Firstly, let me congratulate Manchester United’s manager, players and fans on finally matching our record of 18 top flight league titles. If I didn’t do that then I might sound a little bitter throughout the rest of this article, because what I’d like to do secondly is establish why it is that people hate Man United as a club so much – and no, it isn’t ‘just because they win’, contrary to what you might think.

Obviously, Liverpool fans hate United because they’re our biggest rivals and have been for many years; but the hatred levels shown towards Chelsea, Everton and Arsenal are nothing compared to the animosity we have for the Mancs. Absolutely nothing. There are so many reasons for this that to attempt an exhaustive list would be futile, but taking a few of the most recent and nauseating instances of United’s extreme arrogance and hypocrisy might allow us to explore the hatred just a little bit.

A few weeks ago was the 20^th anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy, and say what you will about Liverpool fans, Heysel, and all of the other historically controversial moments which have shaped this club, there can be no denying that, for those few April days, respect and solidarity were owed to those who lost loved ones on that day. It was a beautiful week in many ways, with a moving ceremony and a lot of very kind, thoughtful words being said by people up and down the country, even those not normally involved in the footballing world.

At the same time, Alex Ferguson was preparing to launch a pre-meditated and public attack on Rafael Benitez’s moral standards. It concerned the infamous ‘gesture’ Rafa made to Xabi Alonso after the midfield playmaker apparently ignored his manager’s instructions to play a free kick short. Was Ferguson there in the dugout, was he even at Anfield? No. Did the incident concern him or his team at all? No. Did he have any evidence that Benitez meant the gesture as an arrogant ‘game over’ signal aimed at Allardyce and Blackburn? No. Did Allardyce say anything about the incident until Ferguson raised the matter? Did he mention it in his post-game drink with Sammy Lee? Did the TV cameras show Benitez to be targeting his opponents in any way?

Did Sam Allardyce once bring a reserve keeper on to play up front in an FA Cup game that he judged his Bolton side to have already comfortably won? Yes, he did.

Allardyce is a disgusting person but by far the worse of the two evils here is Ferguson. He said that Benitez had shown ‘contempt’ for his opponents with the gesture. Well, let’s talk about contempt Mr Ferguson.

Do you think that nobody is watching when you run around like a drunken hooligan, waving your arms and swearing at the 4^th official just because a decision didn’t go your way? What about your team’s nasty and well-known habit of surrounding the referee? What about your assistant’s accusation last year that the referee of your FA Cup game against Portsmouth was bent, just because he didn’t give you the decisions that you wanted? What about your deliberate lies to the media about your club’s level of spending compared to Liverpool’s? What about your childish refusal to speak to the BBC on account of the fact that they included your son in a documentary about dodgy agents? Not to be forgotten was your refusal to fulfil your media obligations to Sky Sports – the company responsible for the wealth of your club – because they dared to insist that one of your games be played at 12.45 instead of 3 o clock (this was in accordance with official police recommendations).

And last week, after your side scored a late goal against Wigan, your player Patrice Evra made a gesture which – and this time it was certainly clear – was meant to mock Benitez and imply that the league was ‘all over’. By the way, the league wasn’t over at that point – the Mancs needed Saturday’s bland 0-0 home draw to Arsenal to confirm that. Contempt? Anyone?

Ferguson has been anxious about Liverpool this year. He made remarks earlier this season which ruled us out as serious contenders, despite our strong start. Benitez stepped in soon after and gave his legendary Ferguson lecture, a moment which has wrongly been labelled a rant and which, actually, revealed an awful lot of truths concerning the ‘untouchable’ status that the United manager has deliberately built for himself over his many years in charge. We proceeded to push United to the 37^th game of the season, beating them twice, scoring more goals and losing fewer games, leaving them to rely on some excellent defending and some dubious refereeing decisions to win the league.

They won the league because they managed to nick goals in the home games which saw us drawing. They got more points over 9 months and they are therefore rightly champions. But when Benitez beats them to the title next year, it will be every bit as impressive an achievement as Ferguson’s first title win with United – if not more so. Ferguson has a centre back who cost more than our entire defensive squad put together; he has a £30 million striker in Berbatov, a £27 million striker in Rooney and the ability to spend £30 million combined on young lads like Anderson and Nani. Benitez meanwhile has built a team out of dependable players like Alonso, Agger, Skrtel, Reina, Kuyt and Riera without spending small fortunes on each one. His record signing, Torres, was only £20 million and has been much better value than Berbatov. Mascherano, at £18 million, is better than both Carrick (£15 million plus) and Hargreaves (£18 million plus).

