Rafa Benitez, Football Manager

good manager at badly run club.

Still don't understand what makes him a good manager tbh. Feel free to have a go at explaining this without referring to the club messing up all the things he should have been doing.

Pros- won the CL.
Bought Torres, Reina, Alonso, Masch, Benny Noon.
Beat lots of 10 men teams (Inter, Everton, Utd spring to mind.)

Weaknesses- can we blame his inability to understand wide positions on the board?

Maxi's turning out to be a pretty good wide player. Glen Johnson and Emiliano Insua have been encouraged to get forward and provide width.

encouraged to get forward, provide width and lose all ability to defend.

Am going to fully support this dude next season btw. Can't wait to see what he does for Balotelli's career.

you can't be in 2 players at once. lucas and masch fill in when johnson/insua go forward.

you can't be in 2 players at once. lucas and masch fill in when johnson/insua go forward.

― The referee was perfect (Chris), Friday, 9 July 2010 17:29 (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

think some wags have perfected the art actually.

also lol at the idea that full backs cannot both defend and attack. have you ever seen cole or evra or sagna or maicon or warnock etc. etc. etc.

http://browniestories.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/cat-ping-pong.jpg

apparently former liverpool goalkeep nikolay mihaylov (another academy kid/flop whichever way you look at it) got caught up in some shit with the bulgarian mafia when he was dating miss bulgaria.

this thread has not been a huge success since i went to the hospital and back tbh

NV where'd you come up with that pic, and is it g johnson defending/attacking, or is it this thread, or some happy double jeopardy type of general mishmash?

this is the lfc that publically courts other managers etc

Uh yes, I agree with all that. I think you're arguing the pro-Rafa case here. The present board at LFC are dismantling the club brick by brick and are the reason for its recent decline. It has not been as a result of Rafa's management.

Present board who gave him a huge contract and all the power to... spend £35m on two knackered players he doesn't like and come 7th?

I've always been able to separate the shite going on behind the scenes and Rafa's management of the situation he was in for a salary of 6m a year.

xxxpost

was looking for a game of ping pong to symbolize thread rhythm and made the happy discovery of cat ping pong

Rafa is an excellent European Cup manager. He has outsmarted Mourinho in the past and I think he is more than capable of doing so again in the CL with Inter.

(And Mourinho did seem to have an easier ride in Italy with Juve and AC down and seemingly directionless. But I only follow Italian footie if its on terrestrial/freeview)

So much battling to make the wildest claim on this thread, as such not worth commenting on beyond that.

Present board who gave him a huge contract and all the power to... spend £35m on two knackered players he doesn't like and come 7th?

― fuque santa cruz (a hoy hoy), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:50 (Yesterday)

Are you referring to Aquilani and Glen J? I've genuinely not heard that Rafa 'doesn't like' either of them. Where have you heard this?

Just assumed by the way he didn't play Aquilani?

Ronan this is all for you man, don't leave us here all alone

yeah i can talk bullshit about rafa in my sleep, i need some real competition to start busting out the proper challops.

Rafa is an excellent European Cup manager. He has outsmarted Mourinho in the past and I think he is more than capable of doing so again in the CL with Inter.

(And Mourinho did seem to have an easier ride in Italy with Juve and AC down and seemingly directionless. But I only follow Italian footie if its on terrestrial/freeview)

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 10 July 2010 09:24 (7 hours ago) Bookmark

Pfft every time a manager's team beats another manager's team they're smarter now? Rafa's always managed his fair share of one-off wins- cup manager imo.

Mourinho's easy ride at Inter could be equated to Benitez having it very soft in only having a poor united to beat the season before last, tbh. He still got lauded for failing then.

I had thought Spurs did well last season until now - hadn't really considered that maybe they only just stumbled into 4th in the weakest premiership field ever assembled

Shit, I promised myself I wouldn't feed this thread ...

weakest premier league ever assembled

rafa's liverpool finished 7th.

go on.

