Excellent article

[BolshieBastard]

Spot on that and tells it like it is. Still, the rafapologists will probably try and trash it.

 

Read on.

 

Why the ownership issue between George Gillett and Tom Hicks has been clouding the real reason for Liverpool's struggles this season: Rafa Benitez - David Maddock column - MirrorFootball.co.uk

 

Why the ownership issue has been clouding the real reason for Liverpool's struggles this season: Rafa Benitez

 

By David Maddock

 

Published 12:02 23/03/10

 

* (15)

*

Recommend (4)

 

Rafael-Benitez-Liverpool-cropped

 

For perhaps the past 12 months, Liverpool fans have been presented with the worst kind of dilemma.

 

They know that what they see out on the pitch simply isn’t good enough for their great, no, make that historic, club, but what they can’t quite work out, is who to blame.

 

There are the comedy villains, of course, the two American owners whose bickering, childish relationship lies at the heart of the own goals and gaffes that have fatally undermined their tenure.

 

There is the previous regime of David Moores and his Chief Executive Rick Parry, who for all the world appear to have sold to the Americans in the first place not because it was the best option for Liverpool Football Club, but because it offered them a few extra quid and some short-term job security.

Click here to find out more!

 

Then there is the management. Even last season when the team was chasing Manchester United – rather forlornly as it turned out – for the title, there were doubts for much of the campaign about the style of football, the manager’s mentality, the politics and the grasp of what it takes to win the Premier League.

 

Don’t forget the players of course. Liverpool possess at least four players who are arguably the best in the world in their position, and they have other fantastic professionals who have operated at a world level over a consistent period. But they also seem to have yet more players who wouldn’t get into the Nags Head side from the playing fields behind my house on a Sunday.

 

The question is: who is to blame for this sorry mess? Where should the fans be venting their fury, and where should the changes be made to ensure that the crisis which has gripped the club for too long doesn’t eventually tear Anfield apart altogether?

 

Let’s start at the top eh, because that is the usual fall back at Anfield for anyone trying to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the mess that their club is in.

 

Fundamentally, there are two reasons why Hicks and Gillett have failed to deliver on the promises they gave when they bought the club (ignoring for the moment the promises they apparently gave to Moores and Parry about their position in the directors’ box).

 

First and foremost, things have gone wrong because the easy, cheap credit on which their business model was based disappeared overnight in the global economic meltdown of 2008. Basically, too many people like Hicks and Gillett were consumed with the greed of making quick bucks, and the banks got their fingers burnt, so suddenly pulled the plug on lending.

 

With borrowing suddenly very expensive, and without another line of credit, the Americans could no longer buy Liverpool with the club’s own money as they had planned, and as the Glazers were doing at Old Trafford. So believe it or not, they actually put considerable amounts of their own money in, to keep their investment afloat.

 

That though, wasn’t part of the plan, and hence budgets have been tightened, spending restricted and books balanced, which certainly hasn’t helped in terms of player recruitment. But then, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal have suffered in exactly the same way over the past 12 months, as has just about every other club in Europe bar Real Madrid.

 

While many fans won’t like it, the fact is that the method of financing Liverpool Football Club is not the only reason for the club’s downfall. Current interest payments are not crippling, and they will be reduced in the summer when fresh investment arrives. A club of Liverpool’s size can more than maintain ownership-related payments, be they shareholder dividends, tax on profits or interest.

 

Of course, the ridiculous relationship between the two owners doesn’t help, and it is here that perhaps Parry and Moores must take some blame. Hicks – and again you’ll have to take a leap of faith with me here – is actually a respected businessman in the States, perhaps in the top two in what he does, and a man who rubs shoulders with Presidents.

 

He was a perfectly reasonable man to invite into Anfield, because his track record in business (if not in sports franchises), was in identifying under-performing companies, turning them around and making them a success, and then selling them on for a profit (which is exactly what DIC wanted to do, by the way).

