My Club - My View #6
Spartacus
The new football season kicks off in just over a week’s time and I can’t wait. Every year it’s the same, come May I can’t wait for the season to finish and come August I can’t wait for it to start again. It doesn’t matter how successful a season we have or more to the point how disappointing our league campaign may have been, it’s a cycle of emotions that I’ve lived with for many a year and I can’t see it ending anytime soon!
So what about this season? What will Rafa’s fifth season in charge of the mighty reds bring us? Has he strengthened the squad enough to see us challenge for the title or yet again will our league campaign be over by Christmas? I wish I had answers rather than opinions, but then if I had the answers would I still be waiting, eagerly anticipating the start of the season? I think not!
For what its worth and purely from a leagues perspective I think we’ll have our best season yet under Rafa as long as Rafa lasts the season (I’ll come back to that). So why the optimism? Well partly because that’s my nature and I start every season full of optimism but also because I genuinely believe we’ve improved as a squad and I think Rafa is adapting to our league with every season, he’s not took to it overnight and he’s made mistakes but so what? Who doesn’t? As long as he learns by his mistakes and I believe he does then that’s fine.
But I’m not getting carried away with my optimism, having the best league season under Rafa and winning the league are two very different things and in all honesty I don’t see us winning the league, I just don’t think we’ve done enough to bridge the gap. I’m not a huge advocate of simply throwing money at the problem but I do believe we have to be buying players of the same calibre as Torres each season and not as a one off! If that player costs money then he costs money! All in all I’d class a title challenge and us still being in the race come March as a step in the right direction, anything more than that for me is a bonus.
To be honest I feel sorry for Rafa, I’m sorry that he joined a club that prided its self on doing things the right way and supporting their manager, a club steeped in tradition with a reputation second to none yet he finds himself working with muppets and having to deal with unprecedented (for Liverpool) off the field antics, and I wonder how much he’ll stand for before he walks – but I also wonder how much our owners will put up with before they show him the door, a dodgy start in the premier/champions league and we’ll see how much faith they have in Rafa, have they got the bottle for the season ahead? I believe a lesser man would have thrown in the towel by now and I don’t for one minute think he’s not considered that, but only time will tell.
August 9th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Spartacus! Good article.
How can we get rid of these muppets before we lose Rafa? Benitez is a proud and determined man - almost to he point of being stubborn - but you have to be single-minded to achieve success in the face of adversity. If he goes, we’ll never get him back, not even with a change of ownership. I hope fans out there understand that this is very much a possibility, despite how much he wants to remain with us.
Anyway, why should he be facing adversity? This is Liverpool Football Club. Yes we’ve spent on Keane, Ngog, Cavalieri and Dossena (£30-31M?), but we’ve had to sell (or release) 4 full internationals and a promising premiership midfielder to do this (£20-21M?). That’s a net summer spend of approximately £10M!
Now it looks as if Rafa is not getting any backing at all to complete the Barry signing. I hope this is not true, but if it is, and they are effectively telling Rafa that he doesn’t pick the team, then things could escalate out of hand.
Yanks – COME ON, GET REAL! That simply is NOT enough for us to challenge (despite the brilliance of Benitez). If you truly back him, then back him with the transfers we need to progress – otherwise we will never catch up. If you think you can starve him of ammunition to be able to crucify him later – think again, we are NOT stupid.
Its funny how we heard so much from the yanks causing sh!t for Rafa all season and now, over the last couple of months when a club needs money for transfers, we haven’t heard a peep – the exact opposite to what good owners should do…..?