A response to Chris Bascombe's hatchet job

[Dicko]

There was definite manipulation in Feb and March 2006, way before the yanks got here, and of course the "talking talking" flounce post Athens way before he or we got wind of the yank duplicity.

 

But y'know, all of it press mischief yeah?

 

There's me thinking that was Noel white.

Edit that was October.

Still can't recall it though.

[Joe Le Taxi]

I'm on the side of objectivity and Liverpool Football Club. Therefore I've declared war on both....but ready to side with the Mafia if needs be in their war vs the Taliban.

 

I'm with you on this!

 

As for Bascombe I don't care about him but I think the OP is spot on.

[goatboy59]

I've only got my own diaries to go on, hardly proof!

 

But just before the Benfica 2nd leg he was definitely coming out with the lines we've come to expect; about his future and the very odd "if I cannot tell the truth I would rather say nothing" nudge nudge etc - just before a big European night as well.

 

Then days later a one year contract extension and promises of transfer funds.

 

People who say he never got up to all kinds of manipulation, even slap bang in the middle of our best chance to win the league in 20 years, well I feel sorry for you frankly.

 

Except to say he's gone, and you don't have to defend him any more.

 

Erm......

[Dicko]

I've only got my own diaries to go on, hardly proof!

 

But just before the Benfica 2nd leg he was definitely coming out with the lines we've come to expect; about his future and the very odd "if I cannot tell the truth I would rather say nothing" nudge nudge etc - just before a big European night as well.

 

Then days later a one year contract extension and promises of transfer funds.

 

People who say he never got up to all kinds of manipulation, even slap bang in the middle of our best chance to win the league in 20 years, well I feel sorry for you frankly.

 

Except to say he's gone, and you don't have to defend him any more.

 

Erm......

And you don't have to attack him any more either.

Maybe Chris Bascombe should take note.

[goatboy59]

There's me thinking that was Noel white.

Edit that was October.

Still can't recall it though.

 

Was October.

 

If I were sly we could add Noel to the gallery of people above Rafa that he saw off because they didn't particularly side with him.

 

But White was an absolute cunt and should have gone 15 years before.

[goatboy59]

And you don't have to attack him any more either.

Maybe Chris Bascombe should take note.

 

I think you'll find a few little Rafa gophers will not take kindly to having their privileges revoked!

[Whelan]

People who say he never got up to all kinds of manipulation, even slap bang in the middle of our best chance to win the league in 20 years, well I feel sorry for you frankly.

 

 

You see this type of response is what is pissing me off! And has for the past two years, you make a statement, a pretty broad statement that Rafa is manipulative and then assign each example under the same banner!

 

And you throw out a generic insult, yep don't have to bother quantifying my accusations that is your problem.

 

Shankly used to offer his resignation all the time as well, do you think he did it cos he was board, or possibly he was infatuated with the secretary and just wanted to make an excuse to see her!

 

Did you not recall Wenger refusing to sign his contract until the new stadium was built? Was he being manipulative or was he arguing for what he believed was in the clubs best interests.

 

Just as players 'who can no longer play for the manager' are doing so because they don't believe the team can progress with the current manager.

 

Life isn't hunky dorey, sometimes you have to fight for things, and somtimes you have to fight someone for that.

 

There was a distinct difference in picking the odd moment, that he wouldn't committ or used his popularity to get extra funds before the club was sold and what he has had to put up with since, which involved basically fighting for his role and also, his reputation.

[goatboy59]

Absolutely.

 

Except when it begins to consume you and you forget what you were doing it all for in the first place.

[Whelan]

I can't argue with the fact that he seemed to be spending his time fighting the whole world! And, with hindsight took his eye of the ball. But to me, it will always be a case of the Chicken and the Egg!

 

But, if failure was the reason then why is Purslow still there?

[goatboy59]

Well he was doing it at Valencia as well, so it's chicken.

 

No, egg.

 

Oh bollocks.

[diego]

Bascombe once told me that he had a good relationship with the owners. I've not spoken to him since then. It was the same time he told me that there were two LFC's - Parry's and Benitez. (I suppose that would be the Parry Mafia versus the Benitez Mafia?).