 

That’s no crime, and there are good reasons for allowing that to happen, because to become a successful company, Liverpool would have to win trophies and reside at the summit of the world game - fulfilling the demands of the fans.

 

But spend more than a few seconds on the internet researching Gillett, and you come up with a very different picture. He is a maverick, a man who went bankrupt as recently as the '90s, and someone who has always operated at the business margins.

 

That Hicks was doing going into partnership with someone like that is anyone’s guess (and mine is that greed thing again), but it was never going to work, because you had two businessmen with very different methods. One traditional, the other, well, let us say unconventional. It didn’t work, and Liverpool got Abbott and Costello in charge.

 

The fact that the two couldn’t get on, and still don’t, is one of the biggest single reasons behind the mess of the last few years. But largely, that problem has been resolved, with the appointment of an almost independent managing director, who is working on the banks for the financial good of the company, not the necessarily owners.

 

There have been fewer blunders since Christian Purslow took over, only the PR gaffe of Tom Hicks junior bad-mouthing fans causing ripples, but significantly, the club is now being run perfectly well when it comes to finances, and when the debt is reduced further by £100million new investment in May, then the situation will be even better, and potentially brighter in the long run.

 

Which means the ownership issue has been clouding other reasons for Liverpool’s demise. And whichever way you look at it, you have to ultimately keep coming back to the issue of management.

 

Some of the players from the squad that went into this season were not good enough for Anfield, that much is clear. The likes of Andrea Dossena, Andreiy Voronin and Philipp Degen should never, ever have been shown a red shirt, never mind allowed to put one on.

 

Others, such as Albert Riera, Fabio Aurelio, Yossi Benayoun, Ryan Babel, Lucas, Emiliano Insua, David Ngog, and Damien Plessis are good enough players, but good enough to be champions? That is half the squad that entered this season, a possible title-winning season, under the name of Liverpool. And Rafa Benitez recruited them all.

 

Then, there is the issue of the star players not performing, and it is true that at times during this campaign, Fernando Torres, Javier Mascherano, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher have not reached the level they are capable of.

 

The question is, why? Each of those players must look at himself and take some responsibility, because another star player, Pepe Reina, hasn’t under-performed, and yet has suffered the same problems as the others.

 

But these are the same players who inspired Liverpool to finish second 12 months ago, and this is the same squad that was apparently on the verge of the title, with the addition of a £20million midfielder and an £18million right back.

 

And it is here we keep coming back to the management, because for all the protests about money, for all the complaints about owners and a lack of investment, Rafael Benitez had £40million to spend in the summer to improve a squad that lost only two players he didn’t want.

 

Liverpool needed to take one step forward to win the title, especially because Manchester United and Arsenal all took a step backwards, by losing their best players and declining to replace them, and Chelsea didn’t invest at all.

 

Sure, he lost Xabi Alonso, but that’s because he WANTED to. He had planned for basically two years to sell the midfielder, and replace him with Gareth Barry, but crucially forgot to ensure that Barry was still happy with that switch, after being so badly let down the previous summer.

 

So he had to find a Plan B, and that turned out to be Alberto Aquilani. Liverpool were one step away from being genuine contenders, and for the position around which their whole challenge would revolve, they bought a crock. A guy who was injured and wouldn’t be fit until Christmas. And they spent £20million on him.

 

Now, I know hindsight is a great thing, but c’mon, honestly. Why buy for the future when the present is offering you so many riches? Liverpool needed to go forward last summer, and instead they took a massive step backwards, and for that the manager must take the blame.

 

Not only did he waste £20million on an injured player who offered no guarantees he could EVER become accustomed to the pace of English football, he also spent £18million replacing a right back who didn’t need replacing, with a totally different style of player whose presence would fundamentally change the way the team set up.

 

Again, the title was THERE for the taking, but Benitez chose to bring in a player who would demand a different way of playing, which would take time to get used to, and implement. In fact, it has taken all season, and Liverpool are still not comfortable with it, which is evidenced by the fact that their best spell was when Carragher and then Mascherano were playing right back.

