Liverpool FC Forum

by **Lando_Griffin** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 3:41 am

Has he by any chance opened a trust fund for his daughter?

Or bought a house?

Or said "I want to stay here for a long time, my friend"?

Then again, he may have done something else. :;):

by **Lando_Griffin** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 3:42 am

It's good to see that Rafa is getting some of the praise he deserves, and particularly that he wants to stay here.

Rafael Benitez - Legend.

by **John Barnes** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 4:08 am

well Rafa is counting his chickens early if he says he is going to stay for 20 years. what if he donest win the league in the next 4/5 years. will people start getting on his back?

We dont have any devine right to win the league, but with chelsea as a major obstacle these days and ourselves being required to maintain this high standard for at least the next 2/3 seasons to stand a chance then its a big ask.

Rafa, just concentrate on the next game will you please.

by **Sabre** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 4:53 am

Rafa, just concentrate on the next game will you please.

Hi John Barnes, you have a great nickname, hope you try the level of your posts deserve that name!

IMHO, nobody is counting chickens, just praising how well can you work in Anfield. If there's something ALIEN for a Spaniard coach in england, it's the power he's given to take decissions. IN Valencia he had lot of pressures from the board. Simply, it must be a fecking pleasure for Rafa to work in Liverpool.

WHoa, just read the toshack bits about Liverpool. He, as always, says interesting things. I like Toshack's comments, he doesn't bloody care if the people will like'em or not, he's always quite brutally honest. Not that he has been brutal, but he brings some interesting views about the old debate "Does Rafa understand the EPL?".

Tosh

The career of the Wales manager John Toshack includes two spells in charge of Real Madrid and three at Real Sociedad, giving him an appreciation of how odd English football looks to a Spaniard such as Benítez. "Everyone gets railroaded into 4-4-2 because if you don't play that way they call you negative," said the former Liverpool striker, conscious that such systems are somewhat alien to the Anfield manager. "There is no doubt that Rafa has adjusted, because he never used two outright strikers at Valencia."

Well John, I agree you every week, but not on this one. I think Rafa adapted more to the squad rather than to the league. Rafa didn't use two outright strikers, because Valencia had the tradition of having a pacy and fast attacking midfielder like Pablo Aimar, first, or Piojo Lopez before that. If he had Aimar here, we wouldn't be playing Crouch - Morientes for sure.

Plus, didn't Tottenham play with one outright striker against us, it doesn't seem to me that every team plays 442, am I right?

Tosh recalls

The balance to be struck between caution and aggression is one that preoccupies every manager. Benítez would identify with the thinking of one of his Anfield predecessors, even if the idiom would not come so naturally to him. "Bill Shankly," recalls Toshack, "used to say: 'A football team is like a piano. You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.'"

So true.

Benítez won two Liga titles while at the Mestalla, as well as a Uefa Cup, and depended on a robust 4-2-3-1 formation. Though Toshack's Real Sociedad side beat them in the 2001-02 championship the Welshman recalls the formidable cragginess of Valencia. "It was as if you had to be in your 30s to play in their back four," he said, "and no one could get at the defence easily because of David Albelda and Rubén Baraja. Then they would counter-attack through Pablo Aimar."

Hehe true, and relevant enough for those who think "Hyppia's past his best" that I've read somewhere. Veteran players like Fowler can be important in a team! Even more in the case of centre backs.

Toshack is sure Benítez's approach is essential for success at the higher levels and he has England's generally dismal record in European football over the past 20 years to bear out his argument. "You can't play 4-4-2 against Juventus, Chelsea and Milan," he says of the clubs defeated by Liverpool last season. "If you do you will get outnumbered and cut up in midfield."

With a 442 as in 2 target men, no you can't. But with the way Rafa understands 442 with players like crouch that help a lot the build up and touch a lot of balls (for instance receiving a goal kick) yes you can, IMHO! I disagree.

The tailoring of the tactics for specific, relatively minor occasions does not mean Benítez's principles have altered. "You won't see him using Steven Gerrard as a holding player beside Xabi Alonso because it's just not in his instinct to cover that area," said the Wales manager. As Toshack indicates, there are security measures further forward in the 4-2-3-1 structure.

"One of those three men will not really be an attacker by nature," he argues. "For example, John Arne Riise is quite often the player on the left and he is more of a full-back who will help to provide cover on that side."

