As much as I love him, he does like a bit of rhetoric Brendan, and more than anyone I can remember has the media eating out of the Palm of his hand. Feels like he should do the Kenny now and then and tell them to fuck off.
I understand what you’re saying but it’s really better for everyone concerned, Brendan himself most of all, that he doesn’t.
I
loathe the football media, absolutely
loathe them. There are many reasons for that which I won’t go into here because this post is already long enough (although you can probably go ahead and picture BBC’s entire line-up of pundits as a starting point), but the bias I saw perpetrated against Rafa Benítez during his time in charge is what will always stick with me the most. I was never a huge reader of newspapers or watcher of television punditry anyway, but even so, I started to notice quite early on in his reign that Rafa wasn’t getting anywhere near the level of credit, or at least objectivity, that he deserved, that other managers got. I mentioned the specific narratives earlier, but there were many: he’s too cold, he doesn’t understand the English game, zonal-marking is an abomination were the main, recurring ones, but what about calling Everton a small club (he didn’t, of course, it was more a dig at the negative approach of David Moyes which saw him leave Everton after over 10 years without an away win at Anfield, Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge or Arsenal), his supposed Keegan-like meltdown in January 2009, no good signings in the £3m-£10m range changed to £3m-£5m eight months later in order to omit Pepe Reina (hatchet-job courtesy of Alan Hansen, full details
here)? In the midst of making Liverpool a European powerhouse and slowly building a challenger for the League title up against the financial juggernauts of Chelsea and Manchester United, he was treated with less respect than the likes of Roy Hodgson, Harry Redknapp and Sam Allardyce, despite a collective haul of one FA Cup and a few League titles in Sweden and Denmark against a man who had twice out-thought and out-played Real Madrid’s original
Galacticos in Spain and won a Champions League with Djimi Traoré.
Something was off and the realisation only dawned on me slowly over the course of his six years in the job: they simply didn’t like him. Remember during his last season in charge, when he invited Paul Tomkins along to Melwood to do an
interview? As I recall, the general reaction in the mainstream media was harsh, the overall impression given that Rafa had some nerve to grant access like that to someone who wasn’t even a journalist. It was largely unspoken, of course, but the dismissal of Tomkins as nothing but a “blogger” by one writer told you all you needed to know. A few months later, the level and nature of the cheerleading and celebration that took place as media-favourite Roy Hodgson was appointed as Rafa’s successor told you everything. This was no objective journalism; instead, what we got was selective judgements handed down by individuals who had left their collective integrity at the door, highlighted (or lowlighted), I thought, by a deeply personal salvo from Henry Winter who characterised the man who would later donate £96,000 to the Hillsborough Family Support Group and break down in tears at the Hillsborough memorial service as a “cold political animal”.
Now, if you think this doesn’t affect people’s views and perspectives, you’re wrong. We know there are people who let this seep in, the ones whose heads you see religiously stuck in some tabloid or other in the canteen on morning break, telling you with real conviction that Manchester United are signing Gareth Bale and bringing back Cristiano Ronaldo and Paul Pogba or, to use an old example, that Rafa Benítez has spent £500m and signed 150 players because
that’s what it says here. In fact, this post from earlier in the tread sums the reality up nicely as far as I’m concerned:
Basically, it's much easier these days for others to from opinions for you, what with the mass media and all that today.
In the older days, the fans had to form their own opinions. What with the mass deluge of critical pieces from air headed pundits like Alan Shearer, etc, I'm sure some of that subconsciously influences opinion.
All this bullshit that fans have to dodge these days is incredible - sometimes the bullshit sticks to some. It was much better in the old days when the media wasn't the middle man between fans and manager like it is today, and I think loyalty came easier as a result of that.