 

So, for all the complaints about owners, about the way the club is run, and the lack of investment, Liverpool had a chance of taking one step forward to potential glory, and instead took massive strides in the opposite direction. Don't accept that? Well, his other summer transfer move was to bring back Voronin, his idea of cover for Torres.

 

Benitez, in essence, gambled and lost. He bought for the future when the present was calling. He made fundamental changes when fine tuning was required.

 

And it is my belief that in doing so, he lost some of his senior players. Everyone sees professional footballers as almost machine-link athletes, but they are people too, and they have thoughts and emotions.

 

When they see someone as popular as Alonso treated like a product, hawked around for all of the summer of 2008, and effectively forced out of the club because of that, then they will get an uneasy feeling.

 

But when they see his replacement as not being up to the task, and when they see their system changed and therefore undermined, they begin to ask questions and have doubts. It is a similar experience to the summer of 2002, when Liverpool were again a step away from the title and wasted £25million on Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou. The players then knew their manager had wasted a golden opportunity, and from that moment he had lost his squad.

 

Managers are entitled to gamble, but when it fails, they have to accept responsibility, and as far as I can see, that is not happening at Liverpool, which is why there is so much confusion, gloom and sense of crisis around the place.

 

Benitez is lucky because the concern with ownership issues has deflected attention away from him, and has probably kept him in a job. But his position will have to be addressed, and when it is, there are two options.

 

One is to stick with him, and after all, he does have a decent track record, even if he did make disastrous mistakes last summer. It is a big decision, because the consequence of losing the respect of your players is that quite a few of them have to go, including some star names, and that inevitably means yet another period of rebuilding.

 

The other is to decide that with four or five of the best players in the world as the backbone to their team, Liverpool are not quite so badly off as the current position suggests.

 

This option would see a new manager coming in and flogging off some of the dead wood around the place to finance quality new signings, while inspiring his top-class players to reach new heights, and lead the team to the Promised Land.

 

This of course, would require the right man to be recruited, and the flaw in this option is that Liverpool hardly have a good track record in that area over the past two decades, do they?

[shaunstrudwick]

good article

 

Rafa out

[zigackly]

Maddock has evidently been drinking the Hicks love juice.

 

I think he's right in many places in that article though.

 

He makes one very good point that if Benitez has lost the trust of his players (and I find it impossible to conclude that he has not) then the cost of replacing him has to be offset against the cost of revamping the squad if he stayed.

[shaunstrudwick]

Maddock has evidently been drinking the Hicks love juice.

 

I think he's right in many places in that article though.

 

He makes one very good point that if Benitez has lost the trust of his players (and I find it impossible to conclude that he has not) then the cost of replacing him has to be offset against the cost of revamping the squad if he stayed.

 

do we know what this magical clause is that Benitez managed to get written into the last contract?

 

if he is sacked we would only pay him until he found another job - no?

 

still confused as to where the £16m settlement figure has come from

[Guest PurpleNose]

Maddockins.

[zigackly]

do we know what this magical clause is that Benitez managed to get written into the last contract?

 

if he is sacked we would only pay him until he found another job - no?

 

still confused as to where the £16m settlement figure has come from

 

Sorry, but I don't know what you're on about!

[shaunstrudwick]

Sorry, but I don't know what you're on about!

 

?

 

the settlement figure being rumoured to cost the club if we sacked Benitez...

[zigackly]

Oh is there a rumour? I went looking for a figure of £16M in that article and couldn't find it.

[PiranhaBill]

Spot on that and tells it like it is. Still, the rafapologists will probably try and trash it.

 

 

 

Spot on?? My arse. Its a million miles from being correct. Whether you support the manager or not, its littered with inaccuracies, lies and bollocks...

