Rafa Watch

[Neil Young]

I'm sure he knows he would risk becoming very unpopular with them if he didn't attack Benitez.

[Tee]

And how many times have those shining lights of the youth development programme won the league?

The point is it's a lot easier to bring through young players when you're not expected to win everything. It can be done of course but it's tricky, especially if you have a trigger-happy, I-want-it-and-I-want-it-now owner.

Why would we have a "trigger-happy, I-want-it-and-I-want-it-now owner"?

Barca have money to spend, but they bring through players. Same with Utd.

If we were winning and competing for the best players there would not be any complaints. Bringing through youth players is part of the fabric and philosophy of this club. That would never change IMO. Might be harder for them to make it, but thats life.

[Neil Young]

I thought Stu was making a point about Chelsea and Man City and PSG - in those circumstances it's difficult to bring youth along.

It's not even as though Ferguson has done it consistently - the Beckham generation created the expectation for success and real homegrown youth has been sparse since - despite the fact Ferguson, uniquely, is bomb-proof.

So it seems to me Barcelona are an anomaly and even then no system, not even theirs, produces great young players forever. You can't rely on it.

But yes, it's the route we have to try and, even if it weren't, it's the one the club has chosen.

[Tee]

I thought Stu was making a point about Chelsea and Man City and PSG - in those circumstances it's difficult to bring youth along.

It's not even as though Ferguson has done it consistently - the Beckham generation created the expectation for success and real homegrown youth has been sparse since - despite the fact Ferguson, uniquely, is bomb-proof.

So it seems to me Barcelona are an anomaly and even then no system, not even theirs, produces great young players forever. You can't rely on it.

But yes, it's the route we have to try and, even if it weren't, it's the one the club has chosen.

I see.

[Neil Young]

I went on a bit there.

[kingfunk]

Brendan Rodgers, LFC manager

[Fosterbloke]

Hayley McQueen is overweight and plain

Plain

[Fosterbloke]

Well we are still talking about massive tits here...

Are they plastic though?

[magicalbarnes]

Did you see it last night? That was exactly it. A stream of "it's not as good as it was in our day" bull****. They ridiculed, even belittled Rafa's assertion that players cannot perform to their top level playing 3 games in 7 days. In interview Rafa said by the 3rd game in 7 days, they have the stats that show players run less, run slower and perform less well - hence rotation.

Wilkins, Souness and Redknapp - but Wilkins in particular - had a field day, belittling Benitez and the idea that players these days can't manage 3 games in 7. The response was, essentially, "well we could in our day, we could play every day if we needed to, so therefore it's total bollocks". They also lamented the lack of tackling, in that jokey, boys club style "oooh they're all such poofs these days" kinda way.

Every single point Rafa made in his interview - Hazard taking time to adapt to the PL, Oscar being tired, and many other points - Wilkins took the opposing view, giving every point short shrift with the utmost arrogance. Oscar came on and played well - Wilkins gleefully reminded us all how fresh, not tired, Oscar looked. I hate him.

What would any of those idiots know about management? Their not fit to lace Rafa's boots in that field.

[Captain Stu]

Are they plastic though?

Nah, fleshy bags of love.

[Shaggy]

This is quite funny

http://pickourteam.com/premierleague/news/06-12-2012/obsessive-rafa-deserves-chelsea-chance/688917

Obsessive Rafa Deserves Chelsea Chance

by Dion Fanning

The aspect of Rafael Benitez’s personality that likes a struggle may have been unconsciously drawn to the challenge at Chelsea. Like Ike and Tina’s version of ‘Proud Mary’, Benitez doesn’t do things nice and easy. Benitez makes things difficult. For Benitez, the answer to all problems is work so the struggle comes naturally to him. He may not have anticipated the extent of the problems he would encounter at Chelsea but he will consider only one solution: he will immerse himself in work.

Benitez has been caricatured as a distant personality who doesn’t “put his arm round a player” but that portrait is flawed.

Benitez has a warm personality but he has no hinterland. He is incapable of smalltalk and is more likely to resume a conversation with you at the point he abandoned it months earlier than ask about the weather. He may ask about the weather but only if it could affect football. His conversations are always about football.

He is also mildly hilarious, not necessarily when he tries one of his “jokes”, but in this obsession with football which has blocked most other things out, apart from his family. When he was at Liverpool, he heard two of his coaches talking about somebody he hadn’t heard of. He was curious about this name and slightly bewildered that there was a footballer his coaching staff knew about that he didn’t. Who was this Tony Soprano he asked? When it was explained to him that Tony was a fictional character, not a Serie B full-back, Rafa lost interest and the coaches got the impression they had trivialised the conversation by moving away from football.

There is a sense that people are beginning to view Benitez as a warm-hearted obsessive rather than a cold disciplinarian. When he spent a large part of his second press conference at Chelsea arranging bottles on the table to explain zonal marking, most of the journalists found it fascinating and amusing in equal measure.

Under normal circumstances, this obsessive approach could make him well suited to the Chelsea job. Thanks to what one executive called “the unique ownership structure”, Benitez will be primarily concerned with working with players already at the club and those that are presented to him at the training ground in Cobham.

He knows that there will be a collective responsible for transfers so he won’t become unhappy if the club don’t sign the players he wants.

Instead he can spend 12-hour days at the training ground doing what he feels he does best: developing players, coaching them and working on ideas for each game. The players might find it strange to have a manager who spends so much time talking about the game and very little time on, well, on everything else but they may find that his ideas have merit.

Benitez is not cold, he’s not Louis Van Gaal, but he will see the idea of getting the team he wants on the pitch in straightforward terms.

Chelsea, however, don’t do straightforward and the supporters continue to view Benitez as they always have.

At Upton Park last Saturday, defeat brought huge pressure for a manager who had been in the job for nine days. At the after-match press conference, he was essentially asked if, after three games, he felt he had taken the club as far as he could.

The exit from the Champions League could not be blamed on him but failure to win at Sunderland this weekend would most certainly be seen as his fault.

It would be a shame if Benitez who has, if anything, too many ideas, wasn’t given an opportunity to develop them at Chelsea. Certainly, he will think of little else and his conversation will be pretty limited as well.

[Pablo]

This sentence was a bit bizarre:

The exit from the Champions League could not be blamed on him but failure to win at Sunderland this weekend would most certainly be seen as his fault.

Most certainly? How could it ever not be? Insightful journalism that

[Bender]

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich will consider Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp if he fails to persuade former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola, who is currently on a sabbatical in New York, to move to Stamford Bridge in the summer.
Full story: Daily Mail

Interim Chelsea manager Rafael Benitez has held discussions with captain John Terry and Frank Lampard in an attempt to persuade the influential duo to back his regime.
Full story: Daily Telegraph

[RedReet]

[magicalbarnes]

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich will consider Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp if he fails to persuade former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola, who is currently on a sabbatical in New York, to move to Stamford Bridge in the summer.
Full story: Daily Mail

Interim Chelsea manager Rafael Benitez has held discussions with captain John Terry and Frank Lampard in an attempt to persuade the influential duo to back his regime.
Full story: Daily Telegraph

If true, he's an excellent coach, i would have liked him at LFC after Kenny was sacked.

Back to the forum. It's great that Rafa has got his first PL win, hopefully he can go on a bit of a run and put a bit of pressure on fergie. At the same time shut the chavski fans up that boo him.