Raphael Benitez would not have been my first choice to succeed GH; I'd have gone along with lots of others for Jose Mourino.
Thank goodness we didn’t get a vote.
Waving the exceptionally attractive Russian’s chequebook about, he proceeds to turn Euro2004 into the Chelsea trials.
What a whingeing graceless conceited man he comes across as; everything is someone else’s fault.
His squad are never lucky, never in the wrong ala the Kezman pre-season sending off. Then on Saturday, he moans like hell about the elbow, choosing to ignore the punch thrown first.
He spends zillions on a team that are far from convincing and not very entertaining. He appears to want to buy the title with dour 1-0 performances and fluky wins.
He moans away like a good’un because some players don’t want to join him to sit in the reserves for most of the season.
He appears to be doing his best to demotivate some of his own players for example Duff.
The press have always favoured Chelsea even above Arsenal as the south’s answer to the “glamorous” Man Utd.
Look into their history and you’ll learn that they’ve always been a glamorous “team of all-stars” … my backside!
They had one fluky championship with an average side and one decent side in the sixties.
For the time being, the southern press are still in love with “one-nil” Mo. But give them time…
Contrast this with Rafa.
A bit faltering in his use of English in the first press conference, I liked what I saw but wasn’t convinced by his PR “presence”.
Some sections of the press have had a go at him over his English; then I got to think about Uncle Bob Paisley. If you were judged by eloquence, Bob wouldn’t even get on a shortlist these days
Then there’s Rafa’s buys. Despite having little ready cash in the bank, Parry and Moores have given him the money he needs for his well considered purchases.
The southern press are dismissing most of them because they’re not household name megastars. Hmmm reminds me of the buys Shanks and Paisley used to go in for players like Kevin Keegan, Emlyn Hughes, Ian St John. Players about to make their mark rather than baggage carrying prima donnas. I’ve never heard Bobby Robson rave about any no-mark players, he’s raving about these cheap imports. I trust his judgement.
Rafa’s press conferences are getting better almost daily; Anfield is buzzing again.
The uncommitted are being remotivated or shipped out as befits their arrogance.
I think we are about to see that we don’t need the Thai money; we don’t need the Scouser who’s so committed to the cause that he’s become a Channel Islander.
We need what we’ve got; a real man motivator; a determined stickler for detail; a man as equally excited at what he might achieve as we are; a man with a lot of similarities to the greatest OOTer of them all, a Spanish flavoured Shankly.
Thank god we didn’t get Maureen.
© 2004 HH