Nobody seems to give Rafa the credit he deserves for simply managing to build a title-challenging side at a time when Ferguson is cash-rich and well-established and Chelsea have Russian billions in the bank. Liverpool also manage to play quite nice football – something else that the commentators tend to ignore. We’re no Barcelona but we’re certainly better than Chelsea to look at.

Football in general is not enough to make me angry; it’s the characters and forces involved in the game which get me livid. If Ferguson and United’s behaviour had been different, even for this one season, I’d have accepted them winning the title in a much more gracious fashion. But as it is, their lack of humility and respect for others just drives me on; along with a love of Liverpool FC, it’s what keeps me going, keeps me paying for my season ticket every year. We’ll get that title back from Man United next season, that’s what I believe; and when we do it, it will be as respectable, popular champions, and our manager will show anything but contempt in victory. But – and this is the key - even if we don’t win, all of the respect and honour will still be on our side.

And that’s why I’m proud to be a long-suffering Liverpool fan.

It saddened me greatly that in a week which saw the 20^th Anniversary of Hillsborough marked poignantly by people far and wide, a dishonest and frankly ridiculous accusation was hurled in the face of Liverpool’s manager Rafa Benitez. Not only that, but the attack also appeared to have been pre-arranged by new best buddies Alex Ferguson and ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce, a pair who have had a less than romantic history with Benitez during his tenure in England.

The most galling and sickening thing is that both men knew exactly what they were doing: they had decided to launch a pointless and finally fruitless attack on a club which was essentially mourning the loss of 96 of its fans. Ferguson perhaps wanted to do it to put Liverpool off, to distract us even further from the title race; and that he sunk so low, unfortunately, does not surprise me one bit.

But Allardyce, whose worst run-in with Benitez came when Rafa rightly accused his Bolton team of being a bullying, rule-breaking troupe which relied on dirty tricks for its victories, genuinely shocked me by going public with his ‘concerns’. OK Sam, so Rafa never turns up for your post-game drink at Anfield; get over it. He doesn’t like you. If anything, you proved him right by ludicrously playing Chris Samba, a lumbering giant of a centre-back, in the striker’s role in order to physically out-do our defence. Benni McCarthy would surely have been disgusted by such antics from a supposedly top-flight football team. And your complete lack of tactical nous was exposed when Agger and Carragher dealt comfortably with your ingenious little ploy.

Allardyce’s shocking stint at Newcastle ended prematurely because their fans were appalled at how little football he was happy for his team to play. He is a no-mark, as both a manager and a person, as was proved by his outburst about Benitez’s hand gesture – which, by the way, was very clearly to his own player. It was actually one of the most animated things he has ever done after a Liverpool goal; normally what you see is a man attempting to work out what to do next, because if there’s anything Benitez always does, it is respect the ability of the opposition.

I’m glad that Rafa sent Sammy Lee to talk about Allardyce at the subsequent press conference, although the Blackburn boss had yet another moan about that fact in the newspapers the next day. Benitez has been too involved in the media this year and how much it has helped the team’s progress has to be questioned.

But if there’s one thing we know for sure after the ‘gesture’ row, it is that Allardyce has written himself into a place alongside Ferguson as a hate figure with Liverpool fans – and as he’ll soon find out, we don’t forget things like this lightly.

Did anybody else notice that after each of Chelsea’s first two goals last night, Andy Gray cackled like some crazed Scottish Mancunian? There was recently a petition signed by Liverpool fans begging Sky to remove him from the commentary box for the duration of our games; if anything, this move has only served to make the man more bitter and twisted than ever before.

His input was just one of the reasons that last night, the thousandth time we’ve met Chelsea in Europe in recent seasons – by the way, how boring is it getting? – felt like a sorry, unmitigated disasterpiece. Anfield was shocked the same way Old Trafford was shocked a few weeks ago. The team looked poor at the back, poor in the middle and, after a promising beginning, toothless up front; Benitez, for once, had none of the answers. I believe that Hiddink outthought his fellow master-tactician from the very start – note that Rafa has admitted to being surprised at Essien’s man-marking job on Gerrard. Chelsea took care of our captain and effectively played us at our own game, with Lucas and Alonso struggling defensively to deal with their expansive play across the park, and Skrtel and Carragher constantly seeming two yards off the pace.

