It was exactly one year yesterday that Kenny Dalglish left his holiday cruise to fly home and take over on the bridge of the good ship Liverpool FC. If he thought his hand was needed on the tiller to guide the way through stormy waters back then, he can't have begun to imagine the maelstrom into which he's sailing some 12 months later.

Dalglish dealt easily with the first set of problems because they were simple football ones - he needed to bring some confidence to players who were under performing with Roy Hodgson in charge. But the issues in front of him now are a different matter entirely. 

Liverpool, down the years, has always been the club that stood for fine values: the consistency of steady tactics in the Boot Room; the quality of passing and moving on the field; the support of the fans on the Kop who backed their own side fiercely but were never afraid to applaud when they saw quality from the opposition.

At the start of 2012 all that is crumbling. The Luis Suarez affair has been allowed to fester into a bitter situation where Liverpool fans feel the world is against their club, and to see an independent commission that included an eminent QC as a conspiracy between Manchester United and the FA. That atmosphere can't have helped but contribute to the problems encountered by Oldham's Tom Adeyemi on Friday night. And now comes news that winger Stewart Downing has been arrested after an early hours incident alleged to have involved a former girlfriend at a nightclub. It is a massive challenge for Dalglish to deal with, make no mistake. And it isn't going to get any easier in the next few weeks after last night's fourth round draw cued up an FA Cup encounter against his nemesis Sir Alex Ferguson.

Rightly or wrongly, it means the Suarez affair won't go away, even if the Uruguayan striker will still be suspended when the match comes round. We will have three weeks of headlines and bitter phone-in debate, and a powder keg atmosphere when the tie finally arrives. Dalglish's handling of the whole affair so far has been to retreat into Planet Liverpool where he can do no wrong, but he has hugely misjudged the change in the world in the decade he spent out of management. Modern debate across phone-ins and the internet means getting the right message through the media has become as essential to top management as picking the right players, and Dalglish doesn't seem to have dealt with the modern mood.

The problems have filtered into his squad already. Matched earlier in the season at odds as short as 1.5 to return to the Champions League, Liverpool are now 3.5 for a top four finish and even with Steven Gerrard fit again it's hard to argue a case for backing them, or for taking the 10.5 for them to be FA Cup winners.

Not that United don't have their problems too. The rumblings over Wayne Rooney's future won't go away, despite all the denials and badge kissing as he got two of the goals in a 3-2 win at Manchester City. And if Paul Scholes coming out of retirement is the answer for Old Trafford, you do wonder what the question was. Great player though he was, nobody can step into the top level of the game after six months without proper training or games - as Scholes proved by giving the ball away for one of City's goals.

January seems to be comeback month, with Thierry Henry pulling on an Arsenal shirt again and Robbie Keane expected today to return to the Premier League with Aston Villa. Both, like Scholes, run the risk of tarnishing their reputations.

Negative publicity around a club can be difficult to deal with. Chelsea and Tottenham are favourites in the FA Cup betting at 5.4 and 6.4 after straightforward wins over Portsmouth and Cheltenham respectively. But there are off the field issues for both to deal with in the coming weeks.

It makes me wonder if the place to look for some betting value is Sunderland, as Martin O'Neill made it five wins in his seven games in charge with a comfortable 2-0 win at Peterborough. The Black Cats are 21.0 to lift the old trophy and the Irishman is spreading happy vibes all round. Of course, those who followed my colleague James Pacheco's advice to back Sunderland before the weekend - they were available at 34.0 - will now be sitting pretty.