What a difference 10 games make

"If you spit in the wind," Gérard Houllier once remarked. "It will come back and hit you in the face."

Lee Hendrie has been expectorating in Liverpool's direction. Before travelling to Merseyside for today's Premiership encounter at Anfield, the Aston Villa midfielder condemned Houllier's side. "It is hard to believe it's Liverpool you are watching; they play the long ball so much. It just shows what a dip in confidence can do."

"I didn't read it and I don't care," the Liverpool manager replied with a shrug. He no longer listens to radio phone-ins either; a sign of the times at Anfield. "I wish we had played more long balls at Sheffield instead of trying to play on that awful pitch."

When he marched into the press room on Wednesday night after Liverpool's defeat in the first leg of the Worthington Cup semi-final by Sheffield United, Houllier was as angry as most could remember. It was not just the fact that Michael Brown's dreadfully late challenge on Chris Kirkland might have broken his goalkeeper's leg, nor the plethora of bookings his side received, but the fact that once more Liverpool had taken on inferior opposition away from home and lost. Middlesbrough, Fulham, Charlton, Sunderland and now Sheffield have been stations of Liverpool's cross. Houllier claims they deserved to win all bar the first.

They have not won in the Premiership since overcoming West Ham at Anfield on 2 November, although if they could pick any side to play it would be Aston Villa, a club which away from home this season has acted as a mobile charity unit, travelling around the country dispensing points to the needy.

"It's more than three points for us. It's a vital, massive game," said Houllier. "Had we taken six points instead of one against Sunderland, then nobody would think our performance was scandalous and maybe we would be third. We have to show the will to grab the campaign by the scruff of the neck and show our true colours and our true character."

Liverpool are perfectly capable of embarking on long unbeaten runs. Houllier sees "some common points" with the treble-winning season when a late push brought them back into the European Cup for the first time since the 1985 Heysel disaster. Last season, too, ended with the kind of winning streak dreamed about in the casinos of Monaco. Two points from every game, Houllier calculates, would guarantee them the Champions' League and perhaps more.

"I find it astonishing people are suggesting Gérard Houllier resigns as manager of Liverpool in favour of David O'Leary or Martin O'Neill," said Conrad Mewton, whose book The Red Revolution; Liverpool under Houllier, represents the first in-depth look at the impact made by the first true outsider to manage the club since Bill Shankly. "But I felt it might be difficult for him to make the decisions that would turn Liverpool into a side playing fluid football.

"I am convinced that the model for his teams is the French national side from 1996-1998, when you had a strong defensive midfield, playing narrowly and supported by attacking full-backs and solid centre halves. France won the World Cup with no strikers of note and even in the knock-out stages they struggled to score."

Mewton believes that Liverpool have not been the same since Markus Babbel suffered a viral infection which cost him the whole of last season. Babbel might not be a Lilian Thuram as an attacking full-back but he presented Liverpool with more options than they have now.

Some observers had seen the problems from a long way off. Writing in the Liverpool Echo after a 2-0 defeat of West Bromwich in September – when they were in the middle of a run of seven straight wins that would take them seven points clear of Arsenal – Tommy Smith was not convinced by what he saw. "When you have four players of the class of El-Hadji Diouf, Michael

Owen, Emile Heskey and Milan Baros, you would expect the goals to flow," Smith said. "They are not and the reason is simple; Liverpool are not an attacking team. The difference between the Reds today and the Liverpool of old is that they don't go for the throat and kill games off. I honestly think Gérard Houllier feels he is playing attacking football with two men up front but his midfielders are of the defensive type. Gerrard, Riise and Murphy all get forward but they don't put pressure on defenders as much as a couple of wingers would."

Those who criticise Houllier for the apparent dullness of some of Liverpool's football and the plethora of young foreigners on the club's books, should perhaps remember that when coming to Anfield in the summer of 1998 to work alongside Roy Evans, Houllier's brief was to strengthen a hopelessly fragile defence and bring in young foreign talent.

The Liverpool board had been impressed by Arsène Wenger's achievement of taking Patrick Vieira from Milan reserves to form the pivot of a championship-winning side at Highbury. Whether Diao, Diouf, Baros or Biscan will ever match Vieira is debatable but some have already begun to leave Liverpool, Gregory Vignal having been loaned out to Bastia.

Sometimes the youth of his team has betrayed Houllier, most notably in the mud of Newcastle on New Year's night when Alan Shearer's experience reigned supreme. What would he give for a fit Dietmar Hamann or to have Jari Litmanen or Gary McAllister back?

"Even Macca, when he was good he would have brought something extra," Houllier admited. "Experience is one thing and character is another but success is built on defeats."

When he returned from the heart illness that had almost cost his life, Houllier spoke eloquently of wanting the young team he had built to express themselves in fluent football. Don Revie regretted until his dying day that his Leeds team never broke free of their inhibitions and you wonder whether Houllier's will. "We had half of the team coming back from the World Cup," he countered.

"If you look at all the players who went to the quarter-finals – Darius Vassell, Robbie Fowler, Emile Heskey, Michael Owen, Nicky Butt, Rio Ferdinand El-Hadji Diouf and Salif Diao – you can see that they have had injuries or loss of form. The second half of the season will see them stronger and I was expecting a dip. It's a mental, not a physical thing and will be put right."

Houllier's argument was flatly contradicted by Hamann: "There are no excuses, not the World Cup, not anything," he told the German press. "Of all the top sides, we had the fewest in Asia, just five. Our losing streak is incredible and inexplicable."

But it will have to stop. Liverpool's matchday programme features a photomontage of Houllier surrounded by Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish – Evans and Graeme Souness have been airbrushed out of history. Last season when Houllier talked of his side being "10 games from greatness" it did not look out of place. Now is the time to show how valid are the comparisons with the past.