The Liverpool team, usually so well prepared and ready for any plan the opposition might throw at them, were clearly stunned by a multi-pronged, up-tempo Chelsea team a million miles away from what it had gradually become under Scolari. Lampard arrived in dangerous positions two or three times and should really have scored at least once. Drogba had a plethora of chances before stepping up to the plate. In the last twenty minutes, every time Chelsea had the ball they looked likely to score; every time Liverpool had the ball, we looked wary and leggy, all too aware of the enormity of the task we’d set ourselves up for.

But perspective is important after a 3-1 home loss to a big rival.

Let us not forget that we came up against a Chelsea team which gave its best performance in months, perhaps even since Mourinho. And you can’t compensate for bad defending at corners. The problem, by the way, is not zonal marking; it is that the players seemed to forget how to do it. You have to attack your zone, even if you don’t have a man; but for some reason last night our lads didn’t attack anything, despite the multitude of Chelsea players swirling around our box. It doesn’t make us a bad team – it just means that we must learn from our mistakes and never let it happen again. Aurelio was caught on the ball early by Malouda and never recovered his confidence – at one point he seemed to be desperate to give a goal to Chelsea, but you can do nothing about that now. Lucas was his usual dawdling self. Ballack delivered the best pass he’s mustered in at least a couple of years to undo Arbeloa. Torres struggled to get behind the wall of muscle that is Alex and Terry. Riera and Kuyt laboured all night but were unable to create much. Alonso passed well but is no Mascherano when it comes to defending the back four.

Rafa was also under-par, failing to react well to the various difficult situations to which his team was exposed.

Nobody did well last night, but beyond the hurt pride and disappointment of heading out of the Champions League, I’m not going to draw anything more from the match. It was genuinely just a clash between below-par Liverpool and a high-flying Chelsea – just a bad night. Let’s move on now and focus on beating Blackburn to keep the league title challenge up.

If The Mirror’s big wigs get Stan Collymore’s column ghost-written, then they really need to find a better journalist to do it. I would guess that, at present, a ten year-old child is at the helm, fighting his way through each difficult sentence. One word at a time.

Perhaps the simplistic style suits the readership of this particular tabloid paper. It is also very possible of course, that the person typing the keys is Stanley himself, the Talksport man now seemingly well on his way to a career in talking self-important rubbish – otherwise known as football punditry.

Have a read of his latest offering for yourself. It won’t take long.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/columnists/collymore/2009/03/23/why-liverpool-still-need-jose-mourinho-to-win-the-premier-league-by-stan-collymore-115875-21220996/

‘Why Liverpool still need Jose Mourinho to win the Premier League’.

Let’s go through it. Forensic examination, if you will.

“Rafa Benitez has just signed a new five-year contract at Liverpool with orders to bring a maiden Premier League crown to Anfield.

As a former Liverpool player I desperately hope Benitez succeeds but I cannot join in the enthusiasm over him.

I still have my doubts about the Spaniard. I know he will now have more control over transfer dealing.”

OK. At this point he should justify his ‘doubts’…

“But the bungling American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett remain in charge of the purse strings.

I have long believed that Jose Mourinho is the man for Liverpool.”

These two statements next to each other seem to imply that if Mourinho were to be in charge, the Hicks and Gillett problem would just go away. Also, is Collymore suggesting that the ‘bunglers’ from the West are going to be astute enough to employ Mourinho? Stan is just talking impractical, bar-room nonsense.

“Benitez cannot attract the type of players Mourinho was able to sign at Chelsea.”

I actually spat my sandwich all over the place when I read this. Mourinho is so highly rated because he was an arrogant media obsession able to spend more than £200 million on a squad of superstars elect. What’s more, he spent his biggest fees on ‘potential’ superstars such as Drogba and Essien because the really big men – the men who are in the same league as Torres, like Kaka and (at the time) Ronaldinho – would not join his team. In his flailing, final season at Chelsea, Mourinho lost it big time and publicly disowned almost half of his own squad. His remit at Inter was to win the European Cup, which he has not. His other achievement of note, the European Cup win at Porto, was no bigger or better a feat than Benitez’s victory in 2005 (the squad list which he worked with, including Smicer, Baros and Traore, is pretty interesting to look at now. How did he do it?).

