Benitez walking on thin ice

You just wonder how long Rafael Benitez has until the big axe or the curtain closes on his Liverpool managerial career? He has been walking on thin ice this season after losing 5 of their 13 league encounters so far. To his credit Benitez has remained defiant despite all the troubles surrounding him and Liverpool FC. He has pushed forward a policy of not discussing Liverpool’s title credentials or the current league position by saying he is taking things one game at a time, he will not be drawn into discussing what happens next May.

With all this media frenzy surrounding him and Liverpool, who is to blame? The owners (George Gillett and Tom Hicks) have come out saying the manager is to blame. Their reasoning behind that has been that they have been generous with the chequebook every season since they took over the club in February 2007 except this past season where they implemented a sell before you buy policy. A total of £229 million has been spent since Benitez took over at Anfield.

The Kop faithful, as Liverpool fans are affectionately known, used to blame Rick Parry, their former chief executive officer, for so many of Liverpool’s ills. Supporters had long accused him of messing up transfer deals, being too slow to the negotiation table and opening the chequebook, too conservative and even the delay in building the new stadium. Parry left last May, Benitez took over all the team affairs from the development side to the first team including all transfer deals and contract negotiations. The exit of Parry has left Benitez without a fall-out guy. So, nobody to be blamed and everything else falls on his head.

The truth remains that this is Benitez’s team, he did not inherit it from any manager like when he arrived in 2004. All the Gerard Houllier, former manager’s signings have either been sold or released like Milan Baros, Djibril Cisse, Alou Diarra, El Hadji Diouf and others as the list is endless. The last of those signings to leave Anfield was Sami Hyypia, who left at the end of last season. Benitez signed Lucas Leiva, Ryan Babel, Andrea Dossena, Fabio Aurelio, Philipp Degen, Charles Itandje, Andriy Voronin, Fernando Morientes and Robbie Keane. Some of these players came to Anfield commanding high transfer fees but have certainly failed to deliver. He has left his squad too thin on the ground again and is too reliant on Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres.

Xabi Alonso can’t be blamed for forcing Benitez’s hand into selling him to Real Madrid in August because the manager was trying to get rid of him 12 months earlier to fund a move for Gareth Barry. The team misses Alonso, Gerrard has admitted it and few would dispute it. But until Alberto Aquilani shows us what he is made of on a regular basis, it remains to be seen just how much Liverpool will miss the Spanish midfield maestro in the long term.

Liverpool looked to be in ascendancy last season as they were top of the table and for a moment it looked like they would end their 19-year drought for a league title then the famous Benitez-Ferguson rant happened and it derailed them badly. No one can be blamed for that more than Benitez for his ill-advised decision to spark a public war of words with Ferguson that seemed to distract Liverpool far more than it did eventual champions Manchester United. He got the control he wanted of having a say in all transfer matters but you have to question whether Liverpool have been any more clinical in the transfer market this off season than they were under Parry.

Now that they have been knocked out of the Champions League and will participate in the lowly Europa league, how will that impact on the club’s finances? They were to earn an extra £10 million for progressing to the last sixteen, which would have gone a long way in paying the interest on their loans. The managing director, Christian Purslow, has come out and said the manager’s position is “not under threat” but how many times have we heard that song before only for the man to be shown the door a few days, weeks or months later?