My respect for Rafa Benítez and Kenny Dalglish is huge, for reasons that go beyond mere results on the pitch, and, with my feelings towards the majority of the mainstream football media being what they are, I enjoyed it immensely that they had no appreciation (or even tolerance, at times) for them. Rafa always remained polite with it, Kenny maybe less so, but as a supporter I loved it. Fuck them and their snide agendas, right? But a supporter can have that attitude. The problem is that when Rafa and Kenny needed breathing space, when results were poor during the 2009/10 and 2011/12 seasons respectively or when the alleged Luis Suárez racial abuse of Patrice Evra took place, followed later by the refused handshake at Old Trafford, or the alleged racial abuse of Tom Adeyemi around that same time, neither of them got it. Instead of the pressure being lifted a little bit, it was gleefully applied with increased force in the figurative equivalent of what happened to Phil Coutinho after his goal against Manchester City the other week (i.e. Lovren apparently trying to remove his jersey forcefully from his body before his teammates took it in turns to pile on top of him). It helped neither them nor the club that the media had so few friendly voices to give them some respite. And as little time as I have for the majority of these people, I’ve come to the conclusion that, as much as I love them, Rafa and Kenny didn’t help themselves, especially given the proliferation of mass media in the 21st century.
Which brings me to Brendan Rodgers. I can’t have been the only one who heard his riposte to Roberto Martinez’s view that “the derby comes at the perfect moment for us…it can kick-start our season after the good moment we are sharing” a few weeks back (“well I think they had their first win in 8 games, so I can only talk about our momentum”) and thought that the media would have eaten Rafa alive for that (innocuous as it was). But they didn’t. And I also got the distinct impression that, at his lowest ebb in October and November, Brendan wasn’t getting quite the same kind of negative treatment that previous Liverpool managers have experienced. For example:
In 2008/09, Liverpool came 2nd, having gathered 86 points (they also went to the quarter-finals of the Champions League). The following season, 2009/10, they started with 19 points from a possible 36. By game 28, they sat on 48 points.
In 2013/14, Liverpool came 2nd under Brendan Rodgers, having gathered 84 points. The following season, 2014/15, they started with 14 points from a possible 36. By game 28, they sat on 51 points.
Similar runs, but the respective media coverage (or narratives) regarding each manager could hardly have been more different. Now it could be argued that Rafa had been in the job for longer and that Brendan deserved the benefit of the doubt more as a result (five and a half years and two and a half years respectively), but it could similarly be argued that a man with Rafa's track record deserved far more respect than he got. Either way, that’s not the way the media works. Rafa bugged them; he was foreign; his tactics were different; his approach, to everyone from players to journalists, was more standoffish. Brendan includes them. Instead of inviting a “blogger” (Paul Tomkins is, of course, a writer, and a damn good one) to Melwood, Brendan invites Robbie Savage. Robbie Savage! Talk about inviting the fox into the henhouse. Savage is the
worst kind of pundit, the one whose main attributes are that he’s a character, his mouth as loud as his hair and clothes, and he’s not afraid to speak his mind. These kinds of people, the likes of Steve Claridge, Craig Burley, I remember Tim Sherwood getting in on the act for a time as well,
tormented Rafa. Robbie Savage is the latest of that breed of pundit, not thoughtful or insightful in the least, happy to get names and words wrong and butcher the very syntax of sentences without a care in the world. And Brendan invited him in. Just over a year later? Savage prefaces a column in which he butchers most of his signings by saying that “I am a fan of Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers and rate him highly as a coach”.
That’s called benefit of the doubt, and it helps. Savage was far less kind the other week about Manuel Pellegrini, unleashing simplistic arguments about 4-4-2. the same approach with which he won the League and League Cup last season. People listen to this shit. Now I’m not saying that Brendan should suddenly go inviting someone like Martin Samuel around for a cosy chat like Tim Sherwood has apparently done, a man whose writing style perfectly suits the rag that he writes for, but it does no harm to keep them happy. We’re talking about the expediency of negative narratives; I think we can all agree that the media have a big hand in conjuring up and reinforcing such narratives. I still recall with dread a comment made by Martin Broughton, temporary chairman of the club back in 2010, who stated in a communication with Jim Boardman on the subject of Rafa’s sacking (the original e-mail was succinctly titled “Thank you for killing my club”) that “I’m sorry you think like that but you are entitled to your opinion.
I note your opinion doesn’t seem to be shared by the media”. Scary stuff and a real indication of how handy it can be to have these people, if not on your side, then at the very least not trying to have you fed to the wolves.