“Benitez, in charge since 2004, has only ever recruited one future superstar in Fernando Torres. But he will need six or seven players of Torres’ stature to ensure Liverpool are the best team in the country.

And I am not sure enough players like Torres will go to Liverpool while Benitez is there.

Mourinho is the true ‘Special One’ and I am still not convinced Liverpool’s players believe Rafa is anything out of the ordinary.”

Name the players in the world who are ‘like Torres’. I can think of only a handful. One is Gerrard, another is Kaka, another is Messi and, unfortunately, the other one is Ronaldo. Collymore believes that with Mourinho in charge, we’d have a better chance of signing Messi, Ronaldo or Kaka. Ok…

On that note, I’d like to point out that the best defensive midfielder in the world at the moment is Mascherano, and the best passer of a ball this season has been Alonso. Reina is the Premiership’s best keeper; Agger and Skrtel are two of its most promising centre backs. Aurelio is improving by the game. Collymore makes it sound like Rafa has done nothing to improve the squad besides Torres; but, whilst we do need more quality players, he’s established a central core as good as anyone else’s.

“Liverpool have recently had fantastic results against Manchester United and Real Madrid.

And I fancy them to edge past Chelsea in their big Champions League clash.

But losing at Middlesbrough last month has handed the Premier League title to United in all likelihood and it is that kind of inconsistency I believe only Mourinho can rectify.”

The loss at Boro was a low point but every team has terrible days, including Manchester United and, stepping back a couple of years, Mourinho’s Chelsea.

My problem here isn’t with Stan the Man. He’s just earning his coppers like the rest of us would in his situation.

The real issue is why so much garbage is available each day in Britain’s top newspapers. Editors give the common idiot a pedestal, and guess what he spews out? Idiocy!

The vile myths surrounding Benitez’s lack of managerial ability which have this season been flying around the country come from the words written by these people. They have no right to express an opinion so publicly (could any ordinary Liverpool fan have his mundane thoughts spread over the back pages if he so wished?), least of all Stan, an ex-player who has to be deemed a flop after one good season and no winners’ medals to his name.

We have to fight back against the shoddy press in his country. Every attack on our club is an attack on us. Collymore’s article is unfortunately the mere tip of the iceberg – go to Newsnow.co.uk and see the daily vitriol for yourself. Even after the 14 days we’ve had, the Daily Mail still managed to today publish a piece suggesting (‘cheekily’, as they would see it, and ‘stupidly’, as I would see it) that Rafa wants to go to Real Madrid at the end of the season.

It’s so ridiculous it’s untrue.

The uncomfortable truth about yesterday’s demolition job on Man Utd was lodged at the back of my mind all the way through the game: beating them now, having allowed them to get so far ahead with ten games to go, leaves a bittersweet taste in the mouth.

Of course, 4-1 at Old Trafford is a scoreline for the ages, something I don’t think I’ll see again for a long time, perhaps never again in my lifetime. Beating them is heaven; beating them so heavily in their own back garden is beyond paradise. Seeing Ferguson’s chewing speed hit record revs per minute as Aurelio curled a beauty past Van der Sar made my blood run warm. He turned a shade of purple almost as dark as his cold, embittered heart. By the time Dossena stole in to dink a perfectly weighted lob into the United net, I don’t think anybody could really believe it. “We want five”, our boys sang. Considering Gerrard’s blinding miss towards the end, we should really have had that fifth. But let’s be satisfied with four.

The litany of appalling results Liverpool have put together of late is the sucker-punch, each and every time you think about them. High as a kite we may be after yesterday, but who could forget the Spurs game away from home when we let an advantage turn into an improbable defeat? The Stoke, West Ham, Everton, Fulham, Wigan, Man City and Hull games where either a lack of creativity or stupid errors have cost us. Last season, people were saying that if we want to win the league, we have to beat the top four. This season, we’ve done that comprehensively and forgotten about the other part of the job. A couple of years ago, people said that if our away form improved we would be in with a chance. This season, it’s the home form which has been dire.

This all points to the conclusion that Benitez has found it impossible to find a consistent balance; he has relied on producing exceptional results in big games in order to cover up the failures of his team in other circumstances. That’s why people said for a long time that he was no good in the league, only good for Europe. This season, when for the first time under him we’ve had a real good go at the league, we’ve come up short because of squad depth issues. Keane was a monumental error. Babel has been a disappointment. Lucas manages to look average even in a game like yesterday’s, where he gave away a lot of possession and was strolled past all too easily on a few occasions. With Torres and Gerrard out, we struggle. It is a miracle that we did so well this season without them playing together for the large majority of the time.

