Liverpool results are ‘unacceptable’ says Henry

New Liverpool owner John W Henry has taken a sideswipe at the previous Anfield regime and issued a thinly veiled warning to current boss Roy Hodgson that things need to improve for the Reds after yet another mauling on the road, this time at Newcastle.

In a live phone-in on Liverpool's TV station on Monday evening Henry branded results last season and so far this season as "unacceptable" but said that the rot had set in long before he arrived in Merseyside.

"It doesn't take a lot of time for the club to go downhill but it takes time to rebuild, and over the last two years there have been some short-term decisions which have really hurt the club," said Henry, who took over at Anfield in October after the reign of Tom Hicks and George Gillett came to an acrimonious end in the High Court.

"It's up to us to turn the tide, but we are in it for the long term," pledged Henry. "We see this as an opportunity to return the club to where it was 20 years ago."

At the end of this season it will be 21 years since Liverpool last won the league, and the club have not won a major trophy since the 2006 FA Cup. But Henry warned that it would take time to re-establish the Reds as a major force and intimated that things were not going as well as he would have hoped.

"Where we are at this point is not acceptable, but when I say rebuilding I mean building for the top of the table. That's going to be really difficult to do this year and a real challenge next year as well."

He also hinted that crowd favourite Kenny Dalglish, who many want to see take over as manager, could be given a bigger say behind the scenes at Anfield. "He needs to have a more substantive role within the club," said Henry.

Club chairman Tom Werner added that the club would be well served by Dalglish's "spirit and tradition".

Werner and Henry, who also run the Boston Red Sox baseball franchise in America, refused to criticise manager Roy Hodgson openly but made it clear that recent results, such as the 3-1 reverse to Newcastle, were not acceptable.

And Werner's comments could be regarded as the dreaded 'chairman's vote of confidence', which has herralded the end of many managerial reigns.

Werner said: "Roy got here shortly before us. You can see that nobody - least of all Roy - is happy. We all know we have to perform better, especially on the road.

"But then I heard that under Rafa Benitez we won only one in 2010 on the road. We believe in what Roy is doing and we certainly feel like the performance has to improve. He would be the first to agree with that." ·