Liverpool were a goal down to Leeds United when Gerard Houllier felt his heart tighten up. Only four days earlier his team had been eliminated from the English League Cup by Grimsby Town, their first defeat in a knock-out competition in 20 months. But no manager in England could have felt himself more effectively insulated by success from the threat of losing his job than the 54-year-old who arrived from France in 1998 to begin the process of rebuilding one of the world's great football institutions.
When Houllier took on the Liverpool job, a once impregnable structure seemed to have rotted all the way down to its foundations.
How could a bespectacled French ex-schoolteacher, even one who had spent a fair amount of time watching football from the Kop, possibly begin to arrest such a decline? Houllier lived up to the stereotype of the emotional, voluble Frenchman. But the efficiency with which he put his plans into action told another story.
Since he already had a World Cup winner's medal, specially minted at the request of the coach AimΘ Jacquet in recognition of his background role in France's 1998 triumph, he was unlikely to be overawed by the task. And within three years he had done more than stop the rot. He had lifted the morale of the Merseyside club to a point at which the team could capture four trophies this year. If the pleasure in hearing the Kop chant his name was the reward for his extraordinary efforts, what happened to him in the Anfield dressing room on Saturday afternoon was the price.
The pressures on this generous, convivial and passionate man have been huge, perhaps unknowable to all but himself, his wife Isabelle and their two sons.
For the first few months at Liverpool there were the strains created by his joint command with Roy Evans, an ill-conceived arrangement that ended with the sudden departure of a widely liked man who had been part of the old boot-room set-up for decades. Many instinctively took Evans's side and looked with suspicion on the man who appeared to have ousted him.
Given money to spend, Houllier soon found himself facing the constant requirement to justify his investment in new players - £11 million sterling on bringing Emile Heskey from Leicester, for example - before their deeds could make his percipience evident even to the most prejudiced critic. He took pleasure in that, as he did in watching the blossoming of his more financially modest acquisitions, such as Sami Hyypia and Jari Litmanen.In a world devoted to short-term benefits, he needed patience. It was a weapon that brought results but, to begin with, not much in the way of applause.
He is a lot tougher than he looks and sometimes sounds, and his capacity for constructive ruthlessness has been evident for some time. Nowadays he would be unlikely to repeat the rashness he showed when he called David Ginola a criminal after the winger's wayward pass cost France their participation in the 1994 World Cup finals and deprived Houllier of his job as national coach. But at Liverpool the dolce vita gang got their marching orders straight away, and when young Gerrard subsequently strayed across the behavioural line he was publicly reminded of the potential consequences.
Houllier's policy of occasionally letting the world get a glimpse of internal disputes carries a high risk, and would probably horrify Sir Alex Ferguson or ArsΦne Wenger, not to mention Bill Shankly or Bob Paisley. But by allowing details of the corrosive feud between Phil Thompson, and the Kop's idol, Robbie Fowler, to emerge in the media, he has let the fans know the management's side of the story.
The team is what matters, and there is no football man more committed to that view than Houllier. Whatever happens next, his name will be sung for as long as there is a Kop. But, for now, a return to health is a lot more important than a return to the Anfield dugout.