I agree.

I know it's biased, but I like always his sincerity (he comments how's realsociedad everyweek in the paper, and gives surface details about liverpool and england) and it was a pleasure to me to read more thoughts about LFC.

Thanks CGGY for bringing this articles!

by **Sarge** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:31 am

Gosh sabre.. you the man. And cggy, great read!

by **Ciggy** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 10:13 am

More from the Sunday Times.

The Sunday Times January 22, 2006

Second chance Sunday
JONATHAN NORTHCROFT
Manchester United and Liverpool renew their rivalry today, knowing they are fighting for scraps Chelsea don’t want
There are no prizes for second place, but this season it is prized. A measure of Chelsea is that being the next best thing is a status now coveted by those who once chased championships. Manchester United and Liverpool quest because of different dynamics. For United, second would be a sop for another disappointing season and validate Sir Alex Ferguson’s view that, take away Chelsea’s freakish wealth and his team would still be England’s best. No roubles, no troubles, as it were. Ferguson is trying to reinvent what he long viewed as worthless as something worth having. In today’s match programme he writes: “Obviously we plan to get as close as possible in case they (Chelsea) slip up, but it’s also vitally important we don’t lose sight of the fact there is a mighty challenge around for second place. To finish runners-up is no mean achievement in itself, but nowadays, of course, it carries automatic qualification for the Champions League, something that is the doorway for revenue and allows us to pursue our wider aspirations in Europe.”

Liverpool want second as confirmation of their progress under Rafael Benitez and the club’s momentum explains, perhaps, why there seems more belief at Anfield that getting close to Chelsea can lead to a genuine title challenge in the near future. John Arne Riise believes “there is no way Sunday is a game for second” and that “we are still looking towards the top”, and even if soberer teammates concede Chelsea are too strong this year there is a feeling, voiced recently by Steven Gerrard, that Liverpool’s time is coming.

Europe suggests as much, that Merseyside is where the army is massing to test Jose Mourinho. But there remains a serious hole in the record of Benitez’s team. If, in league football, Liverpool cannot beat their main rivals over 90 minutes, how will they ever do so over a season? It may be a case of putting a gilded carriage, rather than cart, before the horse, but Benitez has become champion of Europe without being able to conquer the 35-mile tranche of local territory separating Anfield and Old Trafford. United and Birmingham are the only Premiership teams he has not been able to beat since arriving and it is part of a wider pattern of inadequacy in the big domestic games. Suggestions that Chelsea were “scared” of Liverpool because of what happened in Champions League meetings were rendered rather silly when Mourinho’s men won 4-1 at Anfield in October and in league matches against Chelsea, Arsenal and United, Benitez’s record is craven: six defeats in eight.

Much has changed, however, in recent months, with Liverpool having lost only to São Paolo in their past 18 matches, of which 15 were victories and 14 involved clean sheets. More important than statistics, Benitez’s side have played better almost game by game, beginning to attack with the same collective purpose as they defend and enjoying ever-higher yields from Gerrard and Xabi Alonso. Beating United would confirm their advances. Not losing is vital to preserve their growing self-esteem.

“We’re playing well and some people say, ‘You are now better than Manchester United’. They’re a good team with a lot of good players and a good manager and we’ll do our best to beat them,” says Benitez. “But if we cannot, I will want to win the next game. You are only talking about three points.”

Yet it is undeniable, and something he must realise, that the rewards and penalties in terms of morale are greater in the big matches and greatest of all, if you are Liverpool, if the opponent is United. “I have an idea what it means because it’s the same in Spain between Real Madrid and Barcelona, two big teams, always top of the table, always fighting to win trophies and you can see here ’s training ground the supporters outside the gates have more passion for this game than for other games,” Benitez said. Yet there was a typical coda: “The players approach the game with passion. I say to them they cannot lose that passion but they also have to use the brain.”

He wants Gerrard and Co to harness rather than be consumed by the ignominy of Liverpool winning only one of their past seven matches against United, and only once finishing above their foe in 14 seasons. Since 1991-92, United have been on average 16 points ahead of Liverpool in the final table which is why, with Benitez’s men only a point behind United with two games in hand, this could be such a moment of truth. A year ago today, Liverpool lost at Southampton, having just exited the FA Cup to Burnley, and some wanted the manager’s head placed on a spike atop the Shankly Gates. Benitez will get the keys to them if he makes his club United’s betters again.

