Liverpool: Five Replacements for Hodgson Who Can Ensure Club Gains Respect

Liverpool FC are now safe, financially. With NESV buying out the club, a lot of the off-the-field problems have at last been put to rest. However, coming back to the pitch where all the concern must really lie, Liverpool under Roy Hodgson are exactly what they have been for a major part of their campaign so far—atrocious. 

Going back a few days to October 6, when Christian Purslow and Martin Broughton began their civil war openly against the then owners Tom Hicks and Co., they clearly stated that their opinion to sell the club to John W Henry is highly motivated from the fact that the New England Sports Ventures group was a firm believer in "winning."

If that be the case, it may be a little early for them, but it also is the best time for them to bring about some bold changes to the club so that it could move forward because clearly at its present state it is doing the worst it has in the past 40 or so years.

It is no rocket science to see how managers can influence the players on the pitch and even motivate them to be a good fighting unit.

If only any genuine football fan watched the Blackpool vs. Manchester City match that followed Liverpool's discouraging derby, they have easily understood the problem. Even with a team which spent even less than what Liverpool did to bring a Hodgson (Rafa's pay-off), Poulsen or Konchesky , the tangerines took the game to City and were in every way unlucky not to have even scalped a famous draw unlike Liverpool who never deserved any better than they got.

Liverpool now stand one place off the bottom, and what is the most frustrating, is that they look to be just as average a team on the pitch.

Clearly even the biggest critic of Rafael Benitez should agree that Roy was bought in to better the already miserable position of the club ( seventh place finish last time), however, what he managed was a tragedy on the lines of his spell in Blackburn.

Roy Hodgson has surely proven himself to be unworthy of a job at any of the premier clubs in Europe especially Liverpool which has looked ever so lack-lustre under him.

Consequently it must be said that NESV must act fast to stop the club from falling, as it stands, anymore time to Roy Hodgson could spell doom for the club just like it did for Blackburn Rovers years earlier when the management didn't sack Roy as fast as they should have.

Understandably, any new manager coming in would take a little time to adapt and get going so it makes all the more sense to stop Roy just now and move ahead even if it means we have 3m GBP less to spend in the winter transfer window.

Here are my list of five available managers who could be ready to shoulder the responsibility at Liverpool FC.

Liverpool FC need a radical thinker who could steer them to a whole new level. In all honesty, they need a manager who has an experience at the Premier League and has a good reputation with a better club preferably a top four level club.

Martin O'Neill fits that bill pretty easily. He has been a very good manager at both Celtic and Aston Villa and although not exactly a top four side in practice, Aston Villa were a very good unit under Martin and they almost always gave the top four sides (esp. the fourth one) a run for their money.

Although a very attacking manager, the only real criticism regarding his managing methods was that he almost never rotated his first team players who would consequently get tired out by March, a month where Aston Villa have stumbled more often than not in his spell.

However, with better funds available to him under the new ownership at Liverpool, O'Neill could be quite a handful, and one who could be approached easily as he is an available option with no current managerial job at his hand.

Although Leonardo did not have exactly a very long spell for the sole managerial job he did at AC Milan, he did give glimpses of his creative and fresh approach to the game of football.

Leonardo tried out new formations with his aging team and obtained great results during his spell at AC Milan where he had been a technical director for quite sometime before he took on the managerial role.

Moreover, being a Brazilian, Leonardo must have a good knowledge of South American footballers who have the ability to make a major impact . The additions of Kaka and Alexander Pato to AC Milan bears ample testimony to his abilities as a scout.

At a time when Liverpool desperately need an attack-minded manager and also better players without exactly splashing the cash, Leonardo may well be the man.

Kenny Dalglish has been one of those players who Liverpool were gifted to have. Not only was he a superb player and manager, he is the heartthrob for the Liverpool fans even to this day.

Thus, motivating players would never be a problem under King Kenny.

Clearly Kenny Dalglish has the ability to gel this current Liverpool unit into a more organised unit, however the only stumbling block that may come between electing Kenny as the manager of the club is that he has been out of any professional managerial post for a very long spell now, and it can be expected that his scouting would not be that great either, and thus, he may not be a solution for Liverpool in the long term.

But then again, the new owners of the club have a made it clear that they will listen to the fans, and if such a thing be realized then, King Kenny may well be the next Liverpool manager before long.

A manager much in the mold of Arsene Wenger of Arsenal, Manuel Pellegrini is a man known widely for his tactics on the pitch.

Pellegrini took charge of a Villareal side that nobody expected to really rise to the levels they did under him. The yellow submarines as Villareal are often called by, rose to the third spot in only his first season in charge, thus we can understand that unlike Liverpool's present manager who keeps making excuses with time and clearly cannot see how atrocious his team is on the pitch, Pellegrini is very much a results-oreinted manager.

However that was not the end of Pellegrini's magical spell with Villareal, they went on to play the UEFA Champions league semifinal the following season, and although they ended the season on the seventh spot, they went on to rise to finish fifth and second respectively. Clearly the last finish was a historical one for the club and led to interests from Real Madrid.

Pellegrini joined Real Madrid later in 2009, and though he took the club to record points tally of 96, they finished second to Barcelona who amassed a huge 99 points. Pellegrini was consequently fired though, because of Madrid's poor performance in the Champions League which really wasn't a first timer under him.

However, Manuel Pellegrini too is out of professional managing now and could be easily approached to give Liverpool both the touch of experience and attacking flair that they need.

If Liverpool are one of the bottom and at least mathematically into the relegation zone, even Barcelona in 2003-04  was pretty close to it sometime after Frank Rijkaard took over.The Catalans finished second that season and what followed was a major turn around in Barcelona's fortunes as they won not only the La Liga in 2004-05 and 2005-06 but also the Champions League trophy, beating Arsenal in the finals.

Thus not only at the age of 48 is Rijkaard one of the best young managers in Football all over the world but has also done very well at the top jobs in the business unlike Roy Hodgson.

(The best thing with young managers is that they adapt to changes which more senile ones like Hodgson refuse to just because those methods did work for him at lesser clubs.)

Rijkaard also has a pretty good transfer record, signing the likes of Deco and Eto'o for Barcelona who playing around the enigmatic Ronaldinho made Barcelona an all round threat in the world club football.

The only problem at the moment is that Rijkaard is currently under contract with the Turkish giants Galatasaray and although a move to Liverpool at the moment could be a possibility with money available to the Reds, any further deferring of the move could well be very tough if Liverpool slips further into misery.

So it is with respect to both the club and their own business that NESV must be bold and act fast just like they did with the Red Sox.

Clearly Roy Hodgson was bought in to lend the club some stability, which if he was capable enough should have been in sight by now. Instead they are just alternating between being very ordinary and mediocre.

Liverpool now, after the Hicks and Gillett regime, are in desperate need for a better manager, and if they are to seriously improve, the change needs to be made at the earliest.

The off-field problems may hae been solved as of now, but now with Roy starting the blame game on Torres and Co., it's either now or never on the pitch for the New Owners.

No reason why John W Henry must not do what they did for the Red Sox to Liverpool and fast.

Good Bye Roy! Thanks for Meireles, but you will not be missed!