood you see. The Maginot Line.

 

Yes Manchester City will spend money by the (oil) barrel, Manchester United will be a challenge becuase they do, and no one will convinve me that they are 'the shittest team to win the PL, have a damn good team with damn good players who may well be twats of the highest order but the point stands nonethelesss.

 

But it will not matter because we will be putting teams to the sword because that is what Kenny Dalglish knows, that is how he did it as a player and a manager. League titles are not won securing 0-0 draws, they are won by destroying Fulham 5-2, by looking over a ginger manager from England's Second City and thrashing him 5-0. They are won by infusing infectious enthusiasm on the touchline. How can a player not have that seep into his veins- to look over after a goal and see Kenny Dalglish turn and raise his wee Glaswegian arms to the sky and flash a smile that could melt a North Korean dictator and not want to go and score again? And again? And again? Yes, Maxi, we're talking aboot you.

 

And that is building a culture of winning. A team that could go to Mars and win. A team that Napoleon would fear.

[The Special One]

I really need to get my ST back just so I can rep.

[isr]

He's gone up 00000000.1% after that Hillsborough story

 

Is that more, or less, than 000000000000000000000000.1% ?

[James Dean]

What a post NP. Duly repped.

[TheDrowningMan]

Seen too many false dawns to make wild-eyed projections about winning the bread and butter again; too many 'get the signings right in the summer' and 'if we'd signed Damien Duff instead El-Hadj Gaddafi' etc.

 

However, to use the overused cliche (not the Arsenal player) the perfect storm is brewing a tempest in the teapot. Since Dalglish's last reign we have had Souness, Evans, Houllier and Benetiz (cannot put Hodgson in their as he was a defacto caretaker manager whilst we sorted our shite out). They were missing something and it wasn't Gareth fucking Barry. It was the culture of winning.

 

Souness' record speaks for itself, the book on Evans was too nice and let the Spice Boys take over thus the need for the schoolteacher from France to come in and restore order. And restore he did, winning the treble and beating the mancs in a LC final., but success in the Cups is left too many things-- luck of the draw, one off finals, etc. After the League peak (just before the Middlesboro game) we beagan the slide until he needed replacing by another continental manager who came in and worked wonders during the first half of his tenure. And then we began the slide.

 

The one thing that all these managers had missing is the culture of winning. Ferguson is many things, and most of those things are unpleasant, but the one thing he has instilled in Man U is a culture of winning and to win you have to be ruthless. How many teams give up the ghost on the team coach as it comes up to Greyskull? Anfield will be a Fortress next season.

 

Kenny has instilled this in the players. Which is why we see the form table look like this recently for us-- 5-0,3-0,5-2, 3-0..etc. Which is why, three goals to the good at Craven Cottage, we see one of players demanding a penalty at the death of the game. Which is why we see our players still, in injury time, attacking. Make no mistake, if we win next year I will point to the game at the Emirates, where we concede a penalty deep in injury time and do not fold up the tent and pack up but attack them like an Ozark hilbilly attacking a possum he just ran over in his Ford F150 pick-up truck. (With vigour for those unaquanted with the dining habits of the Appalachian peoples of America.)

 

Plain and simple language: Arsenal bottled because we forced that bottle on them. Lucas Levia chased down that deflection, positioned himself and said, 'Go ahead Emmanuel, go ahead and drink from the vintage that is Arsenal Bottling, the squad that was 4-0 up in Tyneside. Oh yes, you fucked that up and now you are going to fuck this up as well. Go ahead and have a snifter of failure that is the last six years. Come on you diving twat, clatter into me and know that the Dutchman will dispatch that penalty like the French Army dispatched your President. Drink it in you diving cheating bottling motherfucker because this is not the Liverpool of yesteryear, this is not the holding crab-sideways passing Lucas of the past but the Lucas Levia of King Kenny's second reign and that sound you are about to hear is the referee's whistle and then him pointing to the spot.'

 

Eboue hardly protested; he just collapsed his hands in his face like a man who knew his fate. Oh, his puffy coated manager made some noises about injury time and it was never a penalty, but really it's just more nonesense from a man whose greatest weakness is his inability to accept weakness in his squad and fix it. Read your history books, it runs in the blood you see. The Maginot Line.

 

Yes Manchester City will spend money by the (oil) barrel, Manchester United will be a challenge becuase they do, and no one will convinve me that they are 'the shittest team to win the PL, have a damn good team with damn good players who may well be twats of the highest order but the point stands nonethelesss.

 

But it will not matter because we will be putting teams to the sword because that is what Kenny Dalglish knows, that is how he did it as a player and a manager. League titles are not won securing 0-0 draws, they are won by destroying Fulham 5-2, by looking over a ginger manager from England's Second City and thrashing him 5-0. They are won by infusing infectious enthusiasm on the touchline. How can a player not have that seep into his veins- to look over after a goal and see Kenny Dalglish turn and raise his wee Glaswegian arms to the sky and flash a smile that could melt a North Korean dictator and not want to go and score again? And again? And again? Yes, Maxi, we're talking aboot you.

 

And that is building a culture of winning. A team that could go to Mars and win. A team that Napoleon would fear.

 

Good stuff.

 

Really, the key to winning is to stuff the league's chaff like a soft toy. It's about 15 of the division's teams dreading having to play you, not overcomplicating things as some top managers tend to. Ferguson has had it right for a long time, even though he's seldom had the division's very best starting XI in recent years. It's simple - You wrack up the wins against teams who are manifestly inferior to you, you have a fantastic home record and little else matters.

