Comment: Don't believe George Gillett's claims over Rafael Benitez
The Times football writer examines the Liverpool co-owner's assertion that Rafael Benitez's position at Anfield is safe
Tony Barrett
As soon as George Gillett gave Rafael Benitez his backing the response of Britain’s bookmaking fraternity should have been to slash the odds on the Liverpool manager losing his job.
Gillett’s form is in the book. Whatever he says, expect the opposite.
Football’s ultimate Walter Mitty figure arrived on Merseyside in the winter of 2007 promising everything from “a spade in the ground” to signal the start of building work on a new stadium to the provision of lavish transfer funds to enable Benitez to splash the cash like never before.
Three years on and the only spades that have gone into the ground at Stanley Park are the ones that were recently used to clear the snow that had gathered on the proposed site of the new Anfield. Benitez, meanwhile, never got to see any of the dollars or the euros that Gillett once pulled from his pocket to illustrate his commitment to both manager and club, instead he has spent the last three transfer windows balancing the books at best as Liverpool continues to be choked by the debt that Gillett and Tom Hicks, his partner in crime, had vowed not to place on the club only for their word to be worth no more than Tiger Woods’ wedding vows.
"We have purchased the club with no debt on the club," Gillett said at the time, only for the unpalatable truth that Liverpool had actually been saddled with debts of hundreds of millions of pounds to emerge some time later.
Then there was his pledge that neither himself nor Hicks would be absentee landlords, not when they had Gillett’s son, Foster, as their man on Merseyside. “Foster will be there 24/7,” insisted Gillett to anyone willing to listen. Suffice to say so little has been seen of Foster at Anfield since then that he has ironically been nicknamed “24/7” at Liverpool.
One of Gillett’s favourite words is “bulls***”. He is particularly fond of using it when he doesn’t like media reports that depict him in an unfavourable, ie an accurate, light. Well forgive me George if I suggest that your latest backing of Benitez is bulls***. It amounts to nothing more than a convenient soundbite and is as transparent as your reasons for buying Liverpool Football Club.
We know this to be the case because Gillett has been caught out not once, but twice, verbally laying into the manager to representatives of supporters group The Spirit Of Shankly (SOS). Twelve months ago he implicitly accused the man he now describes as one of the best five managers in Europe of costing Liverpool their chances of winning the Premier League title with his “Facts” tirade against Sir Alex Ferguson.
Forgotten that one, George? Well let’s allow the recollections of Jay McKenna, the SOS spokesman, to jog your memory.
According to McKenna at the time, the conversation left him stunned with Gillett telling him: “A few weeks ago, we were in first position, then a certain individual from the club attacked another individual from another club, and, since then, we have lost form and slid down the league."
McKenna was stunned. ”I asked if he [Gillett] was blaming Benitez as a result, and in saying that, was he not backing the manager?" he said. "Rather than confirm or deny as I expected, he replied ‘that’s your implication’, before I walked away and back outside to the real world.”
If that doesn’t do the trick for you, George, then how about something a little bit more concrete, like a recording of a conversation you had with another Liverpool supporter towards the end of last year.
This time you didn’t leave the fan needing to draw his own implications from what you were saying because you spelled it out to him loud and clear. “If it’s not getting better, it’s not because of Gillett and Hicks - it’s the manager, the scouting,” Gillett said.
But now, all of a sudden, because it suits your sales pitch to anyone desperate enough to invest in a club run by two individuals whose mere presence in English football makes a mockery of the Premier League’s fit and proper persons test, you expect the world to swallow your latest soundbite.
Liverpool’s form this season is no more than an injury-induced “blip” you say, a result of “a curve ball” being thrown their way. Forgive the fans if they don’t agree with that assessment, George. They say one of football’s greatest names and most historic institutions is being destroyed in front of their very eyes by a pair of leveraged buyout artists who have put their club in the most precarious position it has been in since it was formed more than a century ago.
The fact is that Gillett and Hicks are Liverpool’s curve ball. They are the blip. They are the reason why the club is in jeopardy. And yet they no doubt still wonder why people no longer take their words at face value.
Comment: Don't believe George Gillett's claims over Rafael Benitez | Liverpool - Times Online