 

Does anyone know if he still has a good relationship with the owners as his more recent "cut them some slack" remark seemed to suggest? Or did he fall out with them like he did with Houllier and Benitez?

 

All his articles seem - Koptalk-like - to be based on unattributable insider sources and designed to please his own little Mafia - the small ruling clique on here, his paying client Carragher and Gerrard..

 

His remarks about Shankly and players is hypocritical. His nasty personal campaign against Fowler at the bidding of Houllier was an abuse of that player's trust. He crawled back to Fowler and begged forgiveness only after the supporters made clear which of the two - Houllier or Fowler - they preferred.

[torahboy]

I have always thought that Benitez was a first class manager and that Bascombe, even in his Echo days, was a third class journalist. What the latter writes about the former is never illuminating nor constructive. But our future manager should be made fully aware of the poisonous nature of Bascombe's output over the past few years.

[ritchie]

Chris Bascombe - paid almost exclusively to write poisonously negative stories about Liverpool Football Club in the NOTW.

 

What a great red!

[Anubis]

There is no war.

 

Its over now.

 

Someone from either side will be posting something every day until we have a new manager to talk about. Have you seen the £6m thread? And so it begins anew.

[supertorres]

I get the feeling we'll still be hearing about the rights and wrongs of Benitez's reign for the next two years and we'll still have people from both ends of the scale talking about why he had to go/stay.

 

have liverpool ever had a manager like benitez before that has divided opinion so much

 

i have watched the champions league win and the fa cup win many times

and it seems to me that gerrard was the main reason why we won both trophies

 

i also think that we should have won the champions league in 2007 but rafa choose the wrong starting line up

[Code]

Yes, maybe it is tedious, but then most posts on here this season have been equally as tedious.

 

For people who've still supported Rafa throughout, maybe seeing a man so widely criticised and ridiculed all season landing such a prestigious job within days of leaving is quite interesting, whilst the cream of managerial talent like O'Neil and Hodgson are supposedly being lined up to replace him. I admit it's an arsey post but I don't give a shite to be honest.

 

Do you think anyone is surprised Rafa got a job at a club like Inter if he do?

 

So I really cant see who you are pointing fingers at?

 

He had run his course here, it was time for him to move on because he was lost for ideas.

 

Now he will get a new squad not build in his image and he will probably do allright with it, I dont think he will have a chance to the CL but they should be contenders for Serie A even if all three of Milan, Roma and Juve will fight them to the door next season.

[Kevin D]

Inter deal imminent for Rafa:

 

Massimo Moratti suggests Rafael BenÃ*tez Inter deal is imminent | Football | guardian.co.uk

 

The Internazionale president, Massimo Moratti, has indicated a deal is imminent to make Rafael Benítez the club's new head coach. The Spaniard, who left his post at Liverpool by mutual consent last Thursday, has been strongly linked with the post after José Mourinho's departure for Real Madrid. Moratti told reporters in Italy: "The next few hours could be decisive. But we must ask [technical director, Marco] Branca."

 

Benítez appears certain to take his Anfield first-team coach, Mauricio Pellegrino, the goalkeeping coach, Xavi Valero, and the fitness coach Paco de Miguel with him to the San Siro, with the Italian Amedeo Carboni – who played under Benítez as a left-back at Valencia – also likely to be added to his backroom staff. Reports in Italy suggest Benitez will sign a three-year deal worth €5m (£4.1m) a season.

 

Benítez enjoyed a tremendous first season with Liverpool, winning the Champions League in 2005 and followed that with the FA Cup in 2006 and another Champions League final appearance 12 months later. After finishing runners-up in the Premier League in 2009, many expected a serious title challenge this year but it failed to materialise. Early elimination from the Champions League after the group stage was followed by a failure to finish in the top four and gain entry to the Champions League qualifying rounds.

 

The 50-year-old had four years remaining on his contract but paid the price for that seventh-placed finish. He had previously been linked with Real Madrid and Juventus, who last month appointed the former Sampdoria head coach Luigi Del Neri as Alberto Zaccheroni's successor.

