Poll - Should Rafa stay?

[Mattshark]

lets face it we play **** football because of the way we're set up by rafa benitez. His style wont ever provide attractive football but its results orientated. Substance over style

Not true, we have played plenty of good football under Rafa and we do play passing game.

At the minute its doubly worse because we're playing **** and we're not winning.

We have one the best forms in the league at present (over the last 6 games), but over this season ever considered the poor play comes from the fact that we had such a poor spell?

Ironically, I think rafa would be brilliant in Italy where Italian fans dont know what good football is because they are served up slow paced dross every week and what he does would fit in with everyone else. he would take charge of juventus and make them a stronger outfit.

So is Spain a slow paced game like that too? Because Rafa also did very well there.

He doesnt have the mentality to win the title over here and i dont think he ever will. I dont even think we will finish top 4 so when he leaves us he will have royally ****ed the club.

Disgraceful, how has he ****ed the club?
How does he not have the mentality to win over here exactly? If you want to argue he doesn't have the money, fine, but mentality is a nonsense.

The wolves debacle just illustrates that point when we went to one of the relegation fighting clubs and played a defensive team who cant score for **** and came away celebrating getting a point.

So you are going to only go on the last game played? Should use Brain McBride to beat some sense into you.

Please let the Juventus link be true and that they pay us £20m to take him off us.

Please let them take fans who are totally involved in short termism.

[Craig_H]

Mattshark - do you think he is ever culpable for anything mate?

[Mattshark]

Mattshark - do you think he is ever culpable for anything mate?

Yes I do, I disagree with the methodology some use to attack him though.

[Craig_H]

Fair enough mate. I've just seen point after point made in criticism, and you just seem to bat them away one by one, leading me to think you didnt believe any of them were valid criticisms.

I was wondering if you thought there was anything wrong with him or his methods at all.

[Shanks]

I think some of the comments that are posted, are lost in translation through our friends from overseas and some are purely out of frustration.

I'm sure as fans if we sat round a very large table and each put across our views, there would be less of the personal attacks against Rafa.


Or maybe not.

[el matador]

Not true, we have played plenty of good football under Rafa and we do play passing game.


We have one the best forms in the league at present (over the last 6 games), but over this season ever considered the poor play comes from the fact that we had such a poor spell?


So is Spain a slow paced game like that too? Because Rafa also did very well there.


Disgraceful, how has he ****ed the club?
How does he not have the mentality to win over here exactly? If you want to argue he doesn't have the money, fine, but mentality is a nonsense.



So you are going to only go on the last game played? Should use Brain McBride to beat some sense into you.


Please let them take fans who are totally involved in short termism.

Yesterday I was actually looking forward to watching man city v utd because it would be a half decent game of football unlike the **** that we serve up week after week.

Spain is a very different league now to what it was in benitez's time with both barcelona and real madrid having added defensive solidity and organisation to their game.

When he was in charge of valencia, neither barcelona nor madrid could defend for **** and they were easy to play against. His valencia side were a counter attacking team who tore teams apart on the break plain and simple.

Its well documented that his mentor in footballing philosophy terms is the legendary arrigo sacchi who really pushed forward the italian catenaccio style of football and several modern managers have taken this style into the modern game including benitez.

His footballing tactics are defensive tactics as opposed to the attacking total football purveyed by the dutch teams of the past. Benitez sets his teams to give nothing away which we havent in recent seasons and through controlled posession of the ball dominate teams. But we dont play with any flair and havent since roy evans left the club.

Italian teams today still play the catenaccio style and thats why rafa benitez would succeed in italy and is also why he has been successful in the champions league.

As for Liverpool, if we dont finish in the top four I can see both gerrard and torres being sold off and another manager coming in to pick up the pieces.

Do we look like we're going to finish fourth ? Do we ****.

[BillobShaisley]

The thimg is people talk bolox. Like he doesn't know how to play attractive attacking football. His valencia team did as we did last year. If he's setting us up to be solid, it's because he doesn't have faith in the players and looking at how we're performing, he's probably right.

Also he never changes tactics, another complete load of bollox he's moved Gerrard around as the tactics have changed, we've favoured a 4132, 442, 4231 at different times during his rule and changed during games.

The reason we end up hitting so many long balls is because we don't move to fond and create space in midfield. I'd rather see Carragher whack it than try bringing it out of defence under pressure, i'd rather see him have a shortish out ball without a CM collecting it off his foot on the edge of our box too.

