Rafael Benitez's future at Liverpool remains delicately poised
after he was told by the club's American owners that he will have
to raise his own transfer money next month.
Liverpool moved to present a united front on Monday after their
Spanish manager emerged from Sunday night's meeting with Tom Hicks
and George Gillett with his job safe for the time being.
But although the three-hour meeting was understood to be amicable,
Benitez is having to come to terms with the news that he will have
to sell before he can spend significantly when the transfer window
opens in January.
Benitez's prime target is AC Milan's Georgian central defender
Kahka Kaladze but it appears that he will have to offload someone
like midfielder Momo Sissoko, attracting interest from Everton and
Juventus, or England striker Peter Crouch to generate the
money.
The Liverpool manager has also been told that the £17million it
will require to turn Javier Mascherano's loan deal into a permanent
move will not be available until the summer, leaving the Merseyside
club vulnerable to approaches from elsewhere.
Although Benitez was untypically sanguine about the matter as he
left Anfield late on Sunday, it remains to be seen whether the
dispute that continues to surface about the club's direction will
crop up again soon.
In an address to the Liverpool Former Players' Association at a
city hotel just hours after talks with Benitez, Gillett admitted:
'The transfer window opens soon and we might use the option that
gives us, or we might not.
'But Liverpool is a great club. We are well aware that we have
something very valuable on our hands. Liverpool is not our club,
it's your club. The supporters' club. It's always been that way and
it will always be that way.'
'This dispute wasn't supposed to happen, but it has happened and
now the focus has to be on finding a common platform to continue
our co-operation.
'Rafa is the one we want as a manager and we have faith in him.
I've been married more than 40 years and have first hand knowledge
about how to solve an argument. We concentrated on getting an
overview of the situation, and I felt we accomplished that.'
