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Rafa Proves End Justifies Means...
It's just five months since Liverpool unluckily lost to AC Milan in the Champions League final. The Reds sit fourth in the Premiership with a game in hand on two of the three teams above, and are still unbeaten in domestic competition. The away form is the best it's been in donkey's years. And Benítez's men have just won the latest Mersey derby at Goodison, which should feel like winning ten games in a row.
And yet there is a growing hysterical criticism of the manager. Even when he gets things right, as he did on Saturday, he's slated for being wrong.
All is not perfect, so some dissatisfaction is to be expected. But I despair at the level of the discontent that I'm hearing from sections of the support.
The home form is a concern, but not a massive one just yet. And the Champions League has gone a little pear-shaped, just as it did two seasons ago; it didn't stop the Reds from bouncing back to reach last year's final, and arguably helped in racking up 82 Premiership points, the best total for 18 years.
Even so, I am seriously depressed by the kind of supporters for whom Benítez getting things right is still not good enough. The football wasn't great at Goodison, and there was luck with a last-minute refereeing decision, but even the very best Liverpool teams 'won ugly' in the local derby. Hell, they lost a few that way, too. Derbies by their nature are often far from pretty. But with results disappointing going into the latest international break, the Reds needed a win. At all costs. Whatever it took.
I don't want to spend all my time defending Benítez, but the more ludicrous the criticisms become, from fans and media alike, the more compelled I feel to give the guy a fair press. I mean, David Moyes isn't going to do it, is he?
The 'controversial' substitution of Steven Gerrard by Benítez was high-risk; possibly as high-risk as any I can remember from any Liverpool manager. Had it gone wrong, I wouldn't have been able to defend it.
I could have partly defended Liverpool's performance over 90 minutes, in that it was never going to be pretty or easy, given confidence was low going into the game; that the Reds had seven players playing midweek around Europe to Everton's one; and that, while Everton had two key players missing (Cahill and Johnson), Liverpool had three better players missing from the spine, in Torres, Alonso and Agger.
But I could not, and would not, have defended Gerrard's substitution for Lucas had it gone tits-up and the team performed worse. Had it gone wrong, I may have accepted Benítez's reasoning after the game as to what he wanted to happen, but in making such a daring and significant change there can only really be success on the field to prove it right.
The fact of the matter is that it proved to be one of the best substitutions I've ever seen in my life. Indeed, on a number of levels, possibly the very best. It was obvious to even the layman that in the 2005 Champions League Final Didi Hamann needed to come on to get to grips with Kaka. Less obvious was the simultaneous change to a back three, but at 3-0 down, that wasn't such a drastic decision.
But the removal of Gerrard on Saturday was so inspired because no-one could understand it at the time, and yet it could not have played out better.
With so much at stake, the manager had the foresight to see that the team's 'go to' player was in fact going everywhere too fast, too frantically, and was unbalancing the side in the process. With this in mind, Rafa acted to eradicate the problem.
Now, at the time I didn't see this. Not at all. Like most fans, I was too caught up in the emotion to think rationally. That's what separates great managers from the likes of ourselves (that, and a much bigger knowledge of the game and, indeed, of their own squad). They don't get too caught up in the hysteria of an occasion; they see things we don't because they are analysing, rather than emoting.
Like a surgeon who corrects a problem that the patient isn't even aware of, I got to see the brilliance of Benítez's change as the game unfolded, and as Liverpool improved markedly as a result. By the end, the reason Benítez has been previously hailed as a tactical genius was once again clear. He made a high-risk gamble and it paid off beautifully.
And yet, even after the game, he still got mocked. Pundits laughed at him. Fans thought he'd gone insane. He was vilified even in victory. But if the ends justified the means, then he was entitled to the last laugh.
When playing against ten men you have to make the extra man count, and Liverpool weren't. The best way is to pass the ball quickly to drag the opposition around; make the ball, and those ten men, do the work.
While Gerrard is more capable of doing this than Sissoko (who was having a very poor second half), Benítez clearly felt that Gerrard was too keyed up by the occasion. The captain had got Liverpool back into the game, but then he got too excited for the manager's liking when, with the opposition a man short, he was contributing to his own team's failure to exploit the advantage.