Perhaps a sign that a power shift is progressing is that while Gerard Houllier spent so long discussing the impossibility of matching United, Benitez ignores what goes on along the M62 and now Ferguson is copying him. The signings of Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra were in response to how Liverpool and Chelsea have set certain standards. “Some people have expressed surprise we have signed two defenders rather than a midfielder after the departure of Roy Keane. Well, apart from the fact there is no such thing as a new Keane available, it is important we strengthen our defence. Chelsea and Liverpool just don’t give goals away,” Ferguson said.

Benitez remains modest enough to say of Ferguson: “I can learn more from him than he can from me,” but laughed when asked whether he would ever consider throwing tea-cups around a dressing room or launching a discarded boot at, say, Gerrard’s head. Ferguson will play Evra from the start today, confident that his unhappy debut against Manchester City was a one-off, while Benitez is hoping for more from Harry Kewell. “He’s very happy now. I was always convinced he was good, but I was trying to bring the best out of him. All last season I was thinking, ‘How can I do this?’ and I decided I needed to support him.” Having laid the groundwork, Benitez is looking for his whole team to show progress.

by **Ciggy** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 10:55 am

Turning of the red tide as Rafa changes course
Man Utd v Liverpool: Benitez rewarded for tackling attitude problem
By Steve Tongue, Football Correspondent
Published: 22 January 2006

Whisper it, at least within hearing of Sir Alex Ferguson, but the wheel of football fortune that spins between the two great cities of North-west England might just be turning again. For an extraordinarily extended period between 1969 and 1991 Manchester United did not once manage to finish above Liverpool in the old Football League. That run encompassed the first five seasons after Ferguson's arrival from Aberdeen on a mission, he recalled on Friday, to resurrect Mancunian supremacy. Slowly he did so, and since 1992 the boot has regularly been on the other foot: only once in the past 14 years have Liverpool had the best of it, in terms of League position.

Last May, of course, finishing fifth to United's third place, almost 20 points behind, was rendered academic to their followers by the astounding events of That Night In Istanbul, which means that the triumphalist banners at Old Trafford's away end when the teams meet again this afternoon will be decorated with five European Cups.

Robbie Fowler - you can take the scally out of Liverpool, but not Liverpool out of the scally - was making the same point when he held up five fingers to United supporters after scoring for Manchester City against them last weekend. And waving images of the big-eared trophy around today will also serve to remind the locals that only one of the two clubs are still in this season's Champions' League.

Now the question is whether that wheel is ready to settle at the western end of the East Lancs Road once more. There is no doubt about which way it has been moving these past few months. Towards the end of October, an abject 2-0 defeat by Fulham left Rafael Benitez furious and publicly criticising an "attitude problem". His team had won two Premiership games all season, were 13th in the table and about to go out of the Carling Cup to Crystal Palace. "Benitez bid to create Anfield dynasty in danger of collapse", read one of the kinder headlines.

Yet since then they have been unbeatable, winning 11 League games and drawing the other, as well as topping their Champions' League group. What was once a seven-point deficit on United has been cut to a single one, so that victory this afternoon would carry them into second place, still with two games in hand on their rivals.

In the next month they will catch up with those two matches, away to Charlton (8 February, FA Cup replays permitting) and at home to Arsenal (14 February). There is also the little matter of a visit to Chelsea, for which today's encounter may be considered useful preparation, and a resumption of European competition against Benfica.

But try catching Benitez even contemplating more than one match at a time. "We have a difficult month with a lot of important games, and we'll see if the squad and the team are good enough," was as far as he would go. "I'm not thinking ahead of United, I just want to see my team improve every day."

Individuals are doing so and helping team-strength in consequence, none more so than the once reviled Harry Kewell, whose spectacular goal against Tottenham last week shocked those supporters who had booed him off the pitch in Istanbul and justified the manager's gentle touch with him. "Last season I was thinking how to do it [handle him]," Benitez said. "Sometimes you put a player under pressure and sometimes you support him. I tried to support him. To score a goal like that in front of the Kop is very good for us and for him. Now he is confident and happy; you can see him in every training session trying things he wouldn't before."