The two teams to have won the league since Benitez’s arrival, Chelsea and United, have had vast amounts of money to spend on their squads. United were able yesterday to leave out £30 million Berbatov against their greatest rivals. Benitez, meanwhile, has had to make ends meet whilst operating within a tricky political maelstrom. His mastery in Europe has probably (if not certainly) saved his job as manager. Now that we’re in a better position than ever to take the league, Benitez’s ability to command transfers this summer is paramount; that’s why the contract situation was so important. By shipping out the deadweight and bringing in one or two further touches of quality, he could turn us into a squad which is maybe one level behind United’s, as opposed to two or three levels behind as it is now. That’s a more workable position from which to put in a sustained challenge, sustenance being our main problem this year.

Even now, we can aim for a perfect finish and hope that United lose confidence and miss Vidic in the heart of defence. We can very much believe in a 6^th Champions League title. Benitez’s reign has been far from perfect but the patchwork of brilliant results he has managed to put together on occasion has given us much-needed reason to hope. Next year, it could be based on more than just a patchwork. If we’re excited now, imagine how we’ll feel then.

Stoke 0-0

Fulham 0-0

West Ham 0-0

Hull City 2-2

Everton 1-1

Man City 1-1

The results above are the collective low-points of our season and the main reason for the petering out of our once-so-exciting title challenge. In thinking about why we’ve struggled so much through these games, it became clear to me that it is astounding that the current squad has been able to sustain any kind of form this year.

Our strike-force, if it can be called that, contains Kuyt, Torres, Babel and Ngog. For most of the season we’ve been without Torres and Robbie Keane was floundering in his place. At times we have also missed Gerrard playing in his exploratory role behind the front men, and remain devout of a decent right-sided midfielder who can take full backs on. Meanwhile, our own full backs are inconsistent and show no signs of becoming the complete players that we need in those roles. Benitez has taken a lot of stick this year but, frankly, he’s done well to take such an incomplete team to second in the league.

At times this season, we’ve completely dominated possession against weak teams at Anfield, only to either fail to threaten up front or fall behind to a soft goal. That we haven’t lost a game at home is indicative of the approach we take to games: we cautiously seek to control the game through keeping the ball, hoping eventually to find holes in the opposition defence. Finding those holes hasn’t been easy. Many times the blunt-edged attacking play that we’ve exhibited has drawn attention to the lack of something ‘different’ up front – somebody like Peter Crouch, for example. What’s more, watching Manchester United recently has been the most unpleasant reminder of what title-winning teams do – they don’t always play well, but they don’t give away silly goals and they always show verve going forward. They sneak goals. They treat home games like they should and don’t have to concede a goal before they come to life, as we have done against Everton, Hull and most recently City.

If there is criticism to be made of Benitez, it is of his home tactics. Excluding the games against Chelsea and United, which were won on the back of willing effort and determination to the end, Liverpool have seemed dour and subdued at Anfield. Benitez sends a team out to ‘control’ the game – but this is simply the wrong message. The right message is ‘win at all costs’. Get a goal and you’ll be in control – the reasoning is easy. If Benitez has a productive summer in the transfer market and enlivens his attitude to home matches a little more, then next season could be just as intriguing as this one has been, if not more successful. If not, then I’m afraid our progress may stutter.

One of Benitez’s recent complaints about the administrative structure at Liverpool concerned the club’s comatose approach to both new signings and new contracts. It is well publicised that we missed out on players such as Dani Alves and Simao due to Rick Parry’s languid movements in the transfer market, but that’s all past now. What is of greater concern at this moment is the future of Daniel Agger.

Next season, or possibly the season after, Sami Hyypia will have to stop. He may go on to ‘do a Maldini’ and play until after he hits 40, but this is doubtful. If Agger disappears, we will be left at this juncture with an ageing Carragher and the ever-learning, slightly over-eager Skrtel. This just won’t do.

Agger looked out of his depth when he first arrived on Merseyside, but only slightly; since his first couple of games, he has gone on to fulfil his massive potential. He has more ability than any centre back we’ve had in years to bring the ball out of defence and pick a pass, or even unleash a screamer at goal. He steadies the team and makes us play a different type of football; more composed, more concise. Skrtel and Agger, once both fully matured, would make a formidable partnership, potentially as strong as the one Houllier fostered between Henchoz and Sami.