This is a player who has won Liverpool Mersey derbies with his goals and his gusto, but who has also twice been sent off for the kind of rash actions he doesn't make in 'normal' matches; the most recent example was just 18 months ago, when he was red carded within 20 minutes at Anfield for a quite barmy tackle just a minute after an equally silly offence of kicking the ball away. You could see he was far too keyed up for the occasion.
What happened next? The Reds played brilliantly without him, and relied on teamwork to overcome the one-man deficit.
It didn't need Gerrard's local pride, his great desire to win or his brilliant skills that day. It needed a team to play as a team, and for supposed 'fancy dan' foreigners like Luis Garica and Harry Kewell to win the game.
Does the watching world need more examples of the power of the team over the individual? Think Arsenal and Thierry Henry. And think of this season, where Liverpool have done better in their captain's absence.
Some of it may be coincidental, but the fact remains that Liverpool don't rely on him as much as the media thinks, and that fact is actually rather healthy. I'd still much rather have him in the team 99% of the time, because at his best he's a world-class force of nature, but if he isn't in the team, the rest of the players might find it easier to assert themselves. They can then play as equals, and feel able to pass to whoever is in space, not the man they feel they ought to be supplying all the time.
Gerrard gets a lot of unfair criticism from sections of the Liverpool support as it is, and a much of it baffles me. This is not designed to further slate Gerrard - not at all. But as much as I rate him as a brilliant individual, I want Liverpool to win games - and I don't give a fig who is in the team if that happens.
I don't care if Benítez thinks he has to play Pepe Reina up front - if it directly leads to getting results, I'll applaud it. If Rafa does something bold and the team play brilliantly but don't get the goals they deserve, I'll grudgingly accept that as part and parcel of football.
But of course, if he does something bold and it goes horribly wrong, then like any other manager he is open to harsh criticism. But harsh criticism when a bold substitution makes a massive difference to winning a game? Has the world gone nuts?
I'm just sick to death of every time a decision is made by the manager regarding Gerrard the world ends up focusing on the feelings of the captain and not the benefit of the team. Whether it's resting him, substituting him, or playing him on either flank, it always comes back to the individual, not what really matters - the result.
Benítez won two La Liga titles by preaching teamwork. He won the Champions League with Liverpool in the same manner; yes, it took Gerrard to do what he does best, and what he's paid so handsomely to do, at key moments in two of the games (Olympiakos and the final in particular), but the team was working as one in all of those games. It wasn't as if Gerrard was the only man responsible for the success.
When Gerrard didn't produce any magic, someone else did. It was unsung players like Neil Mellor, Florent Sinama-Pongolle and a teenage Scott Carson who played key cameos; indeed, so many of the squad played their part when it mattered, even poor old Djimi Traoré. Becoming European Champions relied just as much on the massive contributions from others: Carragher and Hyypia's defending, Finnan's coolness, Alonso's passing, Dudek's goalkeeping and Luis Garcia's ability to pop up with a vital goal.
When Liverpool were getting much better results with Gerrard on the right wing in 2005/06, there were still criticisms of Benítez 'wasting' him. So what if Gerrard wasn't able to be at his very best, and be in total control of the game for every single minute, providing he chipped in with goals and assists (which he did aplenty), did his defensive work, and helped the team win?
At times it seemed like Benítez was slated for winning if it came at the expense of Gerrard picking up the Man of the Match bubbly afterwards. This is plain insanity.
The same occurred after this weekend. While Sissoko looked the obvious candidate for the hook, Benítez saw something different, regarding the team as a whole, that he felt would work. And lo and behold, it did. What more could he have done than make the change that led to an improvement in performance and led directly to his team winning the game?
Not only did Lucas, the current Brazilian Footballer of the Year (at just 20) give the team better shape and more composure, he won the game with his composed shot at goal.
Make no mistake - this was not luck. Everything Benítez was hoping for with the change came to fruition.
If ever there was method in a manager's madness, this was proof of it. And for that, he deserves respect.
Paul Tomkins
Rafa Proves End Justifies Means...
