Comments on the website from lvpl78 at replies 37, 101 and 106 are superb.
I agree with those saying Rafa was atrocious in the transfer window, as the combined 103 million pounds return on Mascherano, Alonso and Torres testifies.
On top of that Benitez has wasted 6 million on the dreadful Pepe Reina, who is now clearly worth less than that. Same goes for the awful Daniel Agger who Benitez splurged a further 6.5m on, and Martin Skrtel, who at another 6 million must be one of the most expensive defenders in world football, and is not as good as Rio Ferdinand who cost only fractionally more.
Then you have players like Yossi Benayoun, who whilst scoring several hat-tricks and being sold for a profit to Chelsea, was total rubbish. And Glen Johnson, who although he may have cost less than five
separate Chelsea full backs, is - wait for it - suspect defensively.
The signing of Momo Sissoko was another disaster. Sold two years later for a profit to buy Mascherano. And Peter Crouch, who whilst becoming an England regular at Liverpool, was eventually sold at a profit along with Craig Bellamy, also sold at a profit, to buy Fernando Torres, who turned out to be total pigswill.
What really gets my goat though is Benitez's uncontrollable spending on the likes of Josemi for 2million pounds which is a huge amount of money in modern football, or Andrea Dossena, who ended up being sold at a enormous loss of 1 million pounds and replaced by the disastrous Insua, who Benitez irresponsibly splashed zero pounds on.
His crazy spending, reaching almost a third that of Chelsea who he finished above and had a better record in Europe than, continued with the gargantuan mistake that was Aquilani, a player injured for most of last season, then loaned out to Juve this season, where he has been the best midfielder in Serie A.
It's all very well these Liverpool fans saying he won more games, won more points, had a better record in Europe than any Liverpool manager since Dalglish, but he's rubbish don't you know? The Champions league was a total fluke, as demonstrated by a continual failure to get anywhere near the latter stages ever again post 2005. He only won the CL in 2005 because he was bequeathed great players from his predecessor like Smicer, Traore, Biscan, Kewell, Baros, Cisse (all played in Istanbul) - along with the likes of Cheyrou, Murphy, Diao, Diomede and others. He didn't have clue what he was doing - he just bagged multiple very flukey wins in Europe against the likes of Barca, Real Madrid, Inter, Juve, Chelsea, Milan and others.
Finally, what annoyed me most about Benitez was his defensive tactics. Whilst it is true to say that Liverpool scored more goals than any other side in England in 2008-09, including beating Real Madrid 4-0 and United 4-1 at OT, they were still just so defensive, all because they had two holding midfielders. So they scored over 100 goals! Big deal!! Defensive!
Rafa needs to learn how to spot up and coming talent on the cheap like Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick, Nani, Anderson, Owen Hargreaves, Juan Veron and Dimitar Berbatov. Ok, so maybe Chelsea spent more than Benitez during his tenure by about 4 to 1, but he's still rubbish. He spent 10 million on Dirk Kuyt, who whilst having an impressive goals and assists record, and being one of the stars of World Cup 2010, is still a very poor player. And by the way, Benitez is very lucky that he had more players at the World Cup than any other English side. Another fluke!
How managers like Steve Bruce and Harry Redknapp would love to have had some money to spend on players, instead of making do with the peanuts they are allowed to spend on the likes of Kenwyne Jones, Darren Bent, or David Bentley - all far better than the foreign players Benitez signed.
I agree with ShefieldHarry, who rightly points out that Benitez should go and try managing a mid range club instead of crazy high spending teams like Liverpool. I'd like to see Rafa go abroad to somewhere like Spain and see how he does against the likes of Barca or Real on a shoestring. See how he likes that.
Benitez should also look at Arsene Wenger for a lesson in how to win trophies properly. I don't care that the two sides that have exponentially outpent every other team, Chelsea and United, have won the league every single year since 2004, Benitez is still dreadful.
The problems Roy Hodgson had were nothing to do with his tactics. It's all because he was left bad players. Benitez got lucky with that set of bad players over the course of several years finishing top 4, 2nd, getting record points totals, breaking goal scoring records, and Reina winning golden gloves awards, winning the CL, getting to another final, winning the FA cup etc etc. He got lucky over a period of seven years. Hodgson was deseperately unlucky because the players he inherited were rubbish. If the former Bristol City manager, who once got Inter Milan to finish 5th, and who four years ago was coaching in the UAE, can't get the best out of tem it proves they are rubbish. Now we are witnessing Kenny Dalglish come in and be unbelievably lucky in spite of reverting to tactics much closer to Benitez's. So far he has had four very lucky wins and clean sheets.
Benitez is a terrible manager, as his record at Valencia shows. He's also clearly very difficult to get along with as this interviewer clearly found him cold and distant and didn't enjoy his time with him one little bit.