 

I am on record as being a big fan of Rafa, but his failing domestically was that there were too many occasions on which we appeared to be overthinking the game, adhering far too rigidly to a set plan even when up against dismal opposition. That's important against certain teams, but sometimes you just need to afford more freedom when up against 15 of the league's 20 teams. Ferguson knows it, and that's why his sides are often very negative when facing a top side away from home - they'll keep it tight and win if they can, but titles aren't won purely by beating the top four. I have no doubt that Kenny knows that all too well.

[Section_31]

Great post NP, duly repped sir.

 

I'm trying to remain realistic and cautious. I recently had a flashback to an episode of Hold the Back Page from just after we signed Paul Ince, and even Brian Woolnough and Patrick Barclay thought we'd win the league.

 

Lessons, lessons.

[Nunavut Patrick]

Good stuff.

 

Really, the key to winning is to stuff the league's chaff like a soft toy. It's about 15 of the division's teams dreading having to play you, not overcomplicating things as some top managers tend to. Ferguson has had it right for a long time, even though he's seldom had the division's very best starting XI in recent years. It's simple - You wrack up the wins against teams who are manifestly inferior to you, you have a fantastic home record and little else matters.

 

I am on record as being a big fan of Rafa, but his failing domestically was that there were too many occasions on which we appeared to be overthinking the game, adhering far too rigidly to a set plan even when up against dismal opposition. That's important against certain teams, but sometimes you just need to afford more freedom when up against 15 of the league's 20 teams. Ferguson knows it, and that's why his sides are often very negative when facing a top side away from home - they'll keep it tight and win if they can, but titles aren't won purely by beating the top four. I have no doubt that Kenny knows that all too well.

 

Yes. And Dalglish will know this. It's a formula that seems to have escaped the other managers either by continental stubborness or overthinking. It's alomost as if Wenger, Houillier and Benetiz had to win it their way and torpedoes be damned. Any fool and Gooners know that Veira was never replaced and their keepers make Gomes look like Gordon Banks.

 

Good point about Ferguson's negative sides-- many times they come to Anfiled and play stifling and nick a 1-0. The next week they are twatting someone 5-0.

 

We take care Fulhams, Blackburns and Sunderlands next season and we will roll. We haven't been knocked off our perch, we just flew off it on a sojourn with a French and Spanish bird.

 

And now that Kenny is back he won't be pleased there's an old crow on his perch that has the waft of whiskey about him.

[FortressAnfield]

Plain and simple language: Arsenal bottled because we forced that bottle on them. Lucas Levia chased down that deflection, positioned himself and said, 'Go ahead Emmanuel, go ahead and drink from the vintage that is Arsenal Bottling, the squad that was 4-0 up in Tyneside. Oh yes, you fucked that up and now you are going to fuck this up as well. Go ahead and have a snifter of failure that is the last six years. Come on you diving twat, clatter into me and know that the Dutchman will dispatch that penalty like the French Army dispatched your President. Drink it in you diving cheating bottling motherfucker because this is not the Liverpool of yesteryear, this is not the holding crab-sideways passing Lucas of the past but the Lucas Levia of King Kenny's second reign and that sound you are about to hear is the referee's whistle and then him pointing to the spot.'

 

About 30 seconds of the match left, and he said all that AND still had time to win a penalty???

 

Respect.

[FortressAnfield]

It will if City & Chelsea get their wallets out.... which they will

 

 

City haven't put their wallet away in the last two years: they're fourth.

 

Chelsea got theirs out (not that it had been away for long) in January and spent £50m on one player. Didn't work, did it?

 

Money helps, but it doesn't guarantee success. You have to spend wisely. Buy players like Barnes and Beardsley. Sutton and Shearer. Suarez and Carroll.

[SCOUSE TAPAS]

The whole "rivalry" thing is overstated in my opinion. Whilst they may not be bosom buddies, they have never apart from one exception directly after a match at Anfield in 1988 had a problem.

 

Ferguson did the Foreword in Dalglish's autobiography in 1996 and in Kennys latest book he talks quite respectfully of Ferguson especially directly after Hillsborough when Ferguson sent a group of United supporters here to pay their respects with flowers off the club.

 

It adds to the intrigue though that two old heads will be going toe to toe next season and it just feels "right".

 

Is correct, he was also the first one to send a message of congratulations to Kenny, when Blackburn won the league.

[Red Nick]

Everyone assumes it's to do with the rivalry between the two clubs and the fact Ferguson was overshadowed by him in his early days.

 

But I was reading about when Ferguson was in caretaker charge of the Scotland side in the 1986 World Cup but left Hansen out of his squad, and how Dalglish pulled out with an injury just before the finals, with a few observers reckoning it was a show of support for his mate, apparently Ferguson went ballistic.

 

I think this is the root of it personally. Ferguson has his managerial rivalries but he seems to reserve a special anger for his players when you think of how he's treated people like Beckham and Ince. Possibly to do with the fact he's such a control freak - he doesn't expect to control rival managers but he expects to control every aspect of his players, and when he can't he dumps them and hates them forever. Plus, the BBC will attest as to how long the man can hold a grudge - any grudge.

 

Also, being such a borderline-psychotic narcissist you have to wonder what impact it must have had, when he's seen the World Cup as his day in the sun, to lose his best player like that.

 

Thoughts?

 

Its exactly what is was and it actually goes back to him choosing McLeish and Miller over Hansen when he was manager of Aberdeen and Scotland which Dalglish quite rightly saw as him putting Aberdeen before Scotland.