Rafa Watch

[Marina]

Yes, lads. I'm aware it's unfashionable to whinge about Torres since he's been gone so long. But the fact that Rafa is most likely going to manage him again at a different club digs up some old, bad blood.

[dom9]

Talking of which, when's Chris due back?

[Shaggy]

It's not nice. If someone had shown us in around 2008 that Torres would be playing up front for Chelsea, managed by Rafa, it would have been utterly galling. I'd still rather Rafa went somewhere else, but the fact is he has no other offers from big clubs in this country. We can't expect him to turn it down just because we'd rather he went elsewhere. It's as if some fans would like to give him a list of acceptable clubs to join.

We had our chance - we blew it. He's a football manager, he wants to manage, and he wants to do it in this country at a top team capable of challenging. And as tough as it is to take, he's got his chance. Good luck to him.

[Marina]

Fair enough Shaggy. Fair enough!

Also... I'm not as bad as Chris

[Alex]

Talking of which, when's Chris due back?

10 days or so. I checked yesterday after all the talk of Torres coming back.

[kingfunk]

I'm pissed. Not with Rafa, pisses with the whole idea of him managing the chavs. I wish him no luck whatsoever and hope his man management makes John terry cry!

[dom9]

Fair enough Shaggy. Fair enough!

Also... I'm not as bad as Chris

Haha

[marksared]

I really, really hope this doesn't happen.

It would be hard to take watching Rafa at another Premier League Club never mind Chelsea.

In my head I always had Rafa coming back, there's just such an emotional connection between Rafa the club and the supporters.

[Marina]

Dom! Don't laugh! It's true!

[Fredo]

Fair enough Shaggy. Fair enough!

Also... I'm not as bad as Chris

Or Craig?

[marksared]

It's not nice. If someone had shown us in around 2008 that Torres would be playing up front for Chelsea, managed by Rafa, it would have been utterly galling. I'd still rather Rafa went somewhere else, but the fact is he has no other offers from big clubs in this country. We can't expect him to turn it down just because we'd rather he went elsewhere. It's as if some fans would like to give him a list of acceptable clubs to join.

We had our chance - we blew it. He's a football manager, he wants to manage, and he wants to do it in this country at a top team capable of challenging. And as tough as it is to take, he's got his chance. Good luck to him.

If Rafa goes to Chelsea and does the business FSG & Rodgers will be under pressure to deliver.

[RichC]

I think what galls me the most is their fans, they don't want him - all the Chelsea fans I know call him " a fat spanish waiter" and he's not wanted there on top of that their usual chants of murderers througout every game we play at the Bridge (and the away supporters at Anfield)

I get Rafa wanting to get back into football and Chelsea are a club with resources, some great players and have CL football but you just know he'll be undermind by the players, Mourinho will certainly do some unsettling and with the fans seemingly not waning him it just looks like a hiding for nothing going there for him.

[Marina]

Haaa

I hate all of you. Aw that's not really true. Only when I get compared to mean, exiled est'ers who own groceries somewhere in Scotland...?

[dom9]

Dom! Don't laugh! It's true!

Of course you're not. Of course not.

Nobody else can be quite that unrelentingly, continuously angry and pissed off with Mr Torres.

[Shaggy]

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/time-to-stop-considering-rafael-benitez-as-just-a-big-spender-and-who-is-obsessive-about-small-details-8340533.html

Time to stop considering Rafael Benitez as just a big spender and who is obsessive about small details

Benitez led Valencia, a side that seemed to have no right to European silverware, to win the Uefa Cup

IAN HERBERT WEDNESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2012

There will be cynicism, because there always is, for the proposal that Rafael Benitez would be a good man for Chelsea. Those who look out for alliances will point out that he was a columnist for this newspaper during the European championships.

But try out Champions League Dreams, the book Benitez has written with Times journalist Rory Smith, formerly of this parish, for a sense of the man, and for something which deconstructs that rather facile notion that he is a big spender and obsessive to the point of irritation about small details. Take the front fly-leaf for starters - because that reminds us that the Liverpool team which overcame AC Milan in the Istanbul Champions League final seven years ago included Djimi Traore, Milan Baros and Harry Kewell to Champions League glory. The years dim the memory of quite what an incredible accomplishment that was.

And since it is Juventus who have finally done for Roberto Di Matteo, consider Benitez’s account of how he took his Liverpool team – as much in transition then as Chelsea are now – to face a stronger side in the Stadio delle Alpi than the one Antonio Conte fielded on Tuesday, and saw them come through. Di Matteo’s decision to drop Fernando Torres was taken at 48 hours’ notice at best. Contrast the way that Benitez placed Xabi Alonso, who was less than fully fit but required in Steven Gerrard’s absence, on a specialist training regime for days ahead of the Turin match, preparing him for his role in 3-5-1-1 system which was built around him. And how, instead of the team lining up like that, they played the first two minutes in Turin as the 4-2-3-1 which manager Fabio Capello would have been expecting, before morphing to the three-man defence. Capello didn’t appear to notice.

“The management of 180 minutes, the tactical preparation needed to overcome opponents expected to beat us,” is how Benitez described his early feats in Europe – and though the words which dominate the new book are ‘narrow,’ ‘tight’ and ‘compact’, there is a vision as well as a pragmatism about his football. The Spaniard’s own great hero is Arrigo Sacchi, whose coaching style set aside the Italian defensive style, and what Benitez seeks to build out of the narrow base of his sides is a relentless, sometimes ruthless, energy. It’s not a prettified type of football - not Barcelona’s death by a thousand cuts - but certainly death by a rapier blow, at times. Witness the night Real Madrid were ripped to shreds, 4-0, at Anfield in March 2008.

What everyone wants to know is whether can he restore Fernando Torres - and it certainly says a lot that the two are in touch. “You can say to yourself 'he wants to improve me' or 'he wants to kill me,' but I can tell you, he does want the best for every single player," Torres has said.

History seems also to have airbrushed out the fact that Benitez, just like Andre Villas-Boas, imbued a side that seemed to have no right to European silverware, Valencia, with the ability to win a Uefa Cup and a domestic title. Perhaps it is the anti-intellectual strain in British football which explains why Benitez’s forensic nature is still used to beat him with. "I would need to read more of Freud before I could understand all that went on in his head," Sir Alex Ferguson once said of him. The next day, Benitez won 4-1 at Old Trafford, with Torres operating at heights he has arguably never scaled since. "I read about Freud when I was at school and university," Benitez replied.