Liverpool should be clearing the air, not closing ranks
By Clive Tyldesley
Last Updated: 12:53am GMT 20/01/2007
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What we need is a good old row to clear the air. Leaks and briefings and official denials are all well and good, but when relations become strained between the boardroom and the manager's office the best thing for all concerned is just to meet up and have it out. And I'm not talking about Chelsea for once.
In the shadow of all the Machiavellian manoeuvrings at Stamford Bridge, Liverpool have acted out their own episode of Upstairs Downstairs. Because it's Liverpool, decorum and deference kept a lid on things, but Rafa Benitez made some festering frustrations public after the cup defeats to Arsenal. Everyone wants a bit more to spend. It's the time of the month.
The Dubai International Capital Group certainly sound like an organisation with cash in their pockets, and their imminent takeover should free up significant funds for Benitez's impatient team building. But right now Liverpool are third among equals. Manchester United and Chelsea have stolen away in a title race that many felt Liverpool would contest this season, and Benitez says that winning the Premiership is the priority.
Not even Sky can think of a snappy slogan for this 'Wicked Weekend' of summit meetings at Anfield and Arsenal. Only four clubs entertained title ambitions at the start of the season, and by complete coincidence their paths cross again on the same weekend. Sterling attempts will be made to convince us otherwise, but two appear to be playing for a trophy and the other two for a consolation prize. Eight points separate Liverpool and Chelsea at kick-off today. To hear Benitez, that sounds about par for the course.
"Sometimes we go too slow as a club to make a signing we need, and when we do there is not a lot of money." So said the Liverpool manager after Arsenal's superior reserves were underlined in the 6-3 Carling Cup quarter-final victory last week.
This is the same Liverpool manager who was moved to thank his paymasters for "going to the limit" to buy the players he wanted in August. Both Benitez and Chelsea's Jose Mourinho seemed happy enough with their squads back then, but it's all relative. Liverpool's main signing cost £9 million, Chelsea's £30 million.
What the extraordinary clientele of Anfield will demand to see today is progress. The Koppites will ritually remind Mourinho of their haul of European Cups and try to show Chelsea what a really 'big club' look like. But they know that it will take more than Middle Eastern oil to bridge the gap and give the rest of us an even more exciting title race to savour. Benitez insists that "when you look at the bigger picture, you can see how much progress has been made". Listening to the phone-ins last week, that progress is more evident to some supporters than others.
The Liverpool manager is bullish about the value that has been added to his biggest signings since joining Liverpool. He recently cited Jose Reina (£6 million), Momo Sissoko (£5 million), Xabi Alonso (£10.5 million), Craig Bellamy (£6 million) and Peter Crouch (£7 million) as players who have appreciated financially. Maybe. But is their estimated value in the market place anything like as important as their real value as key components in another trophy-winning team? That is less easy to quantify.
Benitez was much quicker than Mourinho to distance himself from any suggestion of differences with his directors. Liverpool chief executive Rick Parry chose the moment to underline the manager's commitment by revealing that Real Madrid had indeed made an approach for his services. Closing ranks has always been a Liverpool speciality. The whole city has an incomparable solidarity. But Scousers have a reputation for straight talking, too, for 'right, you and me, outside, now'. The air needs clearing when there is an uneasy air.
The Dubai takeover will no doubt change some of the faces sitting round the boardroom table. Perhaps it was a good time for the manager to have his say and put his marker down without encountering any meaningful opposition.
Former chairman Noel White resigned earlier this season after injudicious remarks about Benitez's rotation system. Murmurings and mutterings are not going to bring down a Champions League-winning manager, but the renown and respect he enjoys may not always protect Benitez from the expectations of new owners. Ask Alan Pardew.
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Benitez out to end Chelsea hoodoo on centenary day
By Mark Ogden
Last Updated: 12:53am GMT 20/01/2007
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Rafael Benitez is not one for statistics, which is perhaps just as well as the Liverpool manager prepares to face Chelsea, a team he has yet to take a point from in five attempts, in his 100th Premiership game in charge of the club this lunchtime.
