Rafael Benítez on the brink of leaving Liverpool over Anfield rift

[AusRed]

Can't believe some of the crap that has been written in here. Makes me ashamed to be a Red.

The man came out and said the only reason he is here is because of the fans and look how he is repaid. This Website is called "The Liverpool Way" it’s a shame none of the posts on here reflect that title.

 

No manager has a 100% success rate in transfers, just ask that purple nosed c*nt down the road. Some clubs have funds to make up for it however. What manager will come in and do a better job under the current conditions? Who would want to more to the point.

 

I don’t always agree with Rafas tactics or subs, but this man has given us some of our greatest memories and our only decent shot chance at the title for years.

 

I will continue to support Rafa until the very end, whenever that is because that is THE LIVERPOOL WAY.

 

YNWA

[El_Ménco]

Of course not. You can't blame them for us being 7th in the league and out of all cup competitions (Europe twice). Rafa picked the teams and selected the negative tactics.

 

I want both Rafa and cunt owners gone and to start next season with a nice clean slate.

 

Why not? It was fairly inevitable that we'd start dropping down the league if we didn't have the money to compete with rivalling teams.

[coop]

Of course not. You can't blame them for us being 7th in the league and out of all cup competitions (Europe twice). Rafa picked the teams and selected the negative tactics.

 

I want both Rafa and cunt owners gone and to start next season with a nice clean slate.

 

Obviously Rafa takes the blame for the tactics etc but who is to blame for zero spent over the last couple of years.

 

Who is to blame for telling the manager he would have further money to spend on the team after the cash from Alonso only to then tell him he doesn't.

 

All around us teams are spending 'net' millions whereas we are weakening some areas of the squad to strengthen others.

 

If Rafa leaves in the summer which appears likely then the biggest cancer at the club will remain in the shape of the current owners.

[Megadrive Man]

Rafa Benitez has done a fantastic job in the 6 years he's been here.

 

Having had less money than the likes of United and Chelsea, and more recently City, for prettymuch every season since he took over, he has made us into top four contenders and nearly the Title itself, not to mention an incredible Champions League triumph.

 

The expectations at this club are way too high, because of our history.

 

In reality, we are now behind at least 4 clubs, United, Chelsea, Arsenal, City and maybe even Spurs at a push.

 

The reason for this is 20 years of mis managment at boardroom level that has allowed us to fall behind our Rivals.

[rednich85]

Why can't Rafa just fuck off? Why is he trying to screw the skint club out of money, when he's essentially helped fuck us?

 

You dont know he is trying to screw the club out of money...

 

If he goes, he is entitled to get what the 'club' agreed to pay him in compo.

 

Just another example of how well this club is run

[AusRed]

Of course not. You can't blame them for us being 7th in the league and out of all cup competitions (Europe twice). Rafa picked the teams and selected the negative tactics.

 

I want both Rafa and cunt owners gone and to start next season with a nice clean slate.

 

# Team P W D L F A W D L F A GD Pts

1 Man Utd 38 16 2 1 43 13 12 4 3 25 11 44 90

2 LFC 38 12 7 0 41 13 13 4 2 36 14 50 86

 

Negative tactics? Lots of goals no. Scored 2 less at home and 9 MORE AWAY last season.

 

Second highest scorers in europe behind barca last year werent we?

 

The tactics havent got worse, the effects of our piss poor owners have.

[sir roger]

I can't believe that any even partially competent administrator would have agreed to that clause in a manager's contract , never mind at a club that was under financial constraints at the time.

[1892-LFCWasBorn]

Why not? It was fairly inevitable that we'd start dropping down the league if we didn't have the money to compete with rivalling teams.

 

Why? I'm pretty sure we've been outspent by teams that have always finished below us in the past few years?

 

Are you telling me if Rafa would have set us up to attack from the first whistle of every game this season, we wouldn't have sewn up fourth place at least a few weeks ago?

 

Man City, Spurs and Villa have stuttered pretty much all season and all are gonna finish above us. Says it all really.

 

We went to fucking Wolves for crying out loud and we didn't even have a shot on target in 90 minutes. How did we expect to get 3 points? By hoping that the ref would give us a penalty out of sympathy?

[Guest The Big Green Bastard]

Take a look at how the subject of Rafa has divided the fans opinions and reduced us all to squabbling wrecks.