It's just five months since Liverpool unluckily lost to AC Milan in the Champions League final. The Reds sit fourth in the Premiership with a game in hand on two of the three teams above, and are still unbeaten in domestic competition. The away form is the best it's been in donkey's years. And Benítez's men have just won the latest Mersey derby at Goodison, which should feel like winning ten games in a row.
And yet there is a growing hysterical criticism of the manager. Even when he gets things right, as he did on Saturday, he's slated for being wrong.
All is not perfect, so some dissatisfaction is to be expected. But I despair at the level of the discontent that I'm hearing from sections of the support.
The home form is a concern, but not a massive one just yet. And the Champions League has gone a little pear-shaped, just as it did two seasons ago; it didn't stop the Reds from bouncing back to reach last year's final, and arguably helped in racking up 82 Premiership points, the best total for 18 years.
Even so, I am seriously depressed by the kind of supporters for whom Benítez getting things right is still not good enough. The football wasn't great at Goodison, and there was luck with a last-minute refereeing decision, but even the very best Liverpool teams 'won ugly' in the local derby. Hell, they lost a few that way, too. Derbies by their nature are often far from pretty. But with results disappointing going into the latest international break, the Reds needed a win. At all costs. Whatever it took.
I don't want to spend all my time defending Benítez, but the more ludicrous the criticisms become, from fans and media alike, the more compelled I feel to give the guy a fair press. I mean, David Moyes isn't going to do it, is he?
The 'controversial' substitution of Steven Gerrard by Benítez was high-risk; possibly as high-risk as any I can remember from any Liverpool manager. Had it gone wrong, I wouldn't have been able to defend it.
I could have partly defended Liverpool's performance over 90 minutes, in that it was never going to be pretty or easy, given confidence was low going into the game; that the Reds had seven players playing midweek around Europe to Everton's one; and that, while Everton had two key players missing (Cahill and Johnson), Liverpool had three better players missing from the spine, in Torres, Alonso and Agger.
But I could not, and would not, have defended Gerrard's substitution for Lucas had it gone tits-up and the team performed worse. Had it gone wrong, I may have accepted Benítez's reasoning after the game as to what he wanted to happen, but in making such a daring and significant change there can only really be success on the field to prove it right.
The fact of the matter is that it proved to be one of the best substitutions I've ever seen in my life. Indeed, on a number of levels, possibly the very best. It was obvious to even the layman that in the 2005 Champions League Final Didi Hamann needed to come on to get to grips with Kaka. Less obvious was the simultaneous change to a back three, but at 3-0 down, that wasn't such a drastic decision.
But the removal of Gerrard on Saturday was so inspired because no-one could understand it at the time, and yet it could not have played out better.
With so much at stake, the manager had the foresight to see that the team's 'go to' player was in fact going everywhere too fast, too frantically, and was unbalancing the side in the process. With this in mind, Rafa acted to eradicate the problem.
Now, at the time I didn't see this. Not at all. Like most fans, I was too caught up in the emotion to think rationally. That's what separates great managers from the likes of ourselves (that, and a much bigger knowledge of the game and, indeed, of their own squad). They don't get too caught up in the hysteria of an occasion; they see things we don't because they are analysing, rather than emoting.
Like a surgeon who corrects a problem that the patient isn't even aware of, I got to see the brilliance of Benítez's change as the game unfolded, and as Liverpool improved markedly as a result. By the end, the reason Benítez has been previously hailed as a tactical genius was once again clear. He made a high-risk gamble and it paid off beautifully.
And yet, even after the game, he still got mocked. Pundits laughed at him. Fans thought he'd gone insane. He was vilified even in victory. But if the ends justified the means, then he was entitled to the last laugh.
When playing against ten men you have to make the extra man count, and Liverpool weren't. The best way is to pass the ball quickly to drag the opposition around; make the ball, and those ten men, do the work.
While Gerrard is more capable of doing this than Sissoko (who was having a very poor second half), Benítez clearly felt that Gerrard was too keyed up by the occasion. The captain had got Liverpool back into the game, but then he got too excited for the manager's liking when, with the opposition a man short, he was contributing to his own team's failure to exploit the advantage.
