Nick Wright previews this weekend's clash between York City Knights and Hull FC
Alex Reid looks at whether the once ever-present appearance of English clubs in the later stages of the Champions League is set to become a thing of the past
Craig Dobson looks at QPR's decision to sack Neil Warnock and replace him with Mark Hughes
James Tompkinson reviews an excellent pre-season victory for the York City Knights against Yorkshire rivals Leeds Rhinos
So where has it all gone wrong? Is it the dreaded zonal marking? Excessive rotation? Taking Torres off too early? Maybe it’s all gone downhill since Rafa shaved his beard off?
The truth is it is patently ridiculous to criticise the tactics of a man that won two La Ligas with Valencia and the Champions League with a mediocre Liverpool side – if Popeye started losing fights you wouldn’t blame the spinach would you. Instead I direct you to the transfer market where Benitez has signed 76 players at a net cost of circa minus £92 million and produced only seven senior first team players.
In the modern game success is bred off your transfer dealings and Benitez and the Liverpool board have failed their fans miserably, leaving themselves bereft of both success on the pitch and money in the coffers. He is football’s equivalent of Nick Leeson – throwing money around on reckless gambles, on players such as Jermaine Pennant and Ryan Babel, driving his employer towards financial turmoil.
Having spent over £200 million it is fair for Scousers to demand a world class team. Instead Benitez has only delivered Reina, Torres, and Mascherano to accompany Steven Gerrard, with Alonso moving to Madrid.
Whilst Manchester United and Chelsea have become regulars at Waitrose, Benitez has been rampaging through Lidl’s grabbing unproven products wherever he can get his hands on them. This bizarre transfer policy has made an old saying ring true in the 2009/10 season “You buy cheap, you buy twice”.
So when you see Liverpool languishing below the champions league places, don’t blame Benitez the manager, blame Benitez the shopper whose bad taste in players has seen the likes of Morientes, Gonzalez, and Leto pocketing fans hard earned cash rather than a Villa or a Palacios.
Unfortunately for Benitez there isn’t a bargain hunt bonus buy that is going to level this £90 million deficit and in January the Kop might wave goodbye to the best signing Rafa ever made. The irony of which I am sure will pass by the fans when they are watching their team on a Thursday night against FK Ventspils on Channel Five.
I agree Benitez has made many poor signings which ulitmately have resulted in a thin squad and a mediocre team. I think to attribute the financial turmoil solely to Benitez' transfer dealings is wrong. Firstly I think Benitez has, for some time now operated beneath a boardroom in turmoil as opposed to putting them in turmoil himself. The American owners have enforced their own substantial debt on the club which Benitez could do little about, and as a result was forced to "sell to buy" in recent transfer windows. I am not defending his transfer dealings because he has wasted big sums of money on poor players but in my eyes, not much more so than Alex Ferguson for example. Forlan, Veron, Poborsky, Nani, Kleberson, Djemba-Djemba, Miller, Bellion, Taibi, Bosnich, Barthez, to name a few all cost significant sums of money and were largely flops. The difference is that Man Utd can afford to make poor signings, whereas Liverpool simply cannot. The Financial difficulties at board room level have brought the poor transfer dealings into the limelight. If he could have brought in the likes of Villa, I am sure he would not have opted for Amoo and N'Gog, but it is obvious to me that the financial situation has lead to Rafa "gambling" on lesser know players because he simply has no other option.
As the article says, he won the champions league with Djimi Traore. That is the definition of genius!
Everyone knows Arsene Wenger is something of a genius at finding unknown greats to sign, but he also makes a huge profit in the transfer market - Arsenal are still breaking even despite building a colossal new stadium, and the reason for that is business dealings such as the £20.5 million net profit on Nicolas Anelka!
#1: I think you makes some great points that I didn't have the space here to mention. All the big teams have made poor signings at some point but amidst their dealings they have managed to also make great buys that have resulted in world class teams. Liverpool have had sufficient funds to do the same but have spent poorly. As#2 points out Wenger has dealt brilliantly in the market with far more limited funds.
Also I grant you that Benitez has had boardroom interference but Benitez estrangement of Robbie Keane has to be one the most bizarre, and costly, episodes in management history. Keane was happy to be a rotation player and yet Benitez left him out of squads that had both El Zhar and N'Gog on the bench.
Benitez lost respect of the first team when he started bizarre training exercises like dribbling exercises between cans of special brew instead of bollards. That was OK but things came to a head when he introduced the "running of the jew". This involved forcing Yossi Benayoun to run up ana down carrying Christian soldiers Jamie Carragher and Stephen Garrard on his shoulders. This was generally regarded as unacceptable and a clear breach of the "Kick Racism out of Football" campaign. He also breached the "Respect" campaign when he charged naked into Mike Rileys dressing room at half time wearing only a 12 inch strap on dildo and screaming "FACT" repeatedly. But he really lost the respect of the whole club when he abducted Madeline McCann as an elaborate plot to discrtedit the Portuguese. You just can't do that at this level.
But it was unfor
I would argue though that Benitez has assembled the spine of a "world class" team. Reina, Carragher, Mascherano, Gerrard, Torres is as good as many in the world
comment deleted by the author "blame Benitez the shopper whose bad taste in players has seen the likes of Morientes, Gonzalez, and Leto pocketing fans hard earned cash rather than a Villa or a Palacios."
Are you seriously classing Fernando Morientes, one of the best strikers of the last decade, alongside Leto and Gonzalez. Granted, Morientes wasn't a hit at Anfield, but he was hardly a naff signing on paper.
Alonso's sale has hit Liverpool hard, but he wanted to go, and a £20m profit was made on him. Aquilani may prove a great buy, but agreed the fact he's missed so much has hit our season hard.
"Everyone knows Arsene Wenger is something of a genius at finding unknown greats to sign"
True, but we have to remember he has signed as many stinkers as anyone else. Jeffers, Wiltord, Wright etc
@#7 Granted, Wenger has made some bad signings too, but these have been more than offset by the brilliant ones. He has got a huge amount out of quality players like Anelka, Petit, Overmars, Touré and Adebayor AND then sold them for big profits - that's genius.
I agree that Morientes was a fantastic striker - his goal record is quite impeccable. I couple him with the others in their failure at Liverpool + the fact the club made a net loss on their transfers.
I was going to make the point that #7 did; "bad taste in players...Morientes" - Morientes has scored 44 Champions League goals and basically dragged Monaco to the final in 2004. The problem is that, like Shevchenko, he didn't play as well in the UK. But the same was true of the return of Fowler, etc... most of the time they've been perfectly acceptable changes - unfortunately Alonso, who frankly isn't worth 30M as a self-standing player, was integral to the team this year and he keeps buying players that are great but get injured a lot... Hopefully Liverpool will buck up and shoot back up the table soon; they've also been conceding a lot this year and that's something that isn't a problem with transfers per se... though I <3 Hyypia 
You must log in to submit a comment.
Report