Champions League and FA Cup semi-finals between the two sides may have gone Liverpool's way under the Spanish manager, but Jose Mourinho has grown accustomed to celebrating victory against the Merseysiders when Premiership points are at stake.
Liverpool's sorry record against Chelsea, and a similarly poor return of just two victories and a draw in 10 league games against fellow heavyweights Arsenal and Manchester United, perhaps sums up just why Anfield has rarely threatened to become the home of England's champions under Benitez.
Yet with Chelsea stuttering in recent weeks and cracks appearing in the foundations of Mourinho's empire, Liverpool may be facing their best chance yet to prove that they have the mental strength and belief to defeat the champions and propel themselves into a true fight for second place this season.
Benitez said: "Against the very top sides, it is clear that we need to improve, but we can do it and we believe that we can beat Chelsea. Each game between us is really close and we have beaten them in cup competitions, so we know we can do the same in the Premiership.
"The difference is in the small details. We can beat them, but we also need to take our chances before they do. If we scored first against the top teams it would be a different game. It doesn't guarantee that you will win, but you can control the game more if you score first.
"You never know when is the right moment to play a team, is it now, next month or last month? But all we can say is that, if we want to challenge them for second place, we need to win this game. We are eight points behind, five if we beat them, and in a long competition like the Premier League you will always have a chance.
"But it is always difficult to play Chelsea. They have good players, a good manager, and they have won the Premier League for the last two years so they must be doing something well."
On their last Premiership visit to Anfield, in October 2005, Chelsea humiliated Liverpool by claiming an emphatic 4-1 victory, the home side's last league defeat on home turf.
A more recent humiliation, the 6-3 Carling Cup defeat at home to Arsenal's youngsters 11 days ago, is the most painful memory for Benitez, however, and he admits that his players owe it to the club's supporters to make amends against Chelsea today.
"It is always important to give your fans something and our supporters have been magnificent, in the last game especially" admits Benitez. "We are professionals, we love this club and when we have a bad moment here you think about "You'll Never Walk Alone" and it is true. That is the difference between our club and others and home advantage will be important for us."
Having successfully experimented with a three-pronged strike-force of Dirk Kuyt, Craig Bellamy and Peter Crouch in the victory at Watford last week, Benitez is ready to be equally bold against Chelsea, but Liverpool's task could be rendered more difficult if Mourinho recalls Petr Cech for his first game since suffering a fractured skull against Reading last October.
The goalkeeper is likely to wear protective head-gear, but Benitez insists that his players will not be instructed to put the Czech under increased pressure to test his recovery.
Benitez said: "We will do the right things. He is a very good goalkeeper, but I would like him to play and for us to beat them so we can beat them with all of their best players.
"You don't know how he is training. If Chelsea decide to use him it is because they think he is fit and better than their other goalkeepers, but I want to beat them with the best players they have."
Frustrated Benítez determined to set record straight with Chelsea
Oliver Kay
It is appropriate that Rafael Benítez and José Mourinho should meet at Anfield this lunchtime for what is, for both, the 100th match as a manager in the Barclays Premiership. Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, has won an astonishing 74 of his first 99, his Liverpool counterpart a respectable 59, but today promises to be a defining moment for both during a third season in which they have encountered frustration and recently felt compelled to vent their anger in public.
Benítez’s cordial relationship with the Anfield board is not comparable to the tensions at Chelsea, where Mourinho’s long-term future is in serious doubt because of his deteriorating relationship with Roman Abramovich, the owner, but the Liverpool manager can identify with the turmoil at Stamford Bridge.
Benítez resigned as Valencia coach to move to Anfield in the summer of 2004 after clashing over transfer policy with the Spanish club’s sporting director, Jesús García Pitarch, who he once said — entirely in metaphor, it should be emphasised — “promised me a sofa and then bought me a lamp”.
