by Simon Hughes
In Souness’s first two games in charge, Liverpool beat Norwich and Crystal Palace at Anfield by 3–0 scorelines. Mølby was positioned as a sweeper in a back three that included the Garys, Gillespie and Ablett. Shortly before Souness’s arrival, Mølby had signed a new four-year contract. Yet suddenly his place in the squad was under threat.
Two defeats in three days to Chelsea and Nottingham Forest prompted Souness to take the squad on a boot camp to Lilleshall.
‘Graeme was having a pop at everyone,’ Mølby remembers. ‘Me, John Barnes and Peter Beardsley bore the brunt of it. He kept telling us that we were going to become one of the fittest squads in Britain. Yet if you look at the records, the squad’s fitness standards were already very high. It was as if he was focusing on problems that were not really there.’
In the summer of 1991, Everton made a bid to sign Mølby. By then, his prospects had deteriorated at Liverpool.
‘I wasn’t originally included in the pre-season tour to Norway. But on the day we were due to leave, Liverpool sold Steve Staunton to Aston Villa and I had to take his place. It was clear I was only there to make up the numbers, because I was only ever named as a sub and hardly came on.’
Mølby was ready to leave. He was not given a firm reason for his omission. ‘I was not the type of person to knock on a manager’s door and ask.’ Mølby believed it was the manager’s responsibility to explain himself if he deemed it necessary.
In Norway, Jamie Redknapp, Don Hutchison and Mike Marsh were all selected ahead of him and when the season started, Mølby, at twenty-eight, was playing reserve-team football, often taking on extra training to keep on top of his fitness. Meanwhile, Liverpool struggled. By October, they were eighth in the league and on the verge of getting knocked out of Europe after losing 2–0 away to Auxerre in the UEFA Cup.
What happened next demonstrated Souness’s unpredictability. Mølby was at Melwood alone, running round and round close to its perimeter wall. He could sense a presence getting close to him. He turned and there was Souness.
‘He asked me to play against Coventry on the Saturday. Then he invited me to dinner to talk it through. You could see this as a weakness of Graeme’s – that he was going back on an apparent decision to get shot of certain players. To me, though, in the singleminded world of management, it’s not a bad thing if you can admit that you’re in the wrong. He was man enough to do that.’
Mølby helped Liverpool to a 1–0 victory over Coventry. Dramatically, the deficit against Auxerre was overturned and the French side were eliminated with a 3–0 Liverpool victory, with Mølby scoring the first and assisting with the third. In the dressing room afterwards, Souness kissed each player on the forehead before pulling £1,000 from his pocket, offering the cash to Mølby.
‘He told me to take all the lads out for a drink. That was the strange thing about him. Graeme could blow hot and cold. He had a bad side. But he also had a good side.’
Mølby remained in the team for the rest of the league campaign, where Liverpool finished a disappointing sixth – the lowest position for twenty-seven years. They were more successful in the FA Cup, reaching the semi-final, with Portsmouth the opponents at Highbury. Mølby regrets his role in what happened next.
‘I was expecting to start. I thought I’d done enough to show Graeme I could be relied upon in the big games. We were walking around the pitch, watching the atmosphere build up, and Graeme sauntered over to explain that I was on the bench. “It’s going to be end to end and it’s really hot out there, Jan,” he reasoned.
‘I told him that wasn’t happening. “You either start me or I don’t get changed.”
‘I wasn’t budging. I’d been his best player since coming back into the team and now I felt like I was being messed around again. He wanted Ronnie [Whelan] in there but that didn’t make sense to me as we were both a similar age and had similar running abilities. I felt used.’
Mølby didn’t get changed that day.
Liverpool just about drew the game 1–1, with Whelan equalizing late on, before a path to the final was sealed in the Villa Park replay in a penalty shoot-out.
‘It’s my biggest regret in football, refusing to play,’ Mølby says. ‘Effectively, I went on strike. I was in breach of my contract. The club could have probably sacked me for it. If Liverpool had won comfortably that afternoon [at Highbury], there’s no way I’d have been in the team for the final.’