 

Could do worse than take a break, Rafa. Essentially been fighting for ten years now and even if I don't think he should have left, there were definite signs toward the end - the Athletico match had about 20 of them - that he was suffering from fatigue/loss of total self-confidence.

 

He'll do great things if he gets the job.

[Royal Family]

He had them pegged from the off and history is on his side"

 

Now, I don't mind naivety, but this ridiculous beatification of Saint Rafa has to stop. Had them pegged from the off? Maybe. Then why did he agree to sign a new 5 year deal with them a full two years after they took over? Why in September 2009 when the Kuwaiti deal was being discussed in the press did Rafa praise Hicks (admittedly not Gillett, but he did back Hicks) at a press conference and say that a change of ownership could be "destablising" and "dangerous" for the club at that moment in time?

 

I'm sure he didn't find them ideal owners, but it seems to me that he tended to blame, and fight turf battles with, Parry and Purslow rather than with Hicks. He had a good working relationship with Texan Tom, so let's stop painting Rafa as a martyr who stood alone against the nasty owners, fighting for the fans, shall we?

 

And for the record, I honestly believe he made it impossible to carry on with the job this summer by issuing demands that he knew couldn't be met, all the time whilst negotiating with Juve and then with Inter: something had to give, but Rafa didn't want to be the one to walk away (either to save face with the fans, whom I am sure he genuinely appreciates, or because of the desire for compensation).

[Antynwa]

IT'S A CONSPIRACY

 

EVERYONE HATES US

 

CHRIS BASCOMBE HATES BENITEZ, SO HE LIES ABOUT THE CLUB HE LOVES IN THE PRESS FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES

 

SEND EMAILS EN MASSE TO ANY JOURNALIST WHO SAYS ANYTHING BAD ABOUT BENITEZ

 

Fuck me, give it a fucking rest.

[Antynwa]

Do you think anyone is surprised Rafa got a job at a club like Inter if he do?

 

So I really cant see who you are pointing fingers at?

 

He had run his course here, it was time for him to move on because he was lost for ideas.

 

Now he will get a new squad not build in his image and he will probably do allright with it, I dont think he will have a chance to the CL but they should be contenders for Serie A even if all three of Milan, Roma and Juve will fight them to the door next season.

 

Too right, look at Ged, went and won the French League twice on the bounce after leaving us.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

He needed to go, no question

 

Well, that's an opinion and it is entirely opinion for debate. It's not a fact or unquestionable.

[Guest ian garro]

Fuck me, give it a fucking rest.

 

You've got a fucking cheek posting something like that, after the way you've carried on on here for the last 12 months. You've been on here almost fucking daily like a spoilt fucking child, posting the same, dull, repetitive shit at a rate even Rashid would've blushed at, and now it's "give it a rest" ?

 

Wind your neck in, you tedious, boring twat.

[chauncey]

[zigackly]

Well, that's an opinion and it is entirely opinion for debate. It's not a fact or unquestionable.

 

Yes it's my opinion, but I'm not going to qualify everything I post on here as such. It would be silly.

[BolshieBastard]

http://robbohuyton.blogspot.com/2010/06/liverpool-fc-reponse-to-chris-bascombes.html

 

TEAR apart a poisonous presentation of something at Liverpool FC and you'll always get the same response: Why does it matter?

 

Just ignore it, will be the cry. Don't buy the newspaper, give the website a swerve, turn the telly off or change the radio station.

 

Admittedly for my own blood pressure it works a treat (I'm a much calmer man since I stopped listening to Talk Sport and those dents in the steering wheel have started to recede).

 

Adopting that strategy is all well and good but when apathy rules, people start to take the piss. And then you realise - misinformation does matter.

 

It matters because it's a distraction. A noise. It's like someone waving something shiny on the hard shoulder of the motorway - you end up looking when you should be braking to avoid the crash.

 

The latest distraction comes from Chris Bascombe. And the something shiny in his case is a freshly-sharpened hatchet.