If the manager does not have 100% backing from the fans then it's time to go. Most fans in the league actually respect the work their manager has done this season for their team, but not us. We have been turned into a laughing stock, the courting of the media, the gaurantees and transfers etc.

 

Time for change and a clean start.

[The Robot Tank]

This shit is depressing.

 

Regardless of what happens, I hope it's quick, clean and dealt with before the WC starts.

[Steve Holt]

For all those still calling Rafa a cunt, will you take some of that back if he walks away from the club, relinquishing his pay-off fee?

 

I really feel like shit supporting this club these days, but thats as much to do with idiot mongs supporting us as it does the performances on the pitch.

[stringvest]

I have no time for the manager's politicking, bullshitting and machinations, and I think he's performed miserably this year, but over the course of his tenure he's not the abject failure he's made out to be by some on on here. He oversaw two fantastic cup final victories (mind you he fucked up tactically in the one we lost), and but for some tactical blunders and an undoubtedly damaging politicking interlude last winter, he might have even won the league.

 

Whoever is manager next season will find it massively harder to operate if we don't get new owners with funds to invest in the team, or an injection of cash from somewhere. I'm optimistic that we will get the ownership issue sorted, but it is key to secure finance for the team - not only to bolster what is a very average squad, but to stem the flow of good players leaving.

[Rafa_The_Gaffa]

I genuinely do believe his time is up. I am grateful for 2005 & 2006 but 4 years without a trophy for a club as big as LFC is ridiculous. It also seems that from reading this thread that if you are not pro-rafa then you're a twat. I'm not anti-rafa but he's taking us backwards.

[satmann]

Some of the shit written about benitez in the thread is a joke. Who the fucks going to come to this club to manage under a pair of dicks who own it.

 

Don't want him to go. Owners first.

[SCOUSE TAPAS]

Never had a problem with Rafa.It's just the players he has signed past two years.

 

Keane was never going to make it here.

 

What is odd about that,is the fact Rafa normally gives his signings time to settle,like he did with Crouch.

 

So getting rid of Keane as quick as he did,just seems odd.

 

Aquilani is a fantastic signing,just we needed a fit player at the start of the season.

Have to admit though he might of got away with it to,if so many never picked up there annual injuries at the same time.

 

Even after all that,I think we will be in deep deep crap if he leaves.

 

We will not attract any manager even half as good as he is.

 

As boring and dull as we have been,this season apart,we always do the Europe thing and top4 league place.

 

If we still have C+A here when we get a new manager,we will be in shit.

 

Reason being the only type of manager who would touch us is a Ince or Warnock type of manager,as no top manager would put there reputation on the line by coming here.

 

So yes he needs to go,but not till C+A have gone first.

[ali]

From The Times

May 1, 2010

Anfield exit looms and Rafael Benítez shouldn’t walk alone

 

 

Patrick Barclay

 

The party’s over.

It’s time to call it a day.

 

No critic of a certain age writes off an era in the history of Liverpool Football Club without being haunted by the Frank Sinatra song.

 

ITV played it over scenes of Bob Paisley’s players disconsolately heading for the Anfield tunnel after a first-round knockout by Nottingham Forest in the European Cup of 1978-79. They had been champions in each of the previous two seasons and the feeling was that time, tide and Brian Clough were impatient.

 

Forest did indeed win the European Cup that season, and the season after, but Liverpool were to lift the trophy a third and fourth time — and take eight domestic titles in 12 years — before the tradition of plucking managers from boot room or dressing room was abandoned. Those years featured quite a bit of partying in which the name of the ITV commentator associated with the ill-fated sequence was toasted.

 

But the party to celebrate Rafael Benítez’s achievements ended years ago. It was fun and two of the finals — of the Champions League against AC Milan in Istanbul in 2005 and the FA Cup against West Ham United in Cardiff a year later — were classics. But revelry has given way to a cross between a wake and a revival meeting. And Liverpool are not going to be revived by Benítez.

 

It is not his fault. He has managed the team skilfully and few could have imagined, as they completed a majestic 4-1 triumph at Old Trafford in March last year, that they would not only fail to sustain their challenge for Manchester United’s title this season — this very important season — but fall out of the top four, in effect suffering relegation from the Champions League to the Europa League.

 

This would make a big difference, because Liverpool are accustomed to thinking of themselves as a huge and imminently successful club. As recently as 2004, the search for a replacement for Gérard Houllier began with what seemed the next best thing to José Mourinho, who had just won the Champions League with Porto and was booked for Chelsea. Benítez had won the Uefa Cup and two Spanish titles with Valencia.