This is a player who has won Liverpool Mersey derbies with his goals and his gusto, but who has also twice been sent off for the kind of rash actions he doesn't make in 'normal' matches; the most recent example was just 18 months ago, when he was red carded within 20 minutes at Anfield for a quite barmy tackle just a minute after an equally silly offence of kicking the ball away. You could see he was far too keyed up for the occasion.
What happened next? The Reds played brilliantly without him, and relied on teamwork to overcome the one-man deficit.
It didn't need Gerrard's local pride, his great desire to win or his brilliant skills that day. It needed a team to play as a team, and for supposed 'fancy dan' foreigners like Luis Garica and Harry Kewell to win the game.
Does the watching world need more examples of the power of the team over the individual? Think Arsenal and Thierry Henry. And think of this season, where Liverpool have done better in their captain's absence.
Some of it may be coincidental, but the fact remains that Liverpool don't rely on him as much as the media thinks, and that fact is actually rather healthy. I'd still much rather have him in the team 99% of the time, because at his best he's a world-class force of nature, but if he isn't in the team, the rest of the players might find it easier to assert themselves. They can then play as equals, and feel able to pass to whoever is in space, not the man they feel they ought to be supplying all the time.
Gerrard gets a lot of unfair criticism from sections of the Liverpool support as it is, and a much of it baffles me. This is not designed to further slate Gerrard - not at all. But as much as I rate him as a brilliant individual, I want Liverpool to win games - and I don't give a fig who is in the team if that happens.
I don't care if Benítez thinks he has to play Pepe Reina up front - if it directly leads to getting results, I'll applaud it. If Rafa does something bold and the team play brilliantly but don't get the goals they deserve, I'll grudgingly accept that as part and parcel of football.
But of course, if he does something bold and it goes horribly wrong, then like any other manager he is open to harsh criticism. But harsh criticism when a bold substitution makes a massive difference to winning a game? Has the world gone nuts?
I'm just sick to death of every time a decision is made by the manager regarding Gerrard the world ends up focusing on the feelings of the captain and not the benefit of the team. Whether it's resting him, substituting him, or playing him on either flank, it always comes back to the individual, not what really matters - the result.
Benítez won two La Liga titles by preaching teamwork. He won the Champions League with Liverpool in the same manner; yes, it took Gerrard to do what he does best, and what he's paid so handsomely to do, at key moments in two of the games (Olympiakos and the final in particular), but the team was working as one in all of those games. It wasn't as if Gerrard was the only man responsible for the success.
When Gerrard didn't produce any magic, someone else did. It was unsung players like Neil Mellor, Florent Sinama-Pongolle and a teenage Scott Carson who played key cameos; indeed, so many of the squad played their part when it mattered, even poor old Djimi Traoré. Becoming European Champions relied just as much on the massive contributions from others: Carragher and Hyypia's defending, Finnan's coolness, Alonso's passing, Dudek's goalkeeping and Luis Garcia's ability to pop up with a vital goal.
When Liverpool were getting much better results with Gerrard on the right wing in 2005/06, there were still criticisms of Benítez 'wasting' him. So what if Gerrard wasn't able to be at his very best, and be in total control of the game for every single minute, providing he chipped in with goals and assists (which he did aplenty), did his defensive work, and helped the team win?
At times it seemed like Benítez was slated for winning if it came at the expense of Gerrard picking up the Man of the Match bubbly afterwards. This is plain insanity.
The same occurred after this weekend. While Sissoko looked the obvious candidate for the hook, Benítez saw something different, regarding the team as a whole, that he felt would work. And lo and behold, it did. What more could he have done than make the change that led to an improvement in performance and led directly to his team winning the game?
Not only did Lucas, the current Brazilian Footballer of the Year (at just 20) give the team better shape and more composure, he won the game with his composed shot at goal.
Make no mistake - this was not luck. Everything Benítez was hoping for with the change came to fruition.
If ever there was method in a manager's madness, this was proof of it. And for that, he deserves respect.
Paul Tomkins
- i don't know why, i can't put my finger on it and i'm sure he is probably quite a sound guy but i just don't like him. 
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