 

Bascombe, formerly of the Liverpool Echo, and a Liverpool fan, now writes for the News of the World.

 

I don't buy the paper, I don't visit their website - not just because of their obvious link to The S*n but also because I don't enjoy their particular brand of journalism.

 

But it's still relatively easy to be exposed to Bascombe's work - it's a reoccurring thread in one of the Liverpool forums for instance. And like it or not, the NOTW is the biggest selling newspaper in Britain.

 

So Bascombe's words carry weight with some. Many will pick up that paper without knowing the background and believe every word.

 

I’m not one of them. In fact, I’d go as far as to describe his latest piece as a joke.

 

Coming just a day after a brilliant warts-and-all summing up of Rafa Benitez's reign by The Mirror's Brian Reade, Bascombe couldn't resist the temptation to plunge the knife into Benitez, the man who helped him win awards at the Echo - and secure a move to a national in the first place.

 

Because in journalism, contacts are king. Being a competent writer is only half the battle. To win the awards, to impress the big boys, you need a man on the inside. And who better than the manager?

 

But that was then. And when the Benitez-Bascombe relationship soured, the former Old Hall Street scribe didn't like it.

 

So when he kicks off his bitter, one-eyed piece with the line about Benitez forgetting about the players, about him having "minimal support", what's that based on? Because it's not fact.

 

Bascombe probably does still have some contacts at Liverpool - his key one isn't hard to work out, he wrote his book. But one player's view isn't necessarily the view of the whole squad - and shouldn't be presented as so.

 

So for Bascombe's yin in that he claims Benitez had little backing in the dressing room, I give you Tony Barrett's Yang from a recent webchat he did for The Times.

 

Asked if player power had played a part in Benitez getting the sack, Barrett replied:

 

"This myth is being perpetuated to ridiculous levels now. I spoke to a very senior Liverpool player today, one who has been outspoken in his criticism of the owners, and he told me the Liverpool dressing room was no different to any other.

 

"There are players who don't like Benitez, there are others who do like him and there are those who change their opinion of the manager according to variables such as whether or not they are in the team and results."

 

So there's a view from the inside, from a player - and to him the Liverpool dressing room was no different to any workplace.

 

Yet to Bascombe, it's the frontline of a warzone.

 

The alleged evidence of how Benitez mistreated the players, too, is laughable.

 

Rafa Benitez signed Fernando Torres's hat-trick ball against Hull with 'Keep working'.

 

Funny how that sentence evokes no emotion when written on its own. Yet Bascombe dresses it up like Benitez had pulled down the striker's shorts and smacked his arse in front of the rest of the players.

 

It's the same with Henry Winter, a journalist that moves in similar circles, with his constant reference of the 'cold detachment' of Benitez.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but in my working life I've never had a manager that wraps me in a fur coat, puts me in front of the fire and tells me how good I am every five minutes. Why does a professional footballer need that kind of treatment - particularly one as good as Torres?

 

If signing a ball 'keep working' is the best evidence Bascombe can present that Benitez is 'cold' after six years, is it unfair to suggest he is clutching at straws?

 

Then there's the suggestions that Benitez was/is deluded, is some kind of crank - like his attacks on the owners were almost out of order, something he'd dreamt up and exaggerated.

 

Suggestions which, coming from a Liverpool fan, are startling. Bascombe, more than most, should be all too aware of the perilous position the ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett has put the club in - yet it’s almost swatted aside as a side issue.

 

So while Bascombe admits: "He had much to complain about due to the owners..." he goes on to say "Working for mad chairmen is an occupational hazard but most managers deal with it in a shrewder manner."

 

But most managers are not dealing with chairmen whose sole aim is to line their pockets. Most managers can rely on some modicum of support from their chairmen, and most chairmen have some idea about football and know, for instance, that if you need a centre half when you are trying to mount a title challenge, you don't go scouring the bottom end of the market.

 

The vindictive attack goes on and on, tempered only by the sentence: "He was and still is a world-class coach."

 

My guess is that came afterwards, probably just as he was about to hit send, when he thought: 'Hang on - let's make this a balanced piece..."