 

the Americans could no longer buy Liverpool with the club’s own money as they had planned

 

So believe it or not, they actually put considerable amounts of their own money in

 

But then, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal have suffered in exactly the same way over the past 12 months (one of the best lines that. Chelsea have just had £700m of debt written off)

 

Current interest payments are not crippling (arf)

 

Hicks – and again you’ll have to take a leap of faith with me here – is actually a respected businessman in the States (Is he? I could point you to tons of articles showing he isn't plus he can't get credit anywhere)

 

the club is now being run perfectly well when it comes to finances (hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha)

 

 

Do you know what.... I've barely started and got bored as virtually every sentence is laughably bad.

 

"Excellent Article" Get to F**k.

[coop]

This is taken from a guy calling himself Mcdonaldtaf and its in response to the Maddock article.

 

This also is an excellent read.

 

“Why the ownership issue has been clouding the real reason for Liverpool’s struggles this season: Rafa Benitez”

 

The title of the piece and already hinting that the struggles endured by the whole team, and not only Benitez, this past season should not be used as an excuse for poor performance.

 

I’m sorry but no matter where you work, what you do and who you work for if there are political shenanigans, a lack of capital investment, auditors casting a material uncertainty over the club’s future, a director telling a customer to ‘go away’, demonstrations against the club, fans chanting about a dislike of the owners etc. (and I really could go on) it will affect all levels of the club/company.

 

This is as true of Tesco or Ford as it is of Liverpool Football Club.

 

This need to pick up a big bag of ‘blame bricks’ to tie to one person to ensure they sink is naive and dangerous. There aren’t enough fingers on my hands to point at all who are responsible.

 

“First and foremost, things have gone wrong because the easy, cheap credit on which their business model was based disappeared overnight in the global economic meltdown of 2008. Basically, too many people like Hicks and Gillett were consumed with the greed of making quick bucks, and the banks got their fingers burnt, so suddenly pulled the plug on lending.”

 

This I can agree with. Timing conspired against the owners when they bought the club, had it been two years earlier we would now have a new stadium and be reaping the additional revenues required to compete. In fact I suspect that H&G would have by now sold the club on, reaping a large return on their investment in the process.

 

But the timing wasn’t right and this is the main reason why we aren’t moving forwards, didn’t have the ability to sign a striker in January, have no stadium under way, our banks are applying pressure and our auditors have cast that material uncertainty over the future trading of the club. All of this has understandably led to mass un-rest amongst fans, which in turn has caused the demonstrations etc. All of which must have an affect throughout the club and for none of which the blame can be rested at anyone other than the owners’ feet.

 

“Hicks – and again you’ll have to take a leap of faith with me here – is actually a respected businessman in the States, perhaps in the top two in what he does, and a man who rubs shoulders with Presidents.”

 

Hicks, like many other wealthy people, has lost a huge chunk of his wealth in recent times. I’m not too sure (if he is) how being respected by other businessmen (I take it David is excluding the creditors of Texas Rangers) helps if the majority of your customers have no respect for you.

 

From what I read Texas Rangers are on a downward spiral and have been since Hicks’ tenure started. I read somewhere that he invested heavily at the start of his tenure but didn’t invest very wisely and the club has been slipping ever since.

 

He may know (or knew) how to make money but that does not always equate to having the club’s best interests at heart. The blue print I think went something like this – 1.buy club (c.£200m), 2.borrow against club assets, 3.build new stadium, 4.increase revenues, 5.sell club (c.£800m) (NB wear hat and scarf when at Anfield). Now I have argued and will continue to argue that businessmen have every right to make money, but between step 2 and 3 came ‘unexpected credit crunch’.

 

Hicks and Gillett could have done the morally right thing and put the club up for sale at say £300m and not lose money but not make it either. The club then could have been handed to others with more capital resource – but that wouldn’t have made business sense to the two Americans as they’d still see it as losing millions!

 

“The fact that the two couldn’t get on, and still don’t, is one of the biggest single reasons behind the mess of the last few years.”