Mølby insists he did not have a major problem with Souness, although some of his teammates did.
‘If I could change one thing about his manner, it would be the way he chose his teams. It was very inconsistent, lurching from one extreme to another. Other people had an issue with his man-management. He could really lose his temper. I remember after one defeat he charged into the dressing room and chucked a bottle of smelling salts against a mirror and both smashed into a thousand pieces.’
Souness was not someone who would bear a grudge, however. ‘By the time we returned for training on the Monday, he was prepared to move on if you were.’
Under Souness, Liverpool finished successive seasons in sixth place. At the end of the third season – during which he was sacked after more than half of it – they finished eighth. It was their worst sequence of placings since before Bill Shankly’s arrival in 1959. In the meantime, Manchester United secured two league titles. Liverpool were behind. Over the next two decades, it was a position to which they would become accustomed.
‘There’s a lot of fingers pointed at Graeme for starting the rot and I think he has to take some of the responsibility,’ Mølby says. ‘This is based purely on the type of player he chose to sign. Any manager is defined by the players he chooses to buy and sell. Football boils down to transfers. It always has. Players are just the same as fans. When you hear of someone new coming in, you get excited. The most excited I’ve ever been at Liverpool was when we signed [Peter] Beardsley. We all recognized what a good player he was; Barnes, not so. It took two weeks for us to realize how good John was.’
Mølby cites the signings of Dean Saunders and Paul Stewart as misplaced because of the size of the fees involved.
‘They were Graeme’s first big moves in the transfer market and he spent more than £2 million on each. I’d played against Paul many times and I could not understand why Liverpool would sign him. He played a different type of game. He was only effective when it was a bit longer, picking up second balls off the centre-forward or becoming a nuisance in the penalty area. We never played like that.
‘I think Graeme misjudged where we were. He thought the decline of certain players was further down the line than was actually the case. He overreacted. You can’t blame him for making that decision. But you can blame him for the signings he made. They weren’t good enough.
‘Training certainly changed. Our tastes were very simple. We warmed up then we played five-a-side. It was all about creating angles and that served us well on a Saturday. Then we signed a lot of players from other clubs where there was a lot of coaching, clubs where players could lose and blame the standard of the coaching, as if they themselves were blameless. At Liverpool, that was never allowed to happen. As an individual, you only got out what you put in.
‘Gradually, the standard of the five-a-sides declined. They became less and less competitive. It got to a stage where the staff team and the older heads like me, Ronnie and Rushy were beating the newcomers every day. The scorelines were embarrassing. You can’t have that.
‘I looked at some of the lads on the other team and realized that Souness’s new Liverpool would have to play in a different way. Julian Dicks, for instance, was like a golfer. You’d give him the ball and he’d give himself a bit of space, then serve it in quickly to the front men, bypassing the midfield. I lost count of the times I’d show for the pass and he wouldn’t see me from five yards away. He was used to playing that way. He wasn’t capable of adapting to Liverpool. We were in danger of becoming a longball team.
‘Paul Stewart was
the same. When we were in possession, he went missing. He wanted to play off the front two and feed off the scraps. Dean Saunders was a good finisher but he was a poorer version of Rushy, so we had two players trying to do the same thing.
‘Then we signed Mark Wright, who had a tendency to defend too deep. That wasn’t the Liverpool way either. It all meant we had a defence falling further and further back and one that resorted to knocking it long to two nippy strikers. The midfield didn’t matter. The proper footballers were exposed. I’ll admit I couldn’t play to this style. I played a short game. I wasn’t one for a running match. But I wasn’t the only one. There were too many gaps. The pitch was too big. It wasn’t Liverpool.’
Souness has been accused of changing too much too soon. Those offering more of a generous appraisal claim he was ahead of his time.