 

Then came two Champions League finals and the last piece of the jigsaw: a group of highly rated players, led by Fernando Torres, to remove the impression that Steven Gerrard was a pearl among swine.

 

And then, suddenly last summer, came the collapse. In place of the Torres/Gerrard axis, we had the dysfunctional partnership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr. The old Liverpool, with a boardroom that ticked over like the engine of a Rolls-Royce, had gone.

 

Torres and Gerrard were playing for a jalopy. Every now and again, the football exudes promise. Only 23 days ago, Liverpool brushed Benfica aside at Anfield with a display that made you wish, on their behalf, that the season had just started. Gerrard was clever, Torres renascent and Lucas Leiva, the Brazilian whose nationality is often jocularly questioned, a midfield force of startling vibrancy. On Thursday night, when Atlético Madrid prevailed on away goals, they took another step backwards.

 

Tomorrow Liverpool are capable of beating Chelsea, for all the help it will lend United, but there have been too many false dawns. The question is not of how much longer Benítez should stay at Anfield but who should replace him after the parting is negotiated — a process that, if the parties do get round to it, is likely to be difficult, given the difference between what is left on the manager’s contract and the amount the club have to spare.

 

The air of unreality was enhanced by Benítez’s remarks after the Europa League exit. He declared: “Two or three players have said we need three, four or five more players to progress and I agree with them.” In their dreams! Liverpool and their owners are in debt.

 

They can sign a group of new players only by taking their text from the Portsmouth manual of financial management and if Benítez is suggesting that, the sooner he goes the better. A break from Anfield’s daily charade is the least he deserves. Football people understand that Liverpool are prisoners of their proud past as well as the chaotic present and Benítez will have no trouble finding his next post. Juventus are pressing him for a decision and even Real Madrid are interested.

 

If only Liverpool’s future were as simple. The club need new ownership. If that cannot be arranged — and at present it looks about as likely as the much-promised new stadium — they need greatly scaled-down expectations. When Benítez goes, he should be swiftly followed by Torres, Gerrard while he can still command a large fee, Javier Mascherano and the rest.

 

Then the new manager will have some money to work with. As David Moyes has shown with Everton, and Roy Hodgson most startlingly with Fulham, it need not be a king’s ransom. Neither, of course, has been quite so cursed as Benítez by those expectations. But Liverpool do have one thing: potential. It should sustain them through the long haul. But the party? Collect the empties.

 

Anfield exit looms and Rafael Benítez shouldn’t walk alone - Times Online

[Section_31]

Barclay is a tit, his ONLY saving grace is that he looks like captain Picard and smokes cigars.

[StevieH]

Rafa has aged a lot in the last 6 years.

 

 

 

[aws]

Barclay is a tit, his ONLY saving grace is that he looks like captain Picard and smokes cigars.

 

Not much wrong in the article though.

[Kobayashi Maru]

Even Tomkin's has now pretty much accepted Rafa is going on his Twitter.

 

Henry Winter is still going with the £5m figure under the 'mitigated loss'.

 

End of Rafa? Looming. £5m tops pay-off under 'mitigated loss', less if Juve deal concluded fast. Good tactician but man-manager? No. Time2go

[StevieH]

Juventus move closer to landing Rafael Benítez | Premier League - Times Online

 

Rafael Benítez has informed friends that he is increasingly tempted to quit Anfield. The rift between manager and Liverpool officials has widened over the past week as each side has become frustrated with the other’s actions.

 

The Liverpool manager is disturbed by what he perceives to be the club’s decline under the ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr and their inability to compete at the top end of the transfer market because of the debts piled on them by the Americans.

 

Benítez’s annoyance with the way the club are run was highlighted last week when a senior official made contact with Real Madrid and discussed the possibility of signing Rafael van der Vaart without the manager’s knowledge. While the Spaniard’s frustration has grown, Liverpool have become increasingly exasperated with the continuing reports from Italy linking Benítez with Juventus.

 

It is against the backdrop of this disquiet that the confidence of the Juventus hierarchy that they can finally snare their No 1 managerial target has risen immeasurably.

 

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Benítez is still to decide if Serie A has the necessary pulling power to coax him into leaving Liverpool but his disillusionment with life at Anfield is such that Juventus believe it is only a matter of time before his appointment as the long-term successor to Alberto Zaccheroni is rubber-stamped.