[BillobShaisley]

......Its well documented that his mentor in footballing philosophy terms is the legendary arrigo sacchi who really pushed forward the italian catenaccio style of football and several modern managers have taken this style into the modern game including benitez.

Benitez is a "student of the game", which includes Sacchi who invented modern defending, he's not trapped in any dogmatic worship of a single style.

Do we look like we're going to finish fourth ? Do we ****.

But luckily neither do Spurs, Man City or Villa, phew

[Craig_H]

City have 2 games in hand mate, a 6 point gap will be a ****er to close, especially with away games at City, Arsenal and United to come.

[el matador]

City have 2 games in hand mate, a 6 point gap will be a ****er to close, especially with away games at City, Arsenal and United to come.

I agree and we struggled away against wolves what chance have we against a team that can actually play and score goals ?

The aquilani thing also really pisses me off. Why did we go to wolves with two defensive midfielders when we needed to a win against a team that struggles to score goals ?

I dont get defensive tactics like that and the other thing is that it is relatively easy to play against us when torres isnt up front. Our formation only works when torres plays and the win against spurs is an exception rather than the norm. People keep wondering why he misses so many games but when we only play one up front and he has to constantly challenge for headers against brutish centre backs what do we expect to happen ?

Torres takes a lot of stick and unfortunately he's not built like emile heskey and his body cant take it. unless benitez changes the formation we should expect torres to miss 20 game every season. Nobody can take that amount of stick.

Im not a fan of benitez anymore and i hope he goes in the summer. Guillem balague said something interesting in that he says that for rafa's footballing philosophy to work we have to continuously keep changing the squad. Not adding a player here or there but a wholesale revolution every 3 or so seasons.

With another 5 or 6 players set to arrive this summer how on earth can that be conducive to building something for the future if every few seasons we are changing half the team because rafa cant manage players properly ?

[el matador]

Benitez is a "student of the game", which includes Sacchi who invented modern defending, he's not trapped in any dogmatic worship of a single style.



But luckily neither do Spurs, Man City or Villa, phew

i dont see us playing total football ? Its all very rigid and boring and slow.

we're basically **** to watch and rafa's tactics are defensive.

[Kenneth]

People keep wondering why he misses so many games but when we only play one up front and he has to constantly challenge for headers against brutish centre backs what do we expect to happen ?

Interesting point. Could be something in that.

[Shanks]

Also he never changes tactics, another complete load of bollox

Not really.

You can time your watch against some of Rafa's substitutions.
It's become a bit of a pisstake now.

[Taxi]

There are plenty of decent arguments for an against Rafa on the forum, I'm hoping that this is just a one off pile of ****e of a season.

I don't think Rafa is blameless for our demise but the players need to take some responsibility as well, but at the same time they are his players. Gerrard has been very average this season, Carra hasn't been great and Kuyt has been awful. Personally, I find it shocking that Kuyt remains the first choice winger after 6 years.

We can argue that Rafa has or hasn't spent much based on net spend, but for me he has too high a turnover of players whilst some of those that are here have too much bench time to get into the groove irrelevent of how great they were in the previous game.

I think Rafa once said to Gerrard that he ran around too much, yet he seems to demand that EVERYONE defends. So many times when we're defending, either in free play or from set pieces, everyone is back and there's no outlet up front. If there is he's 20 yards in front of the next closet player and normally just runs alone into trouble. Its quite toothless and it encourages the opposition to attack.

That said, we've had our fair share of injuries and bad luck this season, but even so, other teams also have, and we should have enough to comfortably finish in the top 4.

Also, as mentioned by others, I really do not agree with playing both Lucas and Mascherano against the sort of teams who were put together for the cost of Torres and Kuyt. That is incredibly negative and the blame for that sits squarely with Rafa.

I really don't know what to expect next season. If we fail to get into the CL will Rafa still be here, if we don't and he is, will we have enough to regain a top 4 finish if Citeh have further strenghthened on the back of a season in the CL(on the basis that they get 4th)?

If we don't and he goes, will a new manager be any better equiped to compete with Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and stronger Citeh? I doubt it.

[Sprouty]

There are some rumours starting to surface that Rafa is gone.

I imagine its bollox , but i thought i would pass it on.