Yet the club has refused to meet Agger’s (probably justified) pay demands. The player has been quoted moaning in the press recently about his lack of minutes on the pitch, but he’s only so exasperated because Benitez clearly values him highly - but the club hierarchy does not. After the European Cup victory, a contract as essential as Gerrard’s was left until the last minute and we nearly saw our talismanic captain quit the club. Now one of our best signings in years is threatening to do the same, because we just won’t sit down and talk with him and reward him for his progress.

It says it all that Milan are after Agger to replace Nesta.

Benitez’s frustration is often put down to the Keane affair or the Americans’ incompetence, but something like the Agger situation crystallises just how backwards Liverpool Football Club is when it comes to prioritising. It needs sorting out, and soon.

If you were on £50k a week and had the credentials of Rafael Benitez, it would be hard to find a reason to read the British newspapers other than to defend yourself against its vicious hunter-mentality attacks on your character.

Benitez has admitted in the past that when he watches tapes of Liverpool games, he watches them on mute. Listening to Andy Gray would presumably not be a desirable experience for him whilst he attempts to analyse his team’s performance; then again, I don’t understand how listening to Andy Gray could be a desirable experience for anybody.

This is the attitude he carries through to print journalism. Maybe he reads the papers in the morning, but surely it is only to check whether or not there has been yet another scathing – and more importantly unjust - column written about his team, his tactics and his personality. Take, for example, ‘Hatchet Man’ over at the Daily Mail, a newspaper whose acrid bitterness amazingly manages to grow with each copy. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1146180/HATCHET-MAN-Control-freak-Benitez-leave-Liverpool-rudderless-hopeless-staffless-decamps-Bernabeu.html

Benitez responded politely and candidly to journalists when asked questions about his contract situation; Hatchet takes this as simply his ‘latest boring, self-important whine about his new contract demands’. The clearly quite emotionally repressed (or more likely coldly cynical) journalist behind this column goes on to criticize the size of Benitez’s backroom staff; I mean, heaven forbid he should have twelve people working with him at a football club the size of Liverpool. It’s hardly mass employment. Next up for the ‘sharp’ end of Hatchet’s blunt wit is Benitez’s admittance, which by the way he’s disclosed fully in the past, that he sees ending his career at Real Madrid as the ‘icing on the cake’. To be honest, I’m not bothered about this. Why should we care? He’s doing a job and desperately wants to sign a new contract; he was born in and played for Madrid; what he’s talking about is only natural.

But from Benitez’s few honest words to journalists usually frustrated by his evasiveness, Hatchet constructs a remarkable little piece which tries to belittle the man. If there was ever a case of writing for the sake of writing, this was it. He had no idea what to spew his apparently acerbic prose all over this week so he waited for Benitez to open his mouth. Good. That’s the column done.

The role Benitez plays within the press arena is seen in simplistic, contradictory terms by many people. Seen on the one hand as the emotionless fiend who says nothing incisive into a microphone, the other hand sees his openness with the media this season lamented and blamed for the dip in form that his team has recently experienced. Some, like faithful friend Guillem Ballague, have portrayed him as a media master, pulling the strings through a subtle, controlled approach to public disclosure.

The truth is that Benitez is neither fully coy, nor overly open, nor a master of the media. His surprising attack on Alex Ferguson earlier this season preceded an awful run of stuttering performances by his team. He has too often tried to manipulate his popularity with the fans to strengthen his personal position with the American owners. In the former case, the man was just speaking up for his team against the political dominance of his rivals; in the latter he has betrayed just how desperate he is to stay in charge of the Liverpool project.

The choices he makes are not part of some over-arching master-plan, nor are they ill-informed or stupid. They are reactionary, adaptations to certain circumstances and situations. When Liverpool as a club was relatively calm behind the scenes, Benitez had absolutely nothing to say about political matters. When Liverpool were not competing directly with Manchester United for the title, Benitez had nothing to say about Ferguson’s obvious influence over English football and its governing body. Things change; thus Benitez’s media position changes.

Yet despite the fact that he perhaps sees the rags as useful in his pursuit of some vital or just cause, Benitez clearly has disdain for most of the things that they write. He dislikes them as much as he dislikes the pundits, with their sweeping statements and generalizations about Liverpool’s total dependency on Torres and Gerrard, our zonal marking, etc. Benitez won the Spanish League in the face of Real Madrid and Barcelona; Hatchet Man did not. Nor did any other journalist currently making judgments on his footballing decisions.