 

No David I’m sorry. A lack of ability to inject capital investment into the club to progress the stadium while competing on the field is THE single reason for the mess. It is also the reason Moores sold the club, he couldn’t inject the required capital either so sold the club on to people he thought would.

 

Yes they’ve argued and done some stupid things (Klinsmann) but that is a sideshow to the real problem.

 

“There have been fewer blunders since Christian Purslow took over, only the PR gaffe of Tom Hicks junior bad-mouthing fans causing ripples”

 

Those who read my blog regularly will know that I have/had the greatest of respect and hope for Christian Purslow. But David seems to have forgotten the matter of the Spirit of Shankly meeting minutes debacle. I have concluded that there are three possible outcomes of that situation:

 

1. He is a liar and is not to be trusted running our club, or,

2. He is incomeptent, didn’t control the situation at the meeting and is not to be trusted running our club, or,

3. He specifically released details which, while working to the benefit of Spirit of Shankly, had to be against the best interests of the club’s owners while weakening any negotiating position and is (yes you guessed it) not to be trusted running our club.

 

“Others, such as Albert Riera, Fabio Aurelio, Yossi Benayoun, Ryan Babel, Lucas, Emiliano Insua, David Ngog, and Damien Plessis are good enough players, but good enough to be champions?”

 

I’m not sure if David is suggesting that every player has to be to the standard of Torres. I never knew that Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea started every game with 11 world class players.

 

The rest goes on to Rafa and his tenure and just how bad he has been at his job. You can read that if you want. I’m not getting into all of that as well.

 

Don’t get me wrong Rafa, like others, have to stand up at the end of the season and take a fair proportion of the blame. I think he has made some mistakes in his 5 years but the thing that annoys me about the Maddock’s post is the writing off of so many off field distractions as if they’re just not that important.

 

It’s like he thinks Rafa and the team are race horses with blinkers and falling at a fence can only be their own fault. If only life was that simple, if only we could quiet the outside noise with a click of the fingers. But we can’t and even suggesting that the situation off the pitch is used only as some sort of smokescreen for Rafa and the team is, in my opinion, ludicrous.

[torahboy]

It's Maddock, it's The Mirror. His opinions are of no more value, and, in most cases, of siginificantly less value, than the majority of posters on this site.

[zigackly]

Without any doubt the first half of the article is complete horseshit. I'm not sure Maddock claims to be a business journalist though, and he should probably leave that to people who understand business.

 

The football part of the article isn't too bad in my opinion. Parts of it are pretty good, even.

[shaunstrudwick]

Oh is there a rumour? I went looking for a figure of £16M in that article and couldn't find it.

 

there isn't a figure in that article

 

my question wasn't related to the article specifically

[piscinin]

Then, there is the issue of the star players not performing, and it is true that at times during this campaign, Fernando Torres,

 

Muppet.

[Guest The Chimp]

BolshieBastard, can you change your name to RepetetiveBoringBastard instead? For fucks sake we get it that you want the manager out, but take a fucking day off will you. I loved this site and that's why I joined. Full of clued up reds, good banter and some good debate thrown in. For someone like me far, far way from home it was great to be able to converse with lads who knew the score, lately I'm just fucking sick of every thread being full of the same agenda-driven, point scoring shite. I've never had cross-words with anyone on here, but fuck right off with your constant rafapologist shite, and you're fucking constant agenda against the manager. I'm not even in the "keep him" camp, but I'm drawn towards it just to distance myself from all the moaning, whinging twats who constantly snipe at the manager for every thing under the sun.

 

Edit. Anyone let me know how to enable the ignore function please - I've never used it.

[PiranhaBill]

Without any doubt the first half of the article is complete horseshit. I'm not sure Maddock claims to be a business journalist though, and he should probably leave that to people who understand business.

 

The football part of the article isn't too bad in my opinion. Parts of it are pretty good, even.

