Rafa Benitez has his fair share of critics,and no manager has ever given the Liverpool faithful so many `What the f*** is he doing´ moments, but despite this he is still the right man to lead Liverpool in that ever elusive hunt for the League Title.
Rafa Benitez has had a roller coaster of a season with the lows sadly outnumbering the highs, he has at times had Liverpool supporters pulling hair from their heads wondering why certain players have been rested and at some of his rather strange substitutional decisions. We cannot be 100% sure that if he had not rested some of our better players early on in the season would the points tally be different, but Torres would have put much more fear into the so called lesser teams than Voronin or even the ever hard working but totally enept ability to find the back of the net player, that is Dirk Kuyt.
Looking now at the table shows that if we had won two or three of our eleven drawn games that we would still be right amongst the challengers for the title. But also if Torres had played all the early games would he have been as settled as he is now when we had the very bad run in January.
These are all if`s and but`s, but i think most will agree that Benitez`s decisions have cost the club some very valuable points. Some may say that Liverpools recent great form has been in some way due to Benitez`s resting of players early in the season, but to them i would say that the points dropped earlier in the season are as valuable as the points we are winning now, and it seems a bad gamble risking our season so early on.
So taking all this into account it would be quiet reasonable for the Liverpool faithful to be calling for the Spaniards head by now, but it is not so, on the contrary as shown in the very public, very un Liverpool like battle between the American owners and Benitez, the fans made it very clear that they overwhelmingly came down on the side of Benitez. I think this is because that despite his mistakes most fans relise that he is a top class manager as he often proves with his exploits in Europe and that given time and resources he will bring the title back to Liverpool.
There are also other reasons why he should remain at the helm at Liverpool, the first is that he is finally learning from his mistakes. He now seems to be rotating less, maybe he has come to the conclusion that the Premiership is not the same as La Liga. At Valencia he rotated his players just as he did here and the formula worked winning La Liga twice in three years, so it is easy to see why he stuck to his rotation policy, but perhaps in Spain he could rest key players against weaker teams and still win, but in England every year the so called weaker teams are getting stronger with improved finances from TV money and foreign owners investments. It must be very difficult to let go of his beloved rotation system that seen his Valencia overcome the big guns of Real Madrid and Barcelona twice.
The third and final reason for backing Benitez is that we all seem to have short memories, before Benitez the truely great players were not interested in joining Liverpool. The very best players like Fernando Torres are wanted by all the big clubs and they will all make big money offers, so these players pick the clubs that they can win medals and develop as players.
And of this i am sure, if Rafa Benitez was not our manager when Torres became available, he would not be a Liverpool player today, and the other players of Torres caliber that Benitez will sign in the future, will simply decide to ply their trades in other footballing Mecca`s in Europe, good players want to play for good managers.
With Rafa Benitez as manager it has been a rollercoaster journey, but he is taking our team in the right direction and not winning the league this year will not be the end of the world, perhaps expectations were too high, we are improving but so are the other top teams so it makes playing catch up just a little harder and takes a little bit longer time.
So maybe we have to learn something from our biggest foes and give Rafa Benitez the time that Man Utd gave Alex Ferguson after his very shaky start. It has not worked out so bad for them, so maybe we can afford to be a little bit more patient with our Spanish enigma.
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