I'd like to add my agreement with Freddie I, post #80.
What on earth was Benitez playing at with the youth policy at Liverpool prior to his arrival?
It was a massive oversight on his part circa 2001 to not have clairvoyantly instructed the Liverpool youth coaches at that time to select and nurture better players, so that he would be able to make use of them five years later when he became Liverpool manager.
On top of that, the list of talented players that actually came through the ranks during Benitez's early tenure, only to be mistakenly discarded, is galling and firm confirmation of what an awful manager he is. Stephen Warnock, Neil Mellor, Darren Potter, Jack Hobbs, Richie Partridge and Zak Whitbread are just a few of the galacticos Benitez foolishly let slip through his fingers. He has also showed his ungratefulness for these players by 100% revamping the youth system at Liverpool, employing the same coaches that nurtured the current Barca team as youngsters. Now Liverpool are having to make do with youngsters showing very little potential such as Raheem Sterling, Suso, and 2010 UEFA European Under-19 Football Championship Golden boot winner, and Spanish prodigy, Dani Pacheco.
His predecessor Gerard Houllier inherited a rag tag bunch of poor youngsters including Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen. People might point out that Houllier played Carragher at full back and Gerrard in central midfield, where everyone knows he is at his best. Benitez played Carragher as a centre back to disastrous results in the 2005 European campaign, and moved Gerrard to a support striker role, with halrious consequences as the hapless out of sorts midfielder scored 24 goals in one season becoming footballer of the year. Benitez was even idiotic enough to play Gerrard right wing in 2006, which hugely backfired as Gerrard mustered a measly 23 goals, with Liverpool winning ten consecutive league games. luckily this year sanity was restored and Roy restored Steven to his rightful place in the middle of the park and the team never looked back. Rather worryingly, Kenny Dalglish seems to now have moved him slightly further forward.
But Freddie I is right. It would be a disaster if Benitez were to take charge at somewhere like say - Old Trafford. Especially because he would halt the youth policy that has relentlessly flowed under Ferguson at a consistant rate, with about eight players breaking through in 1995, then none until John O Shea became a decent squad player in the early part of this decade, and now local Salford boys like the Da Silva brothers, Hernandez, and Bebe who the canny Ferguson frugally purchased for 7.5 million just five weeks after he had signed for Vitória de Guimarães on a free transfer.
Freddie is also right to point out the comparitive league positions of Benitez and his predecessors. Those who foolishly defend Benitez by pointing out that his points per game, win ratio, and points totals were higher than his precessors, fail to take into account the fact that Benitez had an easy ride up against novices like Wenger, Ferguson, Mourinho and Hiddink. I don't care if Benitez did achieve a points total in 2009 that would have won the league in most other seasons (including this one) on a budget much smaller than his rivals, with Roman Abramovich pumping unprecedented amounts of cash into Chelsea. His predecessors had to contend with the likes of Bruce Rioch, Ruud Gullit, and Glenn Hoddle. It's all very well people arguing that by the time Benitez left Liverpool, the 15 most expensive signings in Premier League history were all made by Chelsea, Man United or City, and reminding people that in relative terms Houllier and Evans spent much more, or that indeed Roy Evans broke the British transfer record to sign Stan Collymore. But he is still rubbish, as Freddie I and others have highlighted. Look at Robbie Keane. Bought for a large fee, played with mixed effect, sold soon after for a loss. You would never get Harry Redknapp doing that. Not only did Benitez sign a bad player in Keane, but before he was forced to sell him to make interest payments, sometimes he didn't even pick him, and was rightly slaughtered by Jamie "you don't put a 20m pound on the bench Redknapp" such as in the match where Liverpool won at Newcastle 5-1.
Hear hear G4LIVERPOOL post #103
I hated those defensive tactics in 2009, when Liverpool scored 104 goals. Boring! And good shout on the problems he had relating to players. Imagine Ferguson falling out with Jaap Stam, David Beckham or Paul Ince. It would never happen, he's too nice a guy. Luckily, the players Benitez fell out with eventually got their way, with Hodgson appointed and a return to the glory years.
And what I like about your 2005 argument is that it's well thought through, backed by logic, and rational. That Champions League win was all about the determination of the players and won single handedly by Gerrard after he switched to right wing back of his own accord. It was all done in spite of the manager, who was telling them they had already lost, and who also managed to screw up the preceding four legs against Chelsea and Juve. Luckily Benitez was shown up for what he really was the following four years as Liverpool reached another final, a semi final, and a quarter final, luckily getting fortunate wins over Barca, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Real Madrid (who they scraped past 5-0 on aggregate by putting every man behind the ball and defending for their lives).
