Former Liverpool winger Stewart Downing says that the club should have given more time for legend Kenny Dalglish, who spent a couple of years as the manager upon his return to the hot seat.
Dalglish is regarded as one of the club legends and this status is unlikely to have altered even after a poor spell with the club. American owners FSG were seen to have made this sentimental appointment of Dalglish and they quickly backtracked the on this decision by appointing Northern Ireland manager Brendan Rodgers as his replacement. This, however, has not turned out to be a great decision.
Rodgers has become the first Liverpool manager to go without winning a trophy in the first three seasons. The only success that he has achieved so far will be coming within two games of winning the league title. Liverpool returned to the Champions League only ones under the guidance of Rodgers, who was quick to sell Stewart Downing in the opinion of some. The former Aston Villa winger did not have the best 12 months upon his arrival at Merseyside, but he was not given much of a consideration under Rodgers. Downing, though, proved his quality with West Ham for a couple of seasons before joining his hometown club Middlesbrough.
“I played for a very good manager in Kenny Dalglish, he was very good to me. I’ll never forget what he did to get me to that club.When I was speaking to Kenny, I was thinking ‘this is mad, £20m for me to go there’, but it put a lot of pressure on Kenny because he spent big that summer. I went to Aston Villa and said to them ‘this is Kenny Dalglish and Liverpool football club, you have to let me go’ and they were okay about it.I just didn’t think we got time to gel,” said Downing.