Former Liverpool star Kevin Keegan says the blame cannot be laid on manager Roy Hodgson for the club's current position. Keegan, who won three championships with the Reds in the 1970s, feels that the downfall at Anfield has been slowly happening in recent times and that it is unfair if Hodgson shoulders all of the blame for them sitting 12th on the league table.
"The decline of the club is not down to Roy Hodgson. It goes back way before he came," Keegan told ESPN.
"All you can blame Hodgson for is the 20-odd games he's been in charge. He's picked those teams. The problem Liverpool have got is that they are trying to live with history. We all over-achieved for that club. There's no divine right to win the league, no divine right to win it year after year.
"But the standards have been set and these players have not been able to live up them. They've not won the league for 20 years and it's getting longer every minute.
"Hodgson has been in charge for about 20 games. If they thought he was right in June, what are they going to do to back him?
"The attention over the last two or three years has been away from the manager and on the owners. The fans are looking at a lot of things and the players have to look at themselves as well.
"You can't blame Roy for the lack of talent coming through, for the fact they're playing in a stadium I played in and that has hardly changed since before I arrived 40 years ago. It's too simple just to say: 'Hodgson has got to go.'"