 

What parts?

 

The part where he says we replaced a right-back who didn't need replacing ?

 

Or the bit where he says that Benetiz chose to bring back Voronin as cover for Torres?

 

The entire article is a pile of shite with about 2 accurate statements hidden amonst 99 lies, errors, and pontifications. Its like the bloke has woken from a coma.

 

EVERYBODY knows what happened last summer :wallbutt: except this muppet obviously.

[Kennys_spell]

BolshieBastard, can you change your name to RepetetiveBoringBastard instead? For fucks sake we get it that you want the manager out, but take a fucking day off will you. I loved this site and that's why I joined. Full of clued up reds, good banter and some good debate thrown in. For someone like me far, far way from home it was great to be able to converse with lads who knew the score, lately I'm just fucking sick of every thread being full of the same agenda-driven, point scoring shite. I've never had cross-words with anyone on here, but fuck right off with your constant rafapologist shite, and you're fucking constant agenda against the manager. I'm not even in the "keep him" camp, but I'm drawn towards it just to distance myself from all the moaning, whinging twats who constantly snipe at the manager for every thing under the sun.

 

Edit. Anyone let me know how to enable the ignore function please - I've never used it.

 

Top fo the board - look for "USER CP" - click on that.

 

Down the left hand side of the next screed look for "Edit Ignore List"

 

Fill your boots!

[zigackly]

What parts?

 

The part where he says we replaced a right-back who didn't need replacing ?

 

Or the bit where he says that Benetiz chose to bring back Voronin as cover for Torres?

 

Why did Arbeloa need replacing? He was still contracted to us for a year. Why did his replacement have to be a completely different style of footballer, if Rafa felt he had to go? You'll doubtless point out that Portsmouth owed us money. The premier league held back payments to Portsmouth this season that they owed to other clubs as part of transfer deals. We made the decision to make things easy for them, our hand was not forced.

 

Why not sell Voronin and bring in a different understudy for Torres? We had offers for Voronin, he didn't want to be here, and had already proved not to be adequate cover. Perhaps we would not have got in anyone brilliant for the kind of money we spent, but at least they might have played for the shirt.

 

These are decisions Rafa made which can readily be questioned.

[chorlton]

"Parry and Moores must take some blame"

 

SOME!

 

Don't like Maddock, think he's a hack and that article does nothing but reaffirm the opinion.

 

To go on about Rafa's bad signings then state we were one step away from winning is giving Rafa no credit at all. This is not being a Rafa apologist, i find him infuriating and think he has wasted a lot of money but he has done good things as well.

[Guest The Chimp]

Top fo the board - look for "USER CP" - click on that.

 

Down the left hand side of the next screed look for "Edit Ignore List"

 

Fill your boots!

 

Cheers kidder - done.

[BolshieBastard]

Spot on?? My arse. Its a million miles from being correct. Whether you support the manager or not, its littered with inaccuracies, lies and bollocks...

 

the Americans could no longer buy Liverpool with the club’s own money as they had planned

 

So believe it or not, they actually put considerable amounts of their own money in

 

But then, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal have suffered in exactly the same way over the past 12 months (one of the best lines that. Chelsea have just had £700m of debt written off)

 

Current interest payments are not crippling (arf)

 

Hicks – and again you’ll have to take a leap of faith with me here – is actually a respected businessman in the States (Is he? I could point you to tons of articles showing he isn't plus he can't get credit anywhere)

 

the club is now being run perfectly well when it comes to finances (hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha)

 

 

Do you know what.... I've barely started and got bored as virtually every sentence is laughably bad.

 

"Excellent Article" Get to F**k.

 

Time to open your eyes and stop being a sheep. The point he's making about finances is not the debt they two owners have piled on us, as he states in the article, is that the club's income has increased dramatically. Purslow has introduced some stability to the situation.

 

Yes, the debt is the root problem but you need to take the blinkers off and see past that.