Thus whilst he cannot ignore the unfortunately influential words written by the tabloids, Benitez is in the right in his dismissal of them. They’re in the business of chatter about things they don’t even bother to research properly; he’s in the business of trying to win the Premier League. The distance between them is telling.

Happier times...

“I was doing everything I could possible to play football and do well for the team. If I’d been a bad egg I could understand but I never had one bad word to say about anybody there. I never had a problem with the manager. I was never late for training. I came in every day and worked me socks off. Sometimes the manager doesn’t fancy you. You’re probably as baffled as I am.”

Robbie Keane’s press conference, held on his return to Tottenham, presented us with a man who wants the whole world to believe in the implacable thickness of his skin. He stated several times during his Liverpool career that his confidence was not knocked by what was going on. He was always adamant that he was the man for the job.

But as the dust settles on a miserable transfer to-and-fro, it should be remembered that Keane is only human. Behind his furrowed-brow, determined facade is a player who is hurting because his dream move went pretty much as badly as it could have gone. Playing the blame game in this situation may seem futile now but, with the current climate at Liverpool, surely it is important to examine just where this expensive venture faltered and why. Benitez wants more control over transfers and tried last week to distance himself from the big that the club made for the Irishman in the summer, telling a press squad in his habitually cryptic style that “the club sanctioned the move”. He would not give any more details on this. Does it mean that he never wanted Keane? That this is all Parry’s fault and wouldn’t have happened if Rafa had had the power he is now craving?

The answer to those questions is an unequivocal “no”. First things first: if Benitez had his way last summer, right now Alonso would be plying his trade somewhere else and we’d have Barry. Having been our best player this season, Xabi has now more than proved that his manager’s transfer plans were counter-productive. As for whether or not Rafa wanted Keane, of course he did. Liverpool isn’t a club that signs players without the manager’s permission. Benitez’s big mate Guillem Ballague reported all summer that there was a “big surprise” coming up for Liverpool fans, and he later admitted that he’d been referring to the Tottenham striker all along. Rafa saw something in Keane which made him think that he’d fit into Liverpool’s system. In this case, when Rafa came out earlier this week and said that the “bedding-in” never looked like happening, it was an admittance of a mistake, even if he didn’t think so.

The confusing thing is that Keane could never fit into a 4-5-1 which contains Gerrard in the hole and Torres up front. Benitez sold Peter Crouch on the basis that this was the system to take us forward and that 4-4-2 was now behind us. Yet this season the manager tried several times to make us play that way, each time seeing a significant lack of threat coming from Keane and whoever his partner was. Benitez’s gripe with the Keane transfer is obviously that he thought the club spent too much on him, but this does not excuse the fact that he identified him as a solid target. Maybe Keane’s potential success was linked to Barry coming into the club, with Benitez planning to play Gerrard with Barry and Keane just ahead. In that case, I can understand Benitez’s anger, because without Barry Keane does not fit. But that is pure conjecture on my part.

To be clear, I’m a Benitez fan and I do want him to have the final say on transfers. In Keane’s brief spell at the club, Ballague noted again (on his eponymous website) that Liverpool staff and players alike were surprised by the low level of performance offered by the striker both in training and on the pitch. His lack of threat and consistent close-range misses were the reason that he was often substituted; each time this happened he acted like a petulant child. I don’t think that this is what was expected of Robbie Keane, 28-year-old striker now worth a combined £75 million for his career, when he came to the club.

But Benitez must still take some of the blame. He has this week insisted that Ryan Babel and Lucas are progressing as footballers and turning in some excellent performances of late. This is just one example of a number of times when our manager could be accused of seeing things that nobody else in the world can see. His judgment when it comes to most is sound but there are some occasions when we just don’t know what he’s on about. Maybe he has a computer program which tells him vitally important unseen statistics about his team. All I know is that to most fans and pundits, both Lucas and Babel are going backwards instead of forwards, whilst moving for Keane and Dossena in the summer was a complete disaster.

Either way, Benitez is enduring a very tough time of late. He is also leading us to our best league performance in years. It is right to criticize the man, because quite frankly he’s got it wrong in certain key situations this year. But we must also stay with him: he’s doing a heck of a lot of things right too.