 

However, the Liverpool manager is undecided about his future and talked yesterday about the emotional pull of Anfield and the supporters that fill the stadium. “I decided to stay last year because of the fans and for one year I have been working very hard, trying to do my best and we will see what happens in the future, because Sunday’s game against Chelsea is the future now,” he said. “The fans are the main thing, the best thing that the club has. I gave my word because of them. I have had massive offers over the last year and I decided to stay because of them.

 

“It’s been a very disappointing season because we couldn’t achieve what we were expected to, and still I’m here and I will do my best until the end.”

 

The likelihood is that, without a radical change of ownership, the end is nigh for Benítez and if that is the case then tomorrow’s visit of Chelsea could be his last match in charge of Liverpool at Anfield. The five-year contract that he signed last spring may make it almost impossible for the club to dismiss him in their financial plight — Benítez would be entitled to a payoff in the region of £16 million — but it does not preclude him from walking out.

 

Should that happen then Liverpool would even be entitled to seek compensation from his new club, although if Benítez were to waive the right to his payoff, it is unlikely that he would be willing to allow the club to profit from his departure.

 

Senior Liverpool officials will have been dismayed by the timing and content of Benítez’s suggestion, on the eve of Thursday night’s Europa League semi-final, second leg at home to Atlético Madrid, that the club have offered him no assurances about his future and are already examining their options should their present manager decide to leave. One thing that is clear is they will not stand in his way if Juventus offer him an exit route.

 

Martin O’Neill is being touted as a replacement, although the Aston Villa manager would be a hard sell, particularly with many of Benítez’s critics keen to see more attack-minded football, for which O’Neill is not renowned.

 

Benítez has admitted that Liverpool need to sign five players this summer if they are to compete. Privately, he concedes that the figure is higher. “I cannot talk about the long term because we have to focus on the games we have left,” Benítez said.

 

The only certainty for Liverpool now is that their manager’s thoughts are dominated by an increasing belief, borne out by results, that he can do no more for the club or their fans.

 

Possible successors

 

•Martin O’Neill would not be a popular choice to replace Rafael Benítez. The fans at Anfield resent O’Neill after Gérard Houllier accused the Aston Vila manager, who was at Celtic at the time, of canvassing for his job in 2004 and the Gareth Barry saga led to poisonous exchanges between O’Neill and Anfield.

 

•Mark Hughes would be even more unpopular. A former Manchester United player, he would be seen as a step downmarket.

 

•Jamie Carragher has been mooted as a potential player-manager, with Kenny Dalglish in the background to give a helping hand. Both are loved by the fans and many see Carragher as a future manager. However, such a move would be perceived as the owners taking the cheap option. Most supporters would prefer to see the defender build some experience.

[Sandman]

Carra is nowhere near ready for fucks sake. Let him go and gain some experience somewhere else so that he actually has a decent shot at making it with us.

 

Hughes and O'Neill can fuck right off.

 

Fuck. This sucks.

[StevieH]

"......Martin Broughton, the chairman, has been trying to arrange a meeting with Benítez this Bank Holiday weekend. Hicks wants the manager to stay and is believed to have made a call to Benítez expressing that but, with the club up sale, he is unlikely to be around next season.

 

Juventus seem convinced Benítez is joining them and the Liverpool board are resigned to losing him, but the Spaniard has been far from forthright about his plans.

There are echoes of his last days at Valencia, a club he left because, in his words "the conditions changed".

 

What is worrying for Liverpool fans who want Benítez to stay is that, in the same interview, he used exactly the same phrase to describe the situation at Anfield.

 

"I decided to sign a contract extension last summer because the squad was good and the money could be there. At the end, things changed. We've had a bad season and hopefully things will be different in the future, but at the moment I can't talk about the future because I don't know what's going on.

 

"It's not a question of money. I said no to massive offers. In terms of everything I decided to stay under some conditions which have changed."

 

Benítez, as ever, refused full disclosure. Were promises broken? "The conditions have changed." The hints are getting insistent.

 

Liverpool v Chelsea: Carlo Ancelotti ready to mix it in Anfield cauldron - Telegraph

[Shreddy]

can we please go back to last year around this time.

[Arl arse]

He should have no choice in the matter of whether he stays or goes, he should be shown the door if we as a club still have any ambition.