[myrlas]

Did anyone read James Lawton's latest article in the Independent?

 

James Lawton: Never mind the rage against Hicks and Gillett. Benitez is Anfield's real problem - News & Comment, Football - The Independent

 

Would there not be an outcry if he were the head of a failing bank rather than a team?

 

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Rafael Benitez will qualify for a huge pay-off if he is relieved of his duties

 

 

Listening to the latest Rafael Benitez rationalisation of Liverpool's apparently unstoppable lurch towards separation from the top flight of football surely provokes one question above all others.

 

What, it goes, if he was the head of a failing bank rather than a moribund football team? Would there not be an outcry in the nation and impassioned questions in the House?

 

It is hard to see how not. Let's remember the Benitez deal before the point is lost utterly. If he is fired, as surely all among his rivals but the unassailable Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger would have been had they produced such a chaotically assembled season, he is due £16m, no questions asked, no negotiations permitted.

 

 

However, in large sections of Merseyside there is to be heard not the growling of disbelief but some quasi-religious insistence that faith in Benitez can be withdrawn only at the risk of blasphemy.

 

This makes Liverpool, which used to pride itself on being the most intelligent football community in all the land, if not the world, either a place of uncommon generosity or mind-blowing naivety. As things stand, it is quite hard to resist the second conclusion.

 

Most extraordinary is the way so many of the Liverpool following have been prepared to accept Benitez's all-embracing alibi that he has been hopelessly compromised by the financial limitations placed upon him by an admittedly dysfunctional ownership. This defence wasn't operating with overpowering strength at Old Trafford on Sunday, when in his effort to turn around a game so vital to his chances of qualifying for next season's Champions League he sent on three substitutes of a combined value of close to £40m. Two of these, Xabi Alonso's successor Alberto Aquilani and Ryan Babel, have for some time been shaping up as contenders for the unwanted title of the most unfortunate signings in the history of the Premier League.

 

Remember, Aquilani was Benitez's key addition of the summer and the biggest Liverpool move since another £20m misadventure in the case of Robbie Keane. Alonso, most people accept now, had an influence on the team comparable to that of Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard. His successor was signed despite the fact that in not one season for his previous club had he made more than 23 appearances, or, put another way, half a league season and less than a full quota of Champions League group games.

 

At most serious clubs, this would have been considered something worthy of intense questioning, the kind which we know would have gathered around Ferguson's move for Dimitar Berbatov swiftly enough if United hadn't managed to win their third straight title and make a second appearance in the Champions League final in three years.

 

Unquestionably, even Ferguson and Wenger would have been under severe pressure had they produced the performance of Liverpool this season, which now includes 10 league defeats, the same number as newly promoted Birmingham City and a Stoke City widely praised for coming to terms with the requirements of survival in the top flight. Almost needless to say, managers Alex McLeish and Tony Pulis would look at the budget which Benitez so frequently complains about with the wide eyes of urchins pressing their noses against the windows of a five-star restaurant.

 

On top of the £40m worth of players Benitez had resting on the bench at the start of Sunday's game, he also had roughly £85m of it on the field, plus the inherited Steven Gerrard, who is rated among the world's top 10 midfielders but wouldn't have had too many suitors on the evidence of a near paralysed body language which suggested that he would rather have been somewhere quite other than the middle of what used to be one of the key battles in English football.

 

Throw in the most disturbing evidence thus far that Benitez has lost the dressing room, the anger of Dirk Kuyt, normally his most zealous performer, after being replaced by the inconsequential Aquilani, and the reward for failure that is beckoning to the manager as though he was some defrocked banker, becomes all the more absurd.

 

Just think of it. Sixteen million for effectively downgrading the most successful club in the history of English football, and if you say that part of that legacy is Benitez's remarkable triumph in the Champions League, you should perhaps remember that it came, in the most remarkable circumstances, five years ago. Five months, even five weeks, can be a long time on the football barricades. Five years is history.

