Rafael Benitez looks on as Liverpool play Stoke. Photograph: Tom
Jenkins
Rafael Benítez forced a smile
afterwards but his customary touchline pantomime – the dissatisfied
grimaces, the dismissive shrugs, the odd little shapes he makes
with his hands – had carried an extra edge of exasperation and
frustration during Saturday's match. A man accustomed to scrutiny
during his five years on Merseyside is now seriously on trial.
If it is indeed true, as a few newspapers reported yesterday,
that Tom Hicks Sr and George Gillett have finally managed to
identify a Middle Eastern investor willing to fork out £100m in
exchange for a 25% holding in Liverpool FC, then the US owners'
undeserved stroke of luck would enable them to prioritise the
removal of what is coming to appear the biggest obstruction to the
club's progress. With a proportion of that new money – perhaps
£20m, but almost certainly rather less after the lawyers had done
their talking – they would be able to pay up the 4½ years remaining
on Benítez's contract and send their manager on his way.
Liverpool's travelling fans cheered Benítez off the field on
Saturday, at the end of a game in which Stoke City snatched a draw
with a late equaliser. This was not a genuine salute as much as a
sign of defiance aimed partly against the Potters' supporters, who
had consistently managed to drown the noise coming from the away
end, but mostly at an outside world which is looking at the club
and seeing only the signs of a sudden decline with serious
long-term implications.
There can be little doubt that the wrong people are in charge at
Anfield, which makes it hard to be optimistic that the right
decisions will be taken. Somebody, however, has to do something
about what is going on in the name of the club of Shankly, Paisley
and Dalglish, where Benítez's haphazard recruitment policy and
cut-and-paste method of selection seem inadequate to meet the
challenge presented by the prospect of a barren season.
The unease was underlined by the debut of the winger Maximiliano
Rodríguez, a useful Argentina international in his time but now, at
29, seemingly fallen far from the highest standards of his seven
years in La Liga and apparently picked up by Benítez at no cost,
with no guarantee that he will do any better than the dismal parade
of wingers who have trooped in and out of Anfield during the last
five years. The failure of so many of Benítez's mid-level
acquisitions to leave a mark on the club reinforces the suspicion
that, unlike several Premier League managers with more limited
resources at their disposal, he takes moderately gifted players and
makes them worse.
In Benítez's opinion the Britannia Stadium is not the place for
a Premier League debut, so Rodríguez was left on the bench until
the 78th minute. His first contribution was to barge into Salif
Diao in the centre circle, his second to overhit a through ball for
Dirk Kuyt, his third and last to make such a cumbersome job of
controlling a fine pass from Alberto Aquilani that he was easily
dispossessed.
Aquilani himself had not appeared until the 88th minute, omitted
from the starting line-up because Benítez feared the effects of
playing 120 minutes against Reading in midweek. The £20m Italian
began the season with an injury, but this was another example of
Benítez's sometimes bizarre attitude to his players. Given the
chronic absence of creativity caused by the departure of Xabi
Alonso, the Italian should be starting games at every possible
opportunity, even if he cannot complete them. In his few minutes
against Stoke, a couple of measured passes on the counter-attack
gave a glimpse of what his team-mates had been missing.
Should half a season of poor performances be enough to
invalidate Liverpool's second place in the Premier League last
season, not to mention the previous successes under his aegis in
the European and FA Cups, and to override patience? The case for
the prosecution is hard to dispute when Benítez's side play with so
little coherence, and attempts to defuse the sense of crisis by
pointing to the absences of Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres and
Yossi Benayoun are not persuasive.
For several weeks earlier this season Manchester United lost not
one but two complete defences. Arsenal have been coping without
Robin van Persie, Nicklas Bendtner, Gaël Clichy and sometimes
their key player, Cesc Fábregas. Chelsea are currently without four
big performers, including Didier Drogba and Michael Essien, all
temporarily lost to the Africa Cup of Nations. These things happen
at the top level of modern football, and it is part of the
manager's job to ensure that life goes on undisturbed.
A deeper, darker problem, however, may be an erosion of whatever
warmth and empathy may have existed between Benítez and his squad.
Great coaches are seldom interested in being best friends with
their players, but most of them cultivate the quantum of warmth
that generates and sustains mutual loyalty. For Benítez, however,
that loyalty may be stronger on the terraces than in the dressing
room. If Liverpool fail to secure a place in next season's
Champions League, the rumours currently swirling around Gerrard may
prove to have substance, and the captain would surely be followed
out of the club by Torres and Javier Mascherano. By then any
attempt to rebuild Liverpool, at least on the current foundations,
would be too late.