‘Maybe there were too many footballers who were just set in their ways,’ Mølby concedes. ‘If I’d have been him after arriving in April, I would have left things as they were to observe until the end of the season. The following season, slowly I would have introduced new methods one by one. Instead, from day one he was enforcing new ideas. Pre-match meals were an example. Ian Rush would always have a medium steak with beans. Suddenly, that wasn’t available. Footballers are superstitious beings. We listen to the same music in the car and take the same route to the stadium every week. It makes us feel comfortable. The same applies to pre-match meals. Suddenly, Rushy stopped scoring.
‘I don’t think Graeme was ahead of his time entirely, because methods like his were being imposed at other clubs too. It’s well documented. Football was heading that way. Yet if he would have done what he did in six weeks over a year, he might have got a more positive reaction.’
Mølby believed the reign of Souness was a blip. At the start of every season after his departure, it felt like Liverpool would return to the top. Players who knew what it took to win league titles remained at Melwood.
‘Liverpool were watchers of situations. “Let’s see how it works for them.” At this time, though, so much was happening elsewhere. Other clubs were better prepared than Liverpool, certainly off the pitch, for the financial revolution. Peter Robinson once said that if Manchester United got it right off the pitch, Liverpool were in trouble. It proved to be true. With a good team and all the money being ploughed into the game, they were able to accelerate and leave everyone else behind.’
Roy Evans was appointed in Souness’s place after the team reached a nadir, losing 1–0 at home to Second-Division Bristol City in an FA Cup third-round replay at Anfield. Again, the league form reflected badly on Souness. In January 1994, twentyone points already separated Liverpool in fifth from Manchester United at the top of the table.
‘I didn’t think the club would go back [to the Boot Room]. Once the mould had been broken, I thought that was it. After all, Roy had been overlooked when Souness got the job. But when the announcement was made, I felt relief. I thought of Souness’s spell as an experiment that didn’t work out. It felt like things would go back to normal.’
Mølby says Evans returned to the tried and tested methods that had served Liverpool well in the past.
‘For a long time, Roy was the sounding board. You did all your moaning to him. Then suddenly he was the manager. You couldn’t go to him as much purely out of circumstance. But I thought he dealt with the transition well. He never lost himself.
‘I remember on the first day of pre-season, the old coaching manuals from Shankly’s time were out. Over the summer, Roy and Ronnie went through all the training sessions that had been practised and we followed the same process. Maybe I was naive but I figured that the results would get better. Most of the boys [Rush, Nicol and Whelan] were still there. Then the younger ones like McManaman, Fowler and Redknapp were making their mark. It did not feel like a terminal illness.’
Evans employed traditional Liverpool methods but he also introduced some of his own ideas and staff. Doug Livermore had been manager of Tottenham Hotspur only twelve months before and he was appointed as first-team coach.
‘Liverpool wasn’t famous for its coaching. You could not compare it to Ajax, for instance. Liverpool was famous for its simplicity. Roy wanted to change the shape of the team by switching from a back four to a back three. For a team that had played nothing but 4–4–2 for thirty years, this was revolutionary. Roy also realized that set pieces were beginning to play a more significant part in the game. We needed to score more goals from corners and free kicks, and defend against them a lot better. For years, a set piece had been a hindrance. We always wanted the ball in play. The centre-halves did not bother going up to the penalty box because we weren’t aggressive in that kind of way. There was even a famous fanzine called Another Wasted Corner. Some things had to change, or certainly improve. And these factors all contributed to Doug’s arrival.’
It felt like the good times would roll again. Liverpool were spending lots of money on transfers, even outspending Manchester United in the transfer market. A new defence was recruited. There was fluid, attacking football. Mølby was playing his part too. The 1994–95 season began with three successive victories. Mølby opened Liverpool’s account for the campaign from the penalty spot in a 6–1 victory at Crystal Palace. Yet Mølby’s body did not feel right. His decline had been relatively swift. Listening to him speak about that time is sobering. He talks in short sentences.
