No hugs, no learning as Rafa's critics miss the point completely
By Dion Fanning
Sunday December 02 2007
Perhaps it was the idea that Rick Parry was in charge of transfers that finally sent Rafael Benitez mad. Under the old owner of the club, that was how the system worked: Benitez and his scouts found the players and Parry was sent out to sign them. Soon they could be seen at new clubs, but often that new club was not Liverpool.
Some of Europe's most promising players -- Nemanja Vidic, Daniel Alves -- were scouted by Benitez and when Parry was sent out to get them, the players had gone elsewhere or a deal could not be struck.
So when it was proposed to Benitez that Parry deal with this business again, it's no surprise he began letting himself go, dressing in tracksuits and merely "coaching and training" his team. Last Wednesday, Fernando Torres became the latest Benitez signing to show that the manager had spent Liverpool's money cleverly.
Yet the idea persists that he has somehow continued the disastrous transfer policy of his predecessor. Gerard Houllier signed bad players and they stuck around. He may have moved Rigobert Song and Titi Camara down to Harry Redknapp at West Ham pretty quickly, but most of his signings arrived for baffling amounts and were usually at the core of the team for many years.
Benitez was plagued by many of these players when he arrived and only recently put an end to his desperate misery with Djibril Cisse. Many will have noted that Marseille started losing again at almost exactly the same time that Cisse regained his place in the side, but he may not be finished with Benitez yet. The Liverpool manager surely thought those long hours trying to explain the offside rule to Gerard Houllier's record signing were as tiresome as it gets, but it might get worse. If Cisse knocks Liverpool out of the Champions' League in ten days' time, he will -- through transfer fee and loss of earnings -- have individually inflicted the kind of financial damage on an institution not seen since Nick Leeson went on tilt in Singapore.
In contrast, Benitez has rarely lost money on a player and, if he was allowed to do his job, would make a profit on Peter Crouch, Momo Sissoko and Scott Carson in January. Of course, when he signed Torres it was claimed that he was not the answer to Liverpool's goalscoring problem.
His ratio, the critics said, was a goal every three games and Benitez had taken an unnecessary gamble. Benitez paid less than 20 million on Torres, a lot of money but less than the £26m (€36m) quoted. Spurs spent the same on Darren Bent, but is Benitez praised for signing a player Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger dithered over? No, he is criticised for something else. Torres has scored ten goals from 12 starts this season, so instead there is a different complaint.
Now the critics (including, unsurprisingly, Andy Gray) snipe that Benitez doesn't play him enough. In fact, Torres has started all but two games in all competitions (excluding the European qualifiers) this season when he's been fit.
Gray is an inconsistent critic of rotation. When Alex Ferguson's rotation policy let him down at Bolton last Saturday, Gray refused to criticise the fearsome Ferguson for resting Cristiano Ronaldo. United had enough good players without Ronaldo to beat Bolton, Gray insisted. Well, they didn't.
But Hicks and Gillett seem to have listened to the loudest voices, to Gray and his shrill inaccuracies (on Wednesday he remarked that Peter Crouch hadn't "had a sniff" of a starting place since he scored against Besiktas. In fact, he started the next game and was given a big sniff but failed to score).
Some have interpreted the Hicks-Gillett ultimatum as a sign that they are not prepared to spend money on Benitez targets when they have lost faith in him. But this is to view them as football men and there is no evidence that they are.
Tom Hicks, certainly, is no football man; he is Liverpool's Donald Rumsfeld, a football neocon, a friend of Dubya's, with a Rumsfeldian interest in control freakery. Rumsfeld interfered in every decision made below him during the planning and invasion of Iraq and look how well that worked out. Hicks is doing the same at Liverpool; a good ole boy who likes to get his way.
But on Wednesday night, Liverpool supporters illustrated the differences between football in the north of England and the sporting franchises owned by Hicks and Gillett. What they can sell at an ice-rink in Abilene won't wash in front of 45,000 raving lunatics maddened by the latest gnomic statements from the headquarters of corporate hokum in Texarkana.
The people marched for Benitez on Wednesday and they could have rallied round three words that distinguish Benitez from his bosses, the words that Norman Mailer used when he ran for Mayor of New York -- No More Bull****.
A colleague was in a press room of an English ground last Sunday when the draw was made for the 2010 World Cup. As the men in Durban prepared to draw the top seed for England's group, there was much anxiety thousands of miles away.
They would have to avoid Italy; probably Germany too, was the downbeat consensus. When Croatia were pulled from the hat, the mood transformed. "That's all right," one exclaimed, "we can beat them." At this moment, a seasoned journalist is said to have put his head in his hands.
Later a Sky reporter would refer to the teams in England's group as "beatable" and the following day Michael Owen announced that no Croatian player would get in the England team.
"No hugging, no learning," was Larry David's philosophy as he shaped Seinfeld into the greatest TV comedy of all time. It is a credo English football seems determined to adopt with equally hilarious consequences.