 

That lines appears before he walks off down another avenue - a route where it is clear on which side of the divide he was when the recent public battle of Anfield was taking place.

 

"Benitez thought he'd won his war. Instead he came up against Christian Purslow at a time when key players' form dipped and injuries took their toll."

 

Ah Purslow, all hail the suited-up bean counter - our saviour. Ask yourself this, have you ever known a managing director's name appear in the press so frequently? The Telegraph's Winter, the Daily Mail's Ian Ladyman, The Mirror's Dave Maddock - all time and again tellling us what a wonderful job this man is doing while at the same time attacking Benitez and often barely giving a nod to the club's off-field problems.

 

Anyone would think that some kind of briefings have been taking place...

 

And what of Purslow? Why is he still here? What's his role? And why is he now getting involved in football matters?

 

Wasn't it his brief to sell the club (or at the very least bring in some new investment)?

 

"Vulnerable, Benitez became more confrontational. Purslow soon found himself cast as panto villain amongst the clan referred to in Anfield circles as 'the Rafa mafia'. The poisonous leaks against Purslow were assisted by the careful manipulation of Benitez's sympathisers who laughably complained when the boss became the victim of his own smear tactics."

 

So what "poisonous leaks" are they then, Chris? Is it supposed to refer to the incident with Spirit of Shankly when "Cecil" tried to release some more spin to fans and SOS felt it was time to reveal what was really being said by a senior official about the future of our club?

 

Quite how that constitutes Benitez attempting to smear Purslow, I don't know. But it seems the only logical explanation. Otherwise I'm struggling to understand the reference, as are many others.

 

Whereas if you want evidence of leaks about Benitez being put out to the press by Purslow, well we can go back as far as November when Winter wrote:

 

"But it is known around Anfield that Purslow has talked to Benítez about his style of management, notably his cold detachment from the players"

 

Now THAT'S a poisonous leak, as is suggesting the former manager was deliberately missing meetings with Martin Broughton, the new chairman, when he in fact was preparing for a mammoth journey across Europe to Madrid.

 

Tearing shreds off Benitez isn't Bascombe's only agenda in his latest piece, either. He decides to have a go at fans, too:

 

"His departure should not only leave fans assessing where the club goes but cause some to re-think their own role. There's a flaw in the ethos of a club which too readily makes gods of managers."

 

"There's a well meaning but misguided element of Liverpool's support seduced by Benitez's chippy approach. They want Liverpool as a club and city to be belligerent street fighters and their extreme view of what the Scouse mentality is rooted in militant caricature. Benitez bought into this which is why his behaviour became so erratic."

 

There's also a flaw, Chris, in journalists who too readily accept the viewpoint of one player, or one boardroom suit, without considering what their agenda is; without questioning it; without offering balance.

 

As for telling fans how they should behave, what they should believe in - even what their politics should be, well who appointed you God, Chris?

 

Perhaps these fans who you mock recognise the state their club is in. Perhaps they recognise that there is a fight taking place and in Benitez they had an ally - what do you want, a puppet? A man who will watch as Steven Gerrard, Javier Mascherano and maybe even Torres are sold from under him, and will say nothing? A man who won't make a murmur when the promised budget disappears, or when yet another signing goes to the dogs because of tinkering and money watching?

 

Well not for me, Chris. There's problems enough at the club and Benitez, love or hate his football, was well used to dealing with them.

 

As you say, he was and is, a world-class coach - something Liverpool now look unlikely to attract.

 

But it's OK Chris, instead of asking the questions we really want answering - like why spend £6million giving one manager the boot, and £3m to attract an inferior one when we're skint; like why sack the boss without having a replacement lined up; like why target one-season wonders, second-rate nomads and men with less than desirable links and track records that don't stand up when you had a European Cup winner on board?

 

Instead of those, let's tackle what's really important: that the manager stopped giving you stories, you didn't like it and you couldn't wait to stick the boot in.

 

That makes you a much better Liverpool fan, Chris. Much better.

 

What a load of fucking shit nonsense.

 

Thanks.