KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Benitez's Legacy

People until the reality of this man's legacy is realised the club will never move on new owners or not , OK hodgson has not helped himself in carrying on with benitez's tactics and in the end unless there is a dramatic u-turn he will get the sack , But its not all his fault the rubbish that he was left with has left Liverpool Football Club like a desert with well below sub-standard players who cost millions , and superstar players who just don't want to be here . FOR ME THIS IS ALL THE LEGACY OF BENITEZ , people rightly call H&G for bleeding the club with money , but its was benitez who has left this team barren with million wasted on rubbish and a thread bare squad for hodgson to pick the pieces up , as i say yes he will probably get the sack sooner rather than later but a lot of it is down to Mr Benitez and his horrible legacy .

Don’t Blame Benitez

This is going to be a crap column. Sorry. The conclusions derived from its content are as wayward as a Paul Konchesky cross, the gags here aren’t good enough to compete with the likes of Barney Ronay and the cadence, well that’s just all over the place, the place, the place. It’s not my fault though. It’s the fault of my predecessor. Sure, I hit the keyboard and made the words, but the last bloke? Well, he was just awful.

Does that make sense? Well, it makes as much sense as blaming Rafa Benitez for Liverpool’s miserable start to the season. After all, Roy Hodgson signed three of the men who failed against Everton, and that number would have been higher had it not been for the unavoidable absence of Christian Poulsen. But ignoring personnel, shape, style and logic, pundits have been lining up to pin it all on the deposed Spaniard, poring over his failures with glee, pausing only to shine spotlights at Ryan Babel while bellowing, “£11.5m! What the hell was he thinking?” at passers-by.

I am no apologist for Benitez. The day after he left Anfield, I wrote a column that began with the words, “Rafa Benitez deserved to be sacked.” The very next day a number of angry emails arrived, the majority of which were typed in block capitals. But I stand by my point.

Liverpool hadn’t just finished 7th, they had been bombed out of the Champions League in a group stage seeded for their benefit. To make matters worse, they were knocked out of the FA Cup by Reading. At home. In a replay. They only qualified for the Europa League because the Football Association refused to run the risk of Portsmouth having their credit card refused at the airport. By any criteria, with the best will in the world, this was the most disastrous season Liverpool had experienced since the Souness era. Two decades ago, it would have meant the bullet. In these hysterical times it’s only a wonder Benitez wasn’t sacked sooner.

Not that he had much of a chance by the end. He was doomed the moment it emerged his American paymasters had been hitching up their skirts and whistling provocatively at Jurgen Klinsmann. Undermined and humiliated, he was a dead man walking. To make matters worse, the ruinous interest repayments from the deceitful leveraged buy-out robbed him of the ability to strengthen his squad. His final acquisitions were signed for transfer fees that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Kenny Dalglish’s day. But the damage was done before the arrival of Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

Benitez was never able to lift Liverpool to a level where they could consistently challenge the big guns. Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia were superb early signings. Pepe Reina, a year later, was even better. Fernando Torres, not so obviously brilliant as people now make out, arrived in 2007, as did the disagreeable, but effective Javier Mascherano. Five players who would have challenged for a place in the Manchester United first team. Where are the others? Daniel Agger, Dirk Kuyt, Peter Crouch and Alvaro Arbeloa were all good professionals, but as Yossi Benayoun proved this summer, Liverpool’s better players would only be worth a place on Chelsea’s bench.

In erring in the transfer market, Benitez is hardly alone. But he did have an advantage that only a handful of other managers in England shared. He never had to deal with players demanding moves to bigger clubs. He never lost his stars to the European elite. He always had money to spend and, regardless of what Sir Alex Ferguson thinks, there has always been value in the transfer market. And, until the arrival of Hicks and Gillett, he had time. Time enough to forge a squad better than the one that finished seventh. Time enough to build a squad that could have been better insulated against the changing conditions.

Nevertheless, he is a fine manager. The Liverpool side that triumphed in Istanbul were comfortably the worst set of players to lift that trophy since Steaua Bucharest in 1986. Gerard Houllier was right. They were, for the most part, his team and he’s welcome to them. It will be many years before players as mediocre as Igor Biscan and Milan Baros bat so far beyond their average. Benitez won that trophy though, driving his team through the knock-out rounds with tactics that frustrated and defeated some of Europe’s biggest names. He did it the hard way and deserves his place in history. The last tilt at the title was impressive as well, especially given that Torres, regarded by some as one of only two decent players in the side, was absent for so much of the season. In the end though, Benitez couldn’t keep it up. His squad wasn’t good enough to win the title. Or challenge for it. They were good enough to finish seventh.

Which bring us back to Hodgson. He did not inherit relegation fodder. He inherited a seventh placed team. He added some names, he shed a few. He imposed his tactics and his ideals. It takes time to change the mentality of a club, but Hodgson has moved quickly. In a matter of months he has taken under-performing disappointments and turned them into screamingly awful empty shirts. This isn’t entirely his fault. He has endured as many distractions and pitfalls as his predecessor. But it is his responsibility.

Blaming Benitez isn’t just wrong, it’s self-destructive. It obscures the real reasons for Liverpool’s problems. It provides an excuse for failure and footballers rarely need to be asked twice to take one of those. Liverpool are crap because they play crap football. Granted, they haven’t played glorious football since the days of Roy Evans, but good God in heaven, they were never this bad. They lump the ball artlessly into the sky and hope that when it comes down, it lands somewhere near Torres. If that doesn’t work, they try it again. And again. And again.