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By Dion Fanning
Sunday December 02 2007
Perhaps it was the idea that Rick Parry was in charge of transfers that finally sent Rafael Benitez mad. Under the old owner of the club, that was how the system worked: Benitez and his scouts found the players and Parry was sent out to sign them. Soon they could be seen at new clubs, but often that new club was not Liverpool.
Some of Europe's most promising players -- Nemanja Vidic, Daniel Alves -- were scouted by Benitez and when Parry was sent out to get them, the players had gone elsewhere or a deal could not be struck.
So when it was proposed to Benitez that Parry deal with this business again, it's no surprise he began letting himself go, dressing in tracksuits and merely "coaching and training" his team. Last Wednesday, Fernando Torres became the latest Benitez signing to show that the manager had spent Liverpool's money cleverly.
Yet the idea persists that he has somehow continued the disastrous transfer policy of his predecessor. Gerard Houllier signed bad players and they stuck around. He may have moved Rigobert Song and Titi Camara down to Harry Redknapp at West Ham pretty quickly, but most of his signings arrived for baffling amounts and were usually at the core of the team for many years.
Benitez was plagued by many of these players when he arrived and only recently put an end to his desperate misery with Djibril Cisse. Many will have noted that Marseille started losing again at almost exactly the same time that Cisse regained his place in the side, but he may not be finished with Benitez yet. The Liverpool manager surely thought those long hours trying to explain the offside rule to Gerard Houllier's record signing were as tiresome as it gets, but it might get worse. If Cisse knocks Liverpool out of the Champions' League in ten days' time, he will -- through transfer fee and loss of earnings -- have individually inflicted the kind of financial damage on an institution not seen since Nick Leeson went on tilt in Singapore.
In contrast, Benitez has rarely lost money on a player and, if he was allowed to do his job, would make a profit on Peter Crouch, Momo Sissoko and Scott Carson in January. Of course, when he signed Torres it was claimed that he was not the answer to Liverpool's goalscoring problem.
His ratio, the critics said, was a goal every three games and Benitez had taken an unnecessary gamble. Benitez paid less than 20 million on Torres, a lot of money but less than the £26m (€36m) quoted. Spurs spent the same on Darren Bent, but is Benitez praised for signing a player Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger dithered over? No, he is criticised for something else. Torres has scored ten goals from 12 starts this season, so instead there is a different complaint.
Now the critics (including, unsurprisingly, Andy Gray) snipe that Benitez doesn't play him enough. In fact, Torres has started all but two games in all competitions (excluding the European qualifiers) this season when he's been fit.
Gray is an inconsistent critic of rotation. When Alex Ferguson's rotation policy let him down at Bolton last Saturday, Gray refused to criticise the fearsome Ferguson for resting Cristiano Ronaldo. United had enough good players without Ronaldo to beat Bolton, Gray insisted. Well, they didn't.
But Hicks and Gillett seem to have listened to the loudest voices, to Gray and his shrill inaccuracies (on Wednesday he remarked that Peter Crouch hadn't "had a sniff" of a starting place since he scored against Besiktas. In fact, he started the next game and was given a big sniff but failed to score).
Some have interpreted the Hicks-Gillett ultimatum as a sign that they are not prepared to spend money on Benitez targets when they have lost faith in him. But this is to view them as football men and there is no evidence that they are.
Tom Hicks, certainly, is no football man; he is Liverpool's Donald Rumsfeld, a football neocon, a friend of Dubya's, with a Rumsfeldian interest in control freakery. Rumsfeld interfered in every decision made below him during the planning and invasion of Iraq and look how well that worked out. Hicks is doing the same at Liverpool; a good ole boy who likes to get his way.
But on Wednesday night, Liverpool supporters illustrated the differences between football in the north of England and the sporting franchises owned by Hicks and Gillett. What they can sell at an ice-rink in Abilene won't wash in front of 45,000 raving lunatics maddened by the latest gnomic statements from the headquarters of corporate hokum in Texarkana.
The people marched for Benitez on Wednesday and they could have rallied round three words that distinguish Benitez from his bosses, the words that Norman Mailer used when he ran for Mayor of New York -- No More Bull****.
A colleague was in a press room of an English ground last Sunday when the draw was made for the 2010 World Cup. As the men in Durban prepared to draw the top seed for England's group, there was much anxiety thousands of miles away.
They would have to avoid Italy; probably Germany too, was the downbeat consensus. When Croatia were pulled from the hat, the mood transformed. "That's all right," one exclaimed, "we can beat them." At this moment, a seasoned journalist is said to have put his head in his hands.
Later a Sky reporter would refer to the teams in England's group as "beatable" and the following day Michael Owen announced that no Croatian player would get in the England team.
"No hugging, no learning," was Larry David's philosophy as he shaped Seinfeld into the greatest TV comedy of all time. It is a credo English football seems determined to adopt with equally hilarious consequences.
[email protected]
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