 

Meanwhile, Liverpool are sweating on the injection of new funds which would give 40 per cent control of the club to an American investment group, and the banners still fly in protest at the lame-duck ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. However, in the lame-duck department the absentee landlords are surely rivalled by the man who is waiting for his gold-spangled handshake.

 

What can no longer be doubted is that if Liverpool are desperate for the oxygen of new investment and stable ownership, their need for leadership of both authority and empathy at the heart of the club, which will always be the manager's office, has rarely been more apparent.

 

The solution is so basic it should be invoked by the name under which the protesters against the Anfield ownership march. They call themselves the "Spirit of Shankly". And where did that particular commodity invariably express itself? Not in the board room, a place the great man hated and where he never managed to negotiate any fancy pay-off, but on the field of play. What power Shankly ever had was given by the people in response to his achievements. It was never written into a ridiculous and shaming contract.

[Vulmea]

Spot on that and tells it like it is. Still, the rafapologists will probably try and trash it.

 

he also spent £18million replacing a right back who didn’t need replacing, with a totally different style of player whose presence would fundamentally change the way the team set up.

 

But when they see his replacement as not being up to the task, and when they see their system changed and therefore undermined, they begin to ask questions and have doubts.

 

 

Dont think you need to be a rafapologist to see the outright bias in the article

 

i liked these two bits especially

 

the cut price full back rafa plucked from obscurity and who was frequently criticised for not getting forward and who has wanted to get back to spain for two years was the better option - to the attacking fullback that pre-season the same pundits said was yet another 'final piece of the jigsaw' - who'd have thunk it.

 

Last years system which almost won the title was the players system and the manager has gone and undermined it, dognabit...

 

plenty of stuff rafa can be shredded for without the need to make crap like this up.

[PiranhaBill]

Why did Arbeloa need replacing? He was still contracted to us for a year. Why did his replacement have to be a completely different style of footballer?

 

Why not sell Voronin and bring in a different understudy for Torres? We had offers for Voronin, he didn't want to be here, and had already proved not to be adequate cover. Perhaps we would not have got in anyone brilliant for the kind of money we spent, but at least they might have played for the shirt.

 

These are decisions Rafa made which can readily be questioned.

 

Because he wanted to leave (you know, the way Maddock tells us Alonso wanted to leave)!! And he leaves for free if we keep him another year! Imagine the fuss if Madrid took another player for nowt off us - even with aonly a year left on his contract, Arbeloa was sold at a profit. He was a far far better player than he was ever given credit for yet I don't recall any fuss when he was sold and Johnson bought.

 

Johnson is England's first choice right-back. Liverpool Football Club SHOULD be looking at signing such players.

 

When he was bought, Benitez publicly stated that the club could buy another player before we sold anybody..... which ended up not quite right didn't it.

 

Throw in the fact the club was owed the best part of Portsmouth's fee for Crouch, and there was a high possibility of Portsmouth going out of business with the debt not being repaid, Johnson was an obvious choice.

 

We could argue until the cows come home about the Manager's decisions, bad buys, Rafapologists or whatever, but when Riera goes this week..... how much profit has the club made on transfers in the last three windows? And Maddock says the Manager missed a chance to take us forward !! Yeh, ok.

[zigackly]

He wanted to leave, sure, and we would not have got a fee for him. You have to balance short term loss against short term gain though. Perhaps it was worth foregoing the fee we got for him to keep some stability in our style. I very much doubt he would have played badly, given it's a world cup year.

 

I've already answered you on the Crouch money; we would have got it just like Chelsea and another club got theirs when the premier league held back money from Portsmouth to pay those transfer revenues.

 

Are you saying we should be looking to sign all the first choice England players? What are you saying? England are pretty shit in my opinion. I think we should sign players with an idea how to integrate them into our system seamlessly. Maddock is right that Johnson was a gamble, given that he would force us to play in a completely different way.

 

People did actually question this at the time he was signed.