I thought this was a good read and had a similar title to this thread.
Why Rafael Benitez is immune to the pressure despite Liverpool’s dire formhttp://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/english-football/why-rafael-benitez-is-immune-to-the-pressure-despite-liverpool-s-dire-form-1.928377Gabriele Marcotti
Published on 25 Oct 2009
Before we get carried away, let’s remind ourselves: Rafa Benitez has been here before.
In 1996, he was sacked after winning just two of 23 games at Real Valladolid. The following season, he was at Osasuna: one win in nine, then the bullet.
That was pressure. Real pressure. He was a 35-year-old manager getting his first crack at professional football, unsure of whether he could make the grade. And making the grade mattered not just to him, but to his family. He was a mediocre semi-professional footballer who, at age 26, chose to throw himself headfirst into coaching. Ask him about pressure and the fear of losing his job and that’s what he would tell you. That was pressure. This is nothing.
There are many reasons why he feels immune to pressure. But it’s not because one of his employers, George Gillett, said “he was the best in the business”. Nor is it because Kenny Dalglish, Liverpool’s resident legend, confirmed his job was not in danger. And, believe it or not, it’s also not because he knows full well that he’s simply too expensive to sack: letting him go would cost Liverpool some £20 million, an unthinkable sum for a cash-strapped club with two owners who don’t get along and view each other with suspicion.
No, the main reason he feels immune to pressure is that he believes that his way of doing things will, ultimately, yield results. Like a gambler who develops a system and knows he needs to stick with it even through a bad run, Benitez perseveres. His eyes tell him that Jamie Carragher has lost a step and isn’t the player he was a few years ago, his mind and his charts tell him that he remains one of the most athletic players in the side and that the current slide is just a blip. His eyes tell him that Lucas looks entirely overmatched as a holding midfielder, his mind and his charts tell him the Brazilian is bound to grow into the position. His eyes tell him that Dirk Kuyt simply can’t fill in for Fernando Torres when his centre-forward is sidelined, his mind and his charts conclude that the Dutchman is, in fact, a reliable striker when played up front.
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Benitez would probably differ and refer Einstein to his experience at Valencia in 2001/02, when he won La Liga (over Zinedine Zidane’s European champions Real Madrid, no less) with a side whose top scorer notched just seven goals, despite enduring insults and criticism all year long. That experience proved to Benitez that his way could work and that, once you’ve found the secret to success, you’d be mad to let it slip from your grasp or betray it by trying something different.
Four consecutive losses have resulted in many calling for his head. And, to make matters worse, today Anfield welcomes the last side in the universe you want to face when you’ve lost four straight: Manchester United. A fifth defeat on the bounce would make it Liverpool’s worst run since 1953, the year they were relegated from the top flight.
“I am not worried,” he says. “I know what to do. We need to win a few games to lift the mood. And then we have to work hard to do things in the right way. Once we’ve done that – and I’m sure we will – everything will be OK.”
In some ways, it appears ludicrous that his position should be under threat. Nobody – with the exception of Mr. Ferguson and Bob Paisley – has taken an English club to more Champions League/European Cup finals than he has. Only Dalglish has won more matches in his first 200 games in charge at Anfield than he has. What’s more, Benitez has done it during one of the most turbulent times in the club’s recent history, with an unstable ownership structure and a horrendous burden of debt. And he’s done it while matched against Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho: arguably the English game has never had three managers of such stature competing against each other at any one time.
Yet when you look at the way in which he has achieved his success, his position looks less secure. Benitez has defied conventional wisdom time and again. Most top European sides have a serviceable back-up centre-forward. Benitez has David N’Gog, a 20-year-old kid who has scored four league goals in his entire career. The alternative is taking Kuyt and playing him up front, causing disruption in midfield. Speaking of midfield, the decision to replace the departed holding midfielder Xabi Alonso with the attacking midfielder Alberto Aquilani is equally mystifying. Playing Fabio Aurelio, a left-back, in central midfield was another X-Files sort of move.
Coupled with this is a transfer policy which, more often than not, has backfired badly. He spent a combined £40m on Andrea Dossena, Ryan Babel and the now-departed Robbie Keane, three guys who have contributed close to nothing at Anfield. And he has signed dozens of teenagers from around the globe in the hopes of emulating Arsene Wenger. Thus far, Emiliano Insua is the only one to have made a mark on the first team. Meanwhile a gaggle of others you’ve probably never heard of – Nikolay Mihaylov, Sebastian Leto, Ronald Huth, Astrit Ajdarevic, Marvin Pourie, Gabriel Paletta, Antonio Barragan – have come and gone.
The flipside of this, of course, is that despite everything Benitez still manages to put out a very competitive team, one capable of advancing deep into the Champions League each season while coming within a few points of Manchester United in the Premier League last year. If Benitez could do all this while making a hash of his transfers, imagine what he can achieve if he starts getting this right.
That very logic might be part of what keeps him in a job. But while he may not be feeling the pressure, his owners certainly are, courtesy of the tens of thousands who are expected to protest ahead of the match today. And as the screws turn on them, you can see a scenario developing where the axe falls on Benitez. Not now, maybe not next month, but if things don’t start to improve, Gillett and Tom Hicks may feel they have no other option. That’s how high the stakes are.
Failure to qualify for next year’s Champions League would mean taking a £40m hit. And that’s a darn sight more expensive than the £20m it would take to see off Benitez. A club like Liverpool, with outstanding debts set to mature in the next six months and creditors knocking at the Anfield door simply can’t afford it. (Unless, of course, the owners put more of their own money in, which they have indicated they will not do). If things reach a point where a shake-up is needed to pursue the top four, they may well be tempted to pull the trigger and gamble upon somebody else, maybe King Kenny himself (whether he’d be tempted is another matter).
But that day is not here yet. For the time being, as Benitez sees it, Liverpool are simply a team three points away from fourth place in the Premier League and with a tough task ahead in the Champions League. Tough? Sure. But manageable, as long as he sticks to the Benitez Way.
