West Brom, who are already a more tightly-knit group (mostly the same squad as last season, and the same manager), will doubtless have had a far bigger contingent at training - to work on spoiling tactics, as lesser sides rightly do (from their point of view) ahead of coming to Anfield. Of course, we should be beating teams like West Brom at home. But it has to be a 'leveller' if one team gets to prepare for a game and the other doesn't - especially as the one thing Rafa needs in order to affect improvements is time on the training ground. Greece proved that it's easy to stop good teams with good organisation. It will take Rafa time to get our organisation to the level where we can relax and let our superior flair players win these kind of games.
In many ways, Rafa has to learn what we, the fans, already know: we've seen 80% of this squad week-in, week-out, for a number of years now. We know their weaknesses, their strengths. The mental approach of the team needs improving, and that will take time. The team seems entrenched in an inability to rouse itself against lesser opposition. It also has to learn how to keep the ball when leading so that the opposition are rendered impotent. Rafa will be addressing these issues.
To me, it is clear that this is no usual year. Arsenal are on the best run of games in English league football history - an unbeaten season, followed by a quite stunning start to the new campaign. We are playing catch-up with a team breaking all sorts of records; not a relatively 'average' championship-winning side like Leeds or Blackburn (who proved their "averageness" with truly awful title defences the following season), or, comparatively-speaking, the worst-vintage Liverpool and Man U title-winning sides. What this Arsenal team have achieved, domestically, is up there with the Liverpool sides of 1977, 1984, and 1988, and the Man U side of 1999. Arsenal are at the top of their powers, playing with the kind of self-belief and expressiveness that you just cannot instill in a side overnight.
Arsenal are, to my mind, a miraculous side - perfectly balanced, with Wenger's labours over the last eight years bearing fruit. Wenger was able to win the title here within 18 months as he inherited a fully-functioning strikeforce of Bergkamp and Ian Wright, plus the famed defensive unit upon which earlier titles had been constructed. Wenger's ideas were revolutionary in 1996. His side is so good now as he was ahead of the game back then, and has been able to tweak a little here, add a little flair there, and oversee a stunning evolution. And yet in October 2001, after three years of finishing runners-up (success by Arsenal's standards over the majority of the last few decades, but seen then as a sign of stagnation), Arsenal were languishing eighth and Wenger was a spent force. I know: I heard Gooners on 606 tell the world as much.
Nowadays, it's impossible for a manager at a big club to have that kind of cultural impact and turn donkeys into free-thinking ball-playing liberos, and to be alone in mining the European backwaters for hidden gems, such as Patrick Vieira, rotting in Milan's reserves; nowadays, all managers do that. Even Sam Allardyce - a clod-hopping English centre back from the 1970s - manages using specialised fitness coaches, psychologists, dieticians, alternative medicines, and so on.
At Liverpool, Gerard Houllier had made all these beneficial changes; it still left us short, so action was required. Benitez cannot come in and have an instant impact in that sense. The players were already ultra-professional (with one or two exceptions, such as Diouf, now shown the door), so it was more a case of tinkering with things on the pitch, not off it. Those changes include adding width to the side, defending higher up the pitch (not easy without pace at the back) and getting back to attractive (but potent) possession football. The latter is not something that suddenly clicks into gear overnight, but the second half against Man City proved the potential is there. Consistency will only come once it has become second nature to the players.
Chelsea, meanwhile, have spent £200m in 12 months, with - for the first time ever - no limits to a club's spending power. What problems did Mourinho have to solve even before he gave his chairman a list of players to sign? Not many, and the squad has been bolstered by nearly £100m this summer. We've spent with relative largesse by previous standards, but £32m looks small change compared to Abramovich's expenditure. William Gallas has been one of the best centre backs in recent seasons in this country, and can't get a game.
They didn't get Steven Gerrard, thankfully, and we should appreciate our captain and stop worrying that he might leave next summer; surely when he agreed to stay, he wasn't under the illusion that the team would transform into championship material within a month? Are we saying he's that stupid? Now Madrid are rumoured to be lining up a bid next summer; if they do, so be it. The lure might be too much for Steven, but they won't get him on the cheap. We'll cross that bridge if we ever come to it. As for him looking miserable - well, he smiled pretty widely after scoring against Man City, and if fans expected him to be happy during the two subsequent defeats, then surely we are talking about a different player? (Just think of all those times Roy Keane looked unhappy during the 1990s, as he strove for perfection).
Both London high-flyers were already well ahead of us (20-30 points, as well as making the quarter-finals of the CL) before this season even started. In some senses, Rafa - even once he has re-built the side - will be sending his Formula One car onto the track several laps behind the competition. Even Man United, who have had their worst start to a season for many years, have been able to go out and spend £27m on a striker, while awaiting a £29m defender to return from suspension. Our entire strike-force cost just over half a "Rooney", and they can also field £6m Smith, £13m Saha, and £19m Van Nistelrooy.
If we can finish ahead of any one of these three sides, we'll have had a very good season. One aim for this transitional season has to be to finish behind no other team than those three (distinctly possible, once the anomalies of an early-season table disappear) and in finishing fourth at worst try to make sure we end up with a more respectable points tally than last time. It is almost impossible to make much more of an impact than that.
The other aim has to be to make sure that, come May, Rafa has assembled a well-oiled machine which can begin the following season capable of mounting a serious challenge from the starting grid. Where Rafa has his work cut out is in the fact that last season's top three already ally a hard-working ethic to a possession football game - which can also counter-attack at pace (Chelsea's early-season tactics notwithstanding; it's hard to believe once Robben and Duff are fully fit they'll remain so dull). Madrid and Barcelona, for all their talent, were there to be beaten due to the lack of heart for a fight, and the over-reliance on attacking talent at the expense of decent defenders. Benitez's Valencia got the balance right. He needs to do the same at Liverpool, but purely to play catch-up.
So while his task is even harder at Liverpool, at the very least I trust he can make us competitive again. It may take time, but patience remains a virtue, and patience was something Liverpool fans used to be famed for.