‘I did not feel in control any more,’ he says. ‘I was injured in a game against United two years before. I trained really hard to get back – harder than I’d ever done. But I knew that I’d returned as an average footballer.
‘Before the Palace game, I’d missed most of the games in pre-season. But I fought like hell to top up my fitness when I could in training. I was old enough to know when I was ready to play, so I told Roy that he had to start me against Palace. By his reaction, I could tell he’d previously decided to start Michael Thomas instead. In the end, Roy went with me. He was vindicated because the season started well. We went on a decent run. At the back of my mind, though, I knew it wouldn’t last.’
This was around the time Mølby allegedly only reached level six on the bleep test, an exercise where players would have to run from side to side in time with the bleep, until the bleep outpaced them. Professional footballers were expected at worst to get to level twelve. Mølby says the story simply isn’t true.
‘We did a couple of bleep tests and there was never a problem. I got thirteen at Lilleshall. I was fit enough to play top-level football for nearly fifteen years without being superhuman fit. I never had a great deal of pace but I knew where to be.
‘Liverpool players were great storytellers. That’s probably where it came from. When I’m after-dinner speaking, I always leave a bit of grain on myself. Legends grow. Now I hear people say that I never misplaced a pass. Of course I did. In the same sense, the legend goes that I never used to run. But that’s not true either. I’d always felt in control of what I was doing. I was comfortable. I could cruise through games and step up a gear when I really had to, like the FA Cup final of ’86. But after Old Trafford [in ’92], I only had one gear. There were no more great performances.’
Mølby recalls a later encounter at United when Liverpool lost 2–0.
‘I was running the game and Roy took me off when it was 0–0. I knew I was only running the game safe. I never threatened to take what seemed like being a draw to a win. I played just inside our own half and controlled it. Had it been five years earlier, I’d have played fifteen yards inside their half and we might have won the game. But I could only offer us a safe option.
‘I still had my moments where I could be a bit of a showman. I had my good days. I could execute a nutmeg or a back heel and the crowd would applaud. I was able to convert a penalty or a free kick. You’d get that adrenalin rush and feel like a real footballer again. But there were no more goals from open play. I could not help us win any more.’
Mølby believes it is a player’s character
that determines whether he is going to be a success at Liverpool over a long period of time.
‘I look at the boys from the sixties, seventies and eighties. They were all huge personalities, with their own ideas about how the game should be played – hence the reason why a lot of them are in the media. They have things to say, big opinions. It was reflected by how they performed at the weekend. If something needed to be said, they’d say it.
‘You learnt a lot about players away from home. Liverpool were there to be shot at. Teams tried to rough us up. But the best players never hid from anything. We never went looking for trouble, because we knew our ability would see us through anyway. But if it came, we could deal with it.
‘In terms of the playing, it was very simple. You had to do it sixty times a season to the same standard. Later, this is where a lot of players fell short. I’ve always thought it was the hallmark of a great player, being able to play sixty times a season. Not twenty – sixty. It was in my make-up. It’s all to do with desire. You finish a game and you want to do it again. In December 1986, I remember playing on the 26th and the 27th – one day after the next. We were ready for it. I was ready for it. There was no moaning. We lost to United on Boxing Day then went to Hillsborough the following afternoon and ground out a win.
‘The self-policing was also an important part of the culture at Liverpool. The staff at Anfield were very clever, closing the dressing-room door and leaving us in there. Before matches and after matches. We knew how to deal with issues, you know? Players would take it upon themselves to have a word with other players.’
By the time Mølby left Liverpool to become Swansea City’s player-manager in 1996 after twelve years’ service, he admits to being disillusioned with the culture that had infested the game.
‘When you’re winning, it’s so much easier to sort problems out. When you’re losing, it’s doubly hard. Fingers get pointed everywhere. Maybe some of the younger players were going away with England and hearing about how things were done differently at other clubs. People started to think that Liverpool wasn’t the be-all and end-all; what we had wasn’t the greatest formula ever, although it worked for a long, long time.
