benitez at risk of self-destruction
So now the triumphant red tide of Liverpool threatens to engulf the brave, but perhaps still fragile, resurrection of Harry Redknapp's Tottenham. Or does it?
There is a small fear on Merseyside, but if it doesn't seem to be an immediate threat to Liverpool's superb start to the season it does have an impeccable source. It is the property of one of the great Merseyside legends, Ian St John.
St John spent the early going of the season in the warmth of the evidence that, finally, Rafa Benitez was beginning to apply to the Premier League the nous that has always distinguished his work in Europe.
Week by week, game to game, Liverpool have been looking like a real team, strong, balanced and coherent.
If full-back is still a source of some concern, and the absence of Fernando Torres is a blow no team in football could suffer lightly, St John has been hugely encouraged by the resurgence of Xabi Alonso and the sense that Benitez has at last realised the value of letting his men grow into a winning rhythm in the league.
Until Wednesday night, that was. Liverpool struggled to master a Portsmouth side stricken by the loss of Redknapp and armed with the single threat of Peter Crouch and the long ball, one that Jamie Carragher and the near superannuated Sami Hyypia seemed capable of absorbing all the way to Christmas.
St John said: "It was a fortunate victory and a very disappointing performance -- and it sent a worrying message. It made you wonder if Rafa was at it again?"
He was at rotation, the dreaded rotation, of course.
Dirk Kuyt was back in the middle, Xavier Mascherano and Robbie Keane were on the bench, along with the excellent wide man Albert Riera, a player who unlike those such as Harry Kewell and Jermain Pennant, has displayed a relentless willingness to give the team the breadth which has been such a vital part of Liverpool's best ever start in the Premiership.
The team which so brilliantly faced down Luiz Felipe's rampant and expressive Chelsea was suddenly a thing of blessed if acutely recent memory.
"This," claimed Benitez, "sends the message to players and everyone that we can change it and still win."
It is an assertion that has been betrayed many times in Liverpool's dismaying history of Premier League failure and if the victory at Stamford Bridge was a stirring endorsement of allowing players to settle into a winning groove -- and the unstaunched adrenaline of success -- what happened against Pompey told us all we already knew about what happens when such a rhythm is disrupted.
Hapless
Benitez made four changes and might well have seen the loss of two points but for the handling offence of Papa Bouba Diop 15 minutes from the end.
Naturally, he was unrepentant. Though a man of great personal charm at times, Benitez can be as obdurate as an encircled rhino.
"After the victory over Chelsea winning tonight was always going to be the main thing. We want to stay at the top for a long time. With another game in three days and then the Champions League after that, we need to manage the squad and the players."
The exasperation of St John is maybe not so hard to understand. He was, after all , involved in a title win which, under the leadership of Bill Shankly, required no more than 12 players, at a time when pitches began to resemble the trenches of the Somme by January and players of the leading clubs routinely got through 60-plus games.
Different times of course, but we are talking about late autumn rather than the rigours of winter and the exhaustions of the spring.
For a man of such achievement, Benitez's obsession with 'squad management' remains a source of deep mystery. We are not talking about minimal adjustments catering for questionable fitness or nagging injury. What we had on Wednesday was wholesale dislocation of the unit that so undermined Chelsea.
The absence of Riera's constant relevance to the shape and the momentum of the team was especially costly as Alonso, the star of the season, fought hard to find some of the authority which has been so influential -- and has enabled Steven Gerrard to operate as he does best, as a shock troop who can make dramatic interventions rather than set the tone of a performance.
Presumably, Benitez will revert to the formation that so effectively stifled Chelsea. Mascherano will seal up the midfield. Kuyt will run himself into the ground wide -- and in areas where his lack of a killing touch is more easily forgiven. Riera will go back to vitally important work. Keane will strive to re-kindle some momentum.
But then even against fragile Tottenham, starting all over again could be a problem. Spurs' David Bentley claimed he felt like Superman after the 4-4 spectacular against Arsenal. That surely represents some degree of momentum. It is perhaps their only edge but the worry for Liverpool -- and especially a shrewd witness like Ian St John -- is that it might prove to have been donated by Rafa Benitez.
Or to put it another way, has the coach of the early season mislaid the lost chord so soon after finding it?
http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/benitez-at-risk-of-selfdestruction-1514611.html