Europe or bust for Rafa

Tagged with: Fernando Torres Rafa Benitez

It’s a familiar tale for Rafa Benitez and Liverpool.

Once again, Benitez finds himself in the position of relying on Europe to redeem his club’s season.

It worked magnificently in 2004/05, and almost did so again last season. But, it is hard to escape the feeling that, if Inter Milan overcome Liverpool in the European Cup, Benitez’s time at Anfield will be up.

The home defeat to Barnsley is without doubt the most embarrassing result of Benitez’s reign. In 2004/05, Liverpool were knocked out of the FA Cup by Burnley when Benitez fielded a similarly weakened side. But there was greater acceptance of the result amongst fans – Liverpool were en route to the League Cup final, and Benitez was in his first season – and the wonders of hindsight dictates that both that defeat and their chronic Premier League inconsistency were vindicated by the glory of a fifth European Cup.

This time, fans and board will not be looking on so sympathetically.

No one can say Benitez wasn’t warned. His excessive rotation and arrogance towards lower league opposition has already been demonstrated in the FA Cup this season, as Liverpool were first held to a draw at Luton then twice fell behind to Havant & Waterlooville.

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Furthermore, recent Premier League results have not exactly justified his dogmatic insistence on persevering with the policy of rotation. With eight points from their last seven league games, Liverpool, after all the talk of a title tilt, face a depressing scenario: slumming it out for fourth spot yet. Increasingly, pundits have referred to the Big Three rather than the Big Four, indicative of the extent of Liverpool’s slump of late.

In his fourth season at Anfield, Benitez’s excuses are wearing thin, and it would be hard for anyone to argue they have progressed in the last season-and-a-half. After an impressive haul of 82 points in ‘05/06, the signs were there that Liverpool were developing the consistency necessary to finally end their title drought. The chief factor preventing them doing so, pundits argued, was a lack of potency up front.

Unfortunately, cutting edge up front patently remains a problem. Benitez, however, has no one to blame but himself: he has long since freed himself of his predecessor’s signings, and is responsible for the presence of Liverpool’s current quartet of strikers at the club. Moreover, in consecutive summers he has spent big on a forward – ‘the final piece in the jigsaw’. That was the idea, anyway.

Dirk Kuyt, a £9million recruit in August 2006, cannot be faulted for his tenacity and workrate. But he was not brought in for those qualities: he was signed to score the goals to take Liverpool to the next level, and has frankly not vindicated his manager’s faith. For all his industry, he is seldom clinical in front of goal. Bereft of confidence and continually in-and-out of the starting eleven, he went almost three months without scoring until his goal against Barnsley. Few would dispute that Peter Crouch should be leading the line instead of Kuyt.

Unlike so many of his signings, however, Benitez’s headline acquisition last summer has justified the huge outlay. Fernando Torres has displayed power, poise and electrifying speed. Since a clinically-taken goal on his home debut against Chelsea, his finishing prowess has never been in doubt. What continues to bemuse and confound is Benitez’s willingness to ‘rest’ his £26.5million asset with such regularity that he has yet to forge a genuine partnership with any other forward.

When Torres and Steven Gerrard are both near their best, Liverpool are immensely dangerous going forward. But when either or both is off the field or on the periphery of the game, too often team-mates fail to step-up to the responsibility, leaving the side bereft of creativity and incision. They become too predictable to defend against, as Barnsley will attest to.

And so onto Tuesday’s clash with Inter Milan – a side who are strong favourites to retain Serie A and are unbeaten in the league all season. A glance at the team sheet for the FA Cup tie revealed the prominence Benitez is affording to the game; its significance will only have increased following the humiliating defeat. The manager’s cause has not exactly been helped by near-constant, very public and seemingly personal feuding with the club’s American owners, including complaining over the lack of funds made available to him. Critics point out that Messrs Hicks and Gillett released the funds to sign Torres, Ryan Babel and others over the summer.

Benitez has succeeded before with his tightrope-walking antics: infuriating fans and board alike by disregarding domestic competitions in favour of Europe, then gaining stunning vindication through results there. Now, however, the tightrope-walker extraordinaire is a slip away from losing his job.

Can Benitez turn it round?
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