Sensing where the conversation was heading, Benítez sought not to draw comparisons during his weekly briefing at Liverpool’s training ground yesterday. “I don’t know exactly what is happening on the inside there,” he said of the Chelsea situation. “My idea is not to talk about things you don’t know — and sometimes not to talk about the things you do know. I know what the situation was at Valencia, but I don’t know with Chelsea. What I would say is that Spain is different to England in that the chairman and the chief executive at a club have a very different relationship with the manager here than they do in Spain.”
Benítez, king of all he surveys at Anfield, prefers the English way, which makes it more odd that whereas Mourinho’s recent comments in the direction of Abramovich were predictable, the Liverpool manager’s outbursts at his board came as a surprise. While Mourinho was quickly able to assemble a title-winning squad at Chelsea, Benítez seemed to relish the challenge of constructing his empire brick by brick and with prudence in the transfer market, even if his patience has begun to wear thin.
Victory for Liverpool today would put Benítez second only to Kenny Dalglish in the number of wins in the first 100 league matches as Liverpool manager, but it is a sign of the times that it is nothing like enough in the modern-day Premiership. Bob Paisley’s first title, in the 1975-76 season, was achieved with only 23 wins from 42 matches, Joe Fagan’s with only 22 wins in 1983-84; Liverpool won 25 times in 38 matches last season but finished nine points behind Chelsea, the champions, in third.
Critically, Liverpool have faltered in the big games in the Premiership under Benítez. While they boast some famous victories over Chelsea in cup competitions, Liverpool have lost all five league matches against the West London club since Benítez and Mourinho took charge, scoring only once. Their record against Manchester United is little better, with only one point and one goal — that an own goal — to show from five matches.
Xabi Alonso, the midfield player, recently admitted this “is something that worries us”.
Benitez, though, insisted that there is no psychological barrier for his team to overcome today as they try to move within five points of Chelsea. “We believe we can beat Chelsea,” he said. “Each game between us is really close. We have beaten them in cup competitions and we know we can do the same in the Premiership. The difference is in the small details. If we score first, it will be a big difference.”
Benitez keen to add to Blues' woes
By Andy Hunter
Published: 20 January 2007
Three years ago, a manager who had taken his team to two league championships became so dismayed with the doubts of his employers and boardroom pressure to play their record signing that he began to seek work outside the stadium where he was revered and departed amid emotional scenes at the end of the season. Perhaps the paths of Rafael Benitez and Jose Mourinho are more entwined than we previously imagined.
The careers of the Liverpool and Chelsea managers have been intrinsically linked since they arrived on these shores in the summer of 2004, and commenced a rivalry - and occasionally a feud - that appropriately brings them together to celebrate their 100th Premiership games at Anfield this lunchtime. Yet the parallels are not confined to England.
At Valencia, Benitez cajoled a club without a title win in over 30 years to two La Liga triumphs in three seasons. His reward was to have aspersions cast on his influence on the success, to be denied the transfer funds he sought and to be pressured into utilising record signing Pablo Aimar more regularly.
If that sounds familiar to Chelsea, then they should perhaps heed the warning of the Mestalla. Like this week's rapprochement at Stamford Bridge, Benitez and his adversary at Valencia, the sporting director Jesus Garcia Pitarch, made public declarations of harmony in their working relationship during his final season at the club, but the rift was already too deep. The Spaniard ultimately took his success story elsewhere, and Valencia have won nothing since.
"I don't know exactly what is happening on the inside there," said Benitez yesterday, keen to distance himself from any controversy in his latest encounter with the man who ended Chelsea's 50-year wait for the title. "My idea is not to talk about things you don't know and sometimes not to talk about the things you do know! What I would say though is that Spain is different to England in that the chairman and the chief executive at a club have a very different relationship with the manager."
A more immediate concern for the Liverpool manager is how to secure his first league victory in six attempts over Mourinho. "It is always difficult to play Chelsea, always," Benitez insisted. "They have good players, a good manager, and they've won the Premier League for the last two years. All we can say is that if we want to challenge them for second place, we need to win this game."
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