For all the likeable Spaniard's occasional histrionics on the touchline, it is easy to accept that putting an arm round a player comes more naturally to him than bawling one out. More animated he may be than Sphinx-Goran Eriksson, but his philosophy of football is essentially cerebral: "You know you must be calm, you can't play only with passion. I try to analyse calmly before, during and after a game. You need to play with your heart but also your brain."

Not since his time in charge of Real Madrid's Under-19s can Benitez remember kicking anything in the dressing room. His opposite number at Manchester United did not even manage to count as far as two before abusing the referee at half-time last week, though he has always got on well with Liverpool's managers and is pleasantly surprised at how (comparatively) decorous matches between the clubs have been. "When I first came down here they were quite meaty games then, with people like Norman Whiteside and Steve McMahon playing," Ferguson said. "The amazing thing to my mind is that since the Premiership started, I can't think of a game that's really got out of hand. It's always the game I look forward to the most. It reflects my reason for being here. I knew what I had to do when I came here. The challenge was Liverpool and we did it. For me it's got a special significance."

Like Benitez, he is well up on the history of his club: "For a few years they had the upper hand and for a few years we did. Last time the 0-0 draw [at Anfield in September] broke a sequence of wins against them. But every club has cycles. Liverpool's spell in the 70s and early 80s was phenomenal and we've had a phenomenal spell ourselves. It does go in cycles that way. It's 16 years since they won the League and we went 26 years."

Hence the importance to United - who, like Liverpool, are not going to be champions of England this season - of the two midweek matches bookending today's meeting. Four days ago they strolled to victory at the second attempt against Burton Albion in the FA Cup with a young side augmented by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who may yet earn a new contract at 33 after knee injuries had threatened his career. This Wednesday there will be no liberties like Rio Ferdinand ambling around in midfield or Louis Saha casually frittering away chances when Blackburn Rovers arrive for the second leg of the Carling Cup semi-final.

It may only be the unfashionable old League Cup, the Alan Hardaker Memorial Bauble. But it is a trophy. "There's tremendous pressure on Liverpool and ourselves when you don't win trophies," Ferguson admitted, 20 months on from his last one. Now the wheel is spinning again. And, as Dylan put it more than 40 years ago, around the time Bill Shankly was gearing up the Anfield Reds, there's no telling who it is naming.

Replay 1990: When Liverpool were last kings

Victory at Old Trafford on 18 March was a significant step along the way to Liverpool's 18th - and most recent - title.

Graham Taylor's Aston Villa emerged as their strongest challengers, going top on Saturday, 17 March, with their ninth win in 11 games, as Ian Ormondroyd scored the only goal at Derby. With United in mid-table for the third time in four seasons under Alex Ferguson, questions were being asked about the manager, who was widely, if incorrectly, believed to have been facing the sack had they lost to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup third round. Average crowds at Old Trafford were below 40,000, though 46,629 turned out to see Liverpool win 2-1 after leading 1-0 at half-time. John Barnes scored both their goals in his finest game of the season, one a penalty; Ronnie Whelan put through his own goal at the other end. Kenny Dalglish's side went on to finish nine points ahead of Villa. United finished no higher than 13th, but won the FA Cup final in a replay against Crystal Palace to give Ferguson his first trophy and some breathing space.

Manchester Utd: Bailey; Anderson (Duxbury), Bruce, Pallister, Martin; Blackmore, Ince, Phelan; McClair, Hughes, Wallace (Beardsmore).

Liverpool: Grobbelaar; Venison, Hysen, Hansen, Staunton; Houghton, McMahon, Whelan, Barnes; Beardsley, Rush.

http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/liverpool/article340167.ece

Alex Fergusson said in 2002 to The Guardian.
"My greatest challenge is not what's happening at the moment," Ferguson countered, "my greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their fu.cking perch. And you can print that."

Thats why this banner was made

by **azriahmad** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 2:16 am

I remembered that match. Liverpool were utterly dominating the match, manure never had a shout. One of Barnes' goal was a run at the manure goal finished by a calm slot beneath the 'keeper as he dived.

Ronnie Whelan was so masterful as the holding midfielder. Sometime in the second half, he as looking to pass the ball around (at that time, the backpass rule had not been introduced and 'keepers can catch a backpass). Then, he decided to turn and pass back to Grobbelaar. He hit a lobbed pass which looped over the stranded and surprised Grobbelaar who was way out of his goal line. It was a beauty of an own goal!.

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