Interesting where you said earlier about in 2003/04 we only had one player - Owen - capable of banging in the goals..... some things never change it seems then.
Part of why forums piss me off is the semantics! I said Owen was the only *guaranteed* source of goals (meaning in any quantity above 10), which is different to the only one *capable*. Clearly you're harking back to my post about Torres, when I argued your point about him being our only natural goalscorer.
Last year we had six players in double figures, and since then we've added Robbie Keane, who I said had almost 200 career goals. Keane has proved over the years to be a 15-20 goal a season player, more prolific than Emile Heskey, for example, but we have to give him time to settle in.
Steven Gerrard is far more prolific than Danny Murphy, who was Houllier's top-scoring midfielder. Ryan Babel is more prolific than anyone on the flanks in Houllier's whole time (Berger had a couple of 9s, Barmby an 8, and Riise had similar amounts. Babel got 10 last season, and was a sub more often than not). Houllier had some good goalscorers between 2000 and 2002, but then he sold most of them.
Xabi Alonso is twice as prolific as Didi Hamann. Add Kuyt and Benayoun, and you have two players who will score more for us than players like Diouf and Cheyrou were!
Last year we also had two who scored more than 20, and one who scored more than 30. Indeed, if you look at his record, Steven Gerrard scores almost as many goals for Liverpool under Rafa as Owen did under Houllier. Owen averaged about 21 a season and Gerrard averages about 18 a season under Rafa. Both boosted their tallies with penalties, of course.
I'd fancy us to score more without Torres now than we could have without Owen in 2003/04. The difference is that while Torres is our best source of goals now, by 2003/04 we were far more reliant on Owen.
Any team will miss their best striker, and I reiterate that, but while Torres is better than Owen ever was, I feel we missed Owen more back then if he wasn't playing.
That's what I'm gettin at. 2001/02 was not a slump. It was the closest we've come to winnin the league, it's the only time we've finished in the top since the turn of the centuray and it was Houllier's side.
Again, semantics. The slump was from 2001/02; I meant from the end of the season, not including it. I've acknowledged that that season was a success. Maybe I wasn't clear in my first post, even though the context should have made it so, but in my reply I was crystal clear.
Go read 'Dynasty' if you want my full in-depth opinion on both managers, without people nitpicking between what I've said