Liverpool FC Forum

by **76-1115222408** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 8:29 pm

This is from the independent, I thought it was a good read,so am posting it here, just in case anyone hasnt read it.

I know a number of you want to see more British lads in the squad (or that we at least look in that direction too) and this article touchs on it, and TBH I agree with it in the main.........

By Clive Tyldesley

The Rafa Revolution will go on. There is no way Liverpool will abandon their manager or his methods. Not just because Rafa Benitez brought the European Cup back to Anfield. Not just because they are a club who traditionally show the same deep loyalty that their supporters do. Not just because he is a good man with a good pedigree. The Rafa Revolution will run its full cycle because it is too late to turn back.

Since Benitez took charge last year, Liverpool have signed a dozen players from the Spanish League and only a handful from elsewhere. He now has four fellow countrymen among his backroom staff. The Kop choir still set the tone for the club, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher remain the principal conductors, but the chorus line are the Gypsy Kings. More Latin fandango than solid Mersey beat. Liverpool have not been tricked or coerced into this change of tune, but they are too far up the Spanish steps to head back home now.

I remember the fuss made in Spain five years ago because Louis van Gaal had turned Barcelona into a club with a decidedly Dutch accent. Players such as Kluivert, Overmars, Cocu and De Boer had been assembled under a predominantly Dutch coaching team. When the press and public outrage eventually forced a change, it took Barcelona some years to regroup.

The circumstances at Liverpool are different, not least because Benitez is a different man. But only he can see it through from here. The phone-in lynch mob are wasting their money.

The gathering grumble among those disillusioned Liverpool fans is that Benitez is wasting their money and that they have seen this movie before. The charge that brought Gerard Houllier down was that he signed too many players with too little feeling for the club. Call it xenophobic or worse, but there remains a suspicion within English football of signing copious amounts of foreign players. It's as natural as it may be misplaced. If Liverpool had approached Martin O'Neill, Alan Curbishley or Sam Allardyce, I feel sure the Anfield job would have interested them, but the board knew who they wanted and presumably knew what he would do.

They didn't know he would win the Champions League quite so soon. The road to Istanbul was lined with tactical master-strokes by Benitez. Or so the story goes. For all the manager's diligent plotting, it was more a tale of impossible drama and derring-do. When Benitez introduced Dietmar Hamann at half-time in the final, words like "stable door", "horse" and "bolted" came to mind. But the rest is history and it couldn't have happened to a nicer man or more emotional club. You just wonder how the club would look now if Gerrard's late thunderbolt had flown over the Olympiakos bar in December.

Becoming European champions raised expectations accordingly. There was cause to believe that great names would be added to the cast list and Liverpool's other crown jewel, the English championship, may be recaptured too. Michael Owen became a cause celebre for the campaign to see the club cash in on their rediscovered status. Benitez insisted a centre-back and a right flanker were more pressing priorities. Come deadline day, neither arrived. The manager will have money to spend in January. The expectation is that he will again go shopping abroad. An investment in some Premiership experience might be more prudent.

The international balance of Benitez's squad has not been helped by a lack of apparent stars emerging from the Academy. Nor has it been helped by the fact that too many juries are still out on too many of his signings. Luis Garcia is unquestionably gifted but not so much careless with possession as care-free. Graeme Souness would have pinned him to the dressing-room wall 20 years ago. Losing the ball was a capital offence in the last Liverpool European champion team. Times change but if "they worked hard" is the best defence Benitez can put up for his team, perhaps they have changed too much.

It was uncomfortable to see Benitez sweating and stumbling through his post-match interview at Crystal Palace. But there are questions to answer when he is critical of the attitude of players he signed or retained. The imbalance between domestic and European success is an anomaly. Liverpool won't win anything else, anywhere, unless they improve. Benitez is a Spaniard who enjoyed admirable success with Spanish players in Spain. His formula is untried in England. He has got to make it work. Gerrard has demanded the team "play for the shirt" against West Ham today. I'm not sure Garcia can play for the Liverpool shirt any more than Gerrard could for a Chelsea shirt.

Liverpool FC Forum

Good article - About our current plight etc;

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