Former Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez has come out in a staunch defence of his time at Liverpool arguing that he left the squad in good shape, but some of his comments are disingenuous and misleading to say the least.
Benitez’s exact words were as follows: “I was very clear that when I left we had a better squad than we had in the past, and a better team. We knew we had to bring in better players. We left a good team, a very good team. A lot of people are talking about the legacy but the legacy is fantastic. When I left the club, (Javier) Mascherano, (Yossi) Benayoun and (Albert) Riera were there, along with Carra [Jamie Carragher], (Steven) Gerrard, (Jay) Spearing, (Stephen) Darby, (Emiliano) Insua, (Diego) Cavalieri and (Jonjo) Shelvey. They cannot talk about legacy when (Christian) Purslow [managing director] and Hodgson signed seven players. They have already changed the squad.”
While I don’t doubt for a second that the squad Hodgson has inherited was better than the one Benitez inherited from Gerard Houllier, I do doubt that it was even Benitez’s finest squad during his time at the club with departure of Xabi Alonso in particular hurting the club terribly on the pitch last season, but whether a side that lurched from crisis to crisis last season limping to a 7th place finish in the league and poor performances in every cup competition can be labelled as a ‘very good team’ is doubtful.
The hangover from last season has continued well and truly into this season and despite a good team on paper, Liverpool have underperformed to the extreme, even going as far as to eclipse last season’s disappointments with notable defeats at home to both Northampton and Blackpool.
While Hodgson has doubtless made mistakes since taking charge, with the constant calls for patience and downgrading of ambition understandable yet grating at the same time, often trotted out to the press seemingly on a daily basis now, I think it’s fair to say that the club has been on the slide for more than just these last few months since Hodgson took charge and it’s time that Benitez took some of the blame rather than trying, and failing may I add, to paint a rose-tinted view of his last few months at Anfield and washing his hands clean in the process.
The legacy cannot be said to be ‘fantastic’ as Benitez puts it. No youth team player has broken into the starting eleven during his time at the helm and gone on to feature consistently, despite the excellent performances of the youth teams in the FA Youth Cup, which makes naming players such as Spearing and Darby all the more puzzling. Whereas Shelvey was signed at the end of last season and hadn’t even kicked a ball for the club under Benitez’s tenure, and although he does have potential, his signing was a surprising one. The less said about Insua the better and the worst news the club had all summer was that his move to Fiorentina broke down.
The quotes attributed to Benitez include some very strange views indeed. The youth setup was derided by Rodolfo Borrell, a former Barcelona youth coach brought in by Benitez himself last season to help with the youth team’s infrastructure, with Borrell stating that “The reality of what we found here was unacceptable. The under-18s had no centre forward, no balance, no tactical level, no understanding of the game. We are working hard but you can’t change things overnight. I think if we keep working hard maybe in two tears somebody can appear in the first-team.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but after already being manager at the club for six years, isn’t the youth setup’s failings Benitez’s fault as much as anyone’s.
Can anyone honestly tell me that Daniel Ayala was a better defensive prospect than Jack Hobbs? The lack of chances afforded to young players at Liverpool during Benitez’s reign was palpable. I became sick and tired of hearing stories about the latest bright young thing from the reserves that looked all but ready to set the world alight. It never happened. Nothing ever materialised. Benitez never gave them a chance. So far, to his credit at least, Hodgson has. If they are not good enough, fine, but don’t try to change the past please Rafa, Darby and Spearing were less than fringe players under your tenure.
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But it’s in naming the likes of Benayoun, Mascherano and Riera that I begin to believe that Rafa’s now truly off his rocker, why not just name Ryan Babel as well while you’re at it. Riera had been frozen out after some ill-advised comments about the club towards the end of Rafa’s reign, Benayoun openly stated upon joining Chelsea that one of the main reasons for his departure was Benitez and Mascherano was always destined to leave the club this summer no matter who was in charge, the club wasn’t the problem in his case, simply the location and proximity to his family.
Labelling these three as evidence of a strong squad is laughable, as two of them had nothing but contempt towards Benitez due to the lack of playing time he granted them and the other, Mascherano, had wanted to depart the club last summer only to see any potential move scuppered by the sale of Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid. If he had highlighted the string spine that he left, the likes of Reina, Agger, Carragher, Gerrard and Torres I wouldn’t have any quibbles, but highlighting the players listed above is nothing short of bonkers.
Hodgson had this to say in a thinly veiled attack on Benitez’s transfer policy towards the end of his time at the club and the squad he inherited: “We were unbelievably overstaffed when I came to the club and we still are overstaffed. It was just as big a job making sure that some of the players who never feature for the first team move on. We had to limit our squad to players who are either in the frame to play first-team football or who have a bright future [and] who are still anxious to play academy and reserve-team football. We don’t want that middle group, who are too old for reserve football but are not serving any purpose for the first team because they never feature.”
I don’t know about you, but quite how the likes of the players that departed this summer, such as Phillip Degen, Damien Plessis, the aforementioned Cavalieri or Nabil El Zhar could be constituted as being part of a ‘fantastic legacy’ at the club is beyond me and the squad Hodgson inherited had as much dead wood in it as the one Benitez inherited and Hodgson was entirely correct with his sentiments.
Former managers always like to take credit for a club’s successes after they leave just as much as they like to apportion blame to the new manager if the club continues to do badly after they’ve gone, but Benitez’s latest comments leave a bitter taste in the mouth and although he’s trying to wash his hands of the current mess that the club find themselves in, he was the one in charge of player recruitment, and as much as the owner issue is like an albatross hanging weightily around the club’s neck, dragging it further down into the mire, Benitez has to be held accountable too.
It’s clear for all to see that with Liverpool currently in the relegation zone for the first time since 1964, that things are going extremely poorly on the pitch, but on the face of it at least, Hodgson’s signings look to be pretty good. Wilson and Jovanovic had been tracked by the club while Benitez was still manager which makes his ‘they have already changed the squad’ claim seem even more hollow. Joe Cole is still finding his feat but should pay-off in the long term and Raul Meireles looks to be a fine addition. I still have my doubts about Paul Konchesky at this level and I think it’s fair to say that Christian Poulsen has struggled somewhat since his move but has a great pedigree, and Brad Jones will rarely feature only serving to be an able if unused understudy to the excellent Pepe Reina.
I completely understand that Benitez worked under incredibly difficult circumstances for a number of years at the club, and that these restricted the impact he could have had on the club’s fortunes immeasurably, but he was afforded a power and responsibility over first-team affairs that was unprecedented in scope and scale, and one that no manager previously could claim to have acquired. The legacy he has left the club is there for all to see right now, languishing in the bottom three of the Premiership. Rather than wash his hands clean of the mess the club currently finds itself in, perhaps it’s time Benitez took off the rose-tinted specs, as he’s not kidding anyone with this latest baffling ramble.
Written By James McManus