Liverpool are crap because their well-remunerated players are offering up crap performances. Steven Gerrard can pass the ball far more accurately than he did on Sunday. Joe Cole can be more incisive, more daring and more dangerous. Lucas is a decent player, he really, really is. But he wasn’t this weekend. The list of despair goes on and on and on and on. These men need to stand up, take a look at the badge on their shirt and realise that they cannot continue to be so second-rate.

But tactics and motivation are the province of the manager. Not last season’s manager, the current manager. Hodgson has had to deal with boardroom uncertainty and a home crowd who were never entirely sure about him in the first place. This was not an easy assignment and I don’t envy him it for a moment. But it is his job.

For finishing seventh last season, blame Benitez. For bobbing about in the relegation zone, blame Hodgson. This isn’t politics, you can’t blame everything on the previous administration. Liverpool need to face up to the real reasons for their failure.

(Source: Iain Macintosh, [oops].Com)

Amen to that. Couldn't agree more, but Roy has also managed to p!ss me off royally in the last few weeks, he is turning out to be nothing more than a much older version of Benitez.

The first manager to get rid of/stop blindly selecting Lucas and Carragher will be an instant hero in my eyes. Give the latter a place on the coaching staff for his years of honest service but he's shot and clearly hasn't been good enough for over two years. As for Lucas, his shortcomings have been done to death but no criticism however extreme is unjustified. For me the defining moment of today's debacle was our first attack (after about 25 minutes of the game, which says it all). We had a decent bit of pressure, culminating in the ball being played back to Lucas 25 yards from goal. He just chipped it about a mile over everyones head, out of play at an obtuse angle. I saw Nando look at it, following the balls trajectory with a look of amazement on his face. No doubt he was thinking "WHAT THE FECK IS THAT??? How could a pub team player, let alone a member of the LFC squad, manage that???"

Cull Aurelio (again), Insua, Ngog, Maxi, Skrtel, Agger (unless he can actually play more than 20 games a season), Poulsen and Aquilani as soon as possible. Either play Babel or let him go for £5m if necessary, stop asking for unrealistic sums and give Joe Cole a rocket up his @rse. Otherwise accept he is the new Robbie Keane and ship him out as well. There's no excuse for his insipid performances.

Oh and then there's Dirk Kuyt. I like his attitude and work rate, but his career has been ruined by Benitez forcing him to play a bizarre right wing back role after being bought as one of the most prolific strikers in Dutch football. Now, he's getting old and very injury-prone. So that leaves us with a core of quality players numbering... ???

yeah yeah yeah!! f****king brainless!
blame everything on rafa!! when he's long gone!
acting just like tommy eh?

@OP: So, uh, Benitez makes us play ultra-defensive football against WBA and Blackpool at home, then? Wake the f*ck up, you idiot. Benitez is gone now. Roy is the one making all the decisions at the moment, and his decision-making is dire. Rafa may have screwed up a lot of things, but there were a significant number of positives that your one eye seems to have missed. About the only things Roy has done well this season was not sell everyone and buy Cole and Meireles. His results, however, speak for themselves. I could manage this team better, and I promise you I suck.

Tactics, formation and team selction are to blame. It is no coincidence that we play better in the last 15-20 min when we are chasing the game. We always go back to a 4-4-2 with Stevie in the middle. This was not Torre's fault today. He ran as much as he did when he first got here but the supply was rubbish until Stevie went back into midfield. And giving Nando a partner up front stretches the defence out. In the original formation out there (was it 4-5-1 or 4-4-1-1 or 4-3-2-1......I have no clue and I suspect neither do the players) all the defence had to do was put 3 blokes on Torres and push the rest up on the TWO defensive midfielders. Why you would go to Goodison and defend is beyond me.

These comments backing Mr Benitez are just typical of the modern day Liverpool Football Club Supporter , If Liverpool F.C. supporters honestly believe the current decline is all down to a manager who has been here a few months and not a big hang over of the previous regime then you are all deluded , Yes i say hodgson has not helped himself in any way and will get sacked sooner rather than later , But to just dismiss the last few years of Mr Benitez as not a cause of the current problems in unbelievable . Tom Hicks is and was a fr@ud but he was spot on about benitez and about him losing as he said his leaders , Benitez has left LFC along with H&G like a swarm of locusts has passed over anfield and melwood Bad signing money wasted and a really thread bare squad of below standard journeyman players , ok hodgson brought in konchesky poulson and cole but its the establish untouchable players who are the bigger problem not poulson or konchesky , the likes of cole,gerrard,torres,johnson, lucas all going through the motions , but its all hodgson's fault madness the only way liverpool will ever recover is when the whole sorry time of H&G and benitez is left firmly in the past this will never happen while he doesn't get the fair share of the blame for the teams decline . as i say hodgson will go its very likely to happen when the new owners evaluate the club which the should do but until the real culprit of our decline has been blamed (BENITEZ) we are in for a long long long cold few seasons , Its really sad that a great event in the history of our club and football in a whole is now a massive milestone around the clubs neck due to the ineptness of the previous regime .

i despair you deserve the team to be 20 th if you believe what you write .

I don't waste time trying to defend benitez, the results speak for themselves 2 european finals one second place in the premier league, like him or loathe him hes a quality manager how we have paid for his replacement hodgson and its going to get worse before it gets better

Garbage mate. There have been significant changes in the squad since Rafa went. Rafa signed some duds as do all managers (hindsight is great) but he also signed some class players. I'd give anything to have him back over Roy.