Heh, don't change the subject. Just reading a piece saying Spurs have to pay an extra £7m if Keane plays a certain number of games - hadn't seen that before and it doesn't say how many games, but it'd explain why Harry's so keen to keep him out of harm's way

fuck.

german goal btw

fuck playing keane another game in any situation, his attitude has been rank since his return bar all but two or three games.

we overpaid to take him back as is. let him off, if anyone will pay his wages. another thing to blame on rafa, the cunt's wages.

last post totally on-subject btw

Yossi Benayoun tells us where he stands on the topic:

http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_6255511,00.html

Poor Yossi. My heart bleeds.

Yossi Benayoun, July 2008: “I have very good chemistry with Benitez. He loves me. He bought me. I really enjoy being with him, moreover, I had an excellent season. I even surprised myself."

hm, well I suppose you could argue that keeping your staff happy is an important part of any manager's job

yossi otm. and chris, isn't his whole point that he didn't speak out negatively because he is a good pro. this doesn't surprise me at all, the lack of faith in creative players and wingers is rafa's biggest fault. he did "break" riera, managed to fuck the two closest things to wingers the club had, both of them.

perhaps he had lack of faith in them for the reason. i'm more inclined to trust rafa than someone who was moaning after 3 games, 3 games!, that he wasn't playing enough.

*a reason, not 'the' reason.

is yossi otm about albert riera? if someone's a disruptive influence then it makes sense to leave them out. xabi alonso - he was performing badly and rafa looked to replace him. xabi responded brilliantly, got his head down, and put in an awesome season for us before moving on. he still speaks highly of rafa, and didn't go crying to the NOTW.

best this one is handled internally by the liverpool supporters imo.

Yeah but both Rieira and Benayoun had pretty decent assist rates, didn't they? I am specifically thinking of the 2008-09 season ie the one where Liverpool nearly won the league.

You can't defend Rafa on this imo - his job is to get his playing staff playing together to the best of their ability. Alienating them and making them unhappy is only going to do that with very rare individuals, much better to keep them happy and ticking over. He seems to have so little interest in doing that, from what we know, that it's kind of bewildering how he did so well.

The book I'm reading has a piece on Anelka's move to Real Madrid - when he arrived there no-one introduced him to the other players, no-one showed him around, they didn't even clear out a locker for him. The point is that sure, he might still be a sulky dick as an individual, but he'd've done a lot better if he was a sulky dick who thought people put in a bit of effort for him. Why wouldn't you do that?

every manager falls out with players. lovely fluffy roy hodgson fell out with roberto carlos at inter. sir alec kicked a boot at david beckham's head. shit happens. some footballers think they know best, they can't understand why they don't start week in week out. if it were that simple then i'd be a football manager. i'd like to think that a manager knows his players better than anyone else. yossi loses all credibility when he spouts shit like "he deliberately tried to break me". really yossi? ok. have fun picking splinters out of your arse at chelsea.

re. anelka, if you're suggesting liverpool don't employ people to look after new players and help them relocate then i know for a fact that they do.

it appears that a lot of you have lapped up the shite that the press have served up about evil, cold, alienating rafa.

He's OBVIOUSLY a terrible man manager. You can see it in the way the players played when they were given a chance. When fringe players get their chance to play in the first team at Man United they seize the opportuntity and really go for it - they're not getting a game but they're still motivated.

When Rieira got back in the team last season he looked like a player with no confidence. And Rieira and Benayoun are certainly not any worse than, say, Park Ji-Sung or Darron Gibson.

he's OBVIOUSLY a terrible man manager because when ryan babel had a moan on twitter (twitter ffs), he supported him and got him playing out of his skin for the 2nd half of the season.

he's OBVIOUSLY a terrible man manager because he stuck by lucas when he was getting pelted by the press and the fans and then publically praised the lad for his hard work and effort and for proving people wrong.

he's OBVIOUSLY a terrible man manager because torres, reina and mascherano have thanked him publically for turning them into the world class players they've become.

said it a million times, riera's attitude stank/stunk/stinks. that's not rafa's fault, that's just how albert is. simples.

can't be bothered with this any more. have fun!

Chris: Fucking hell. This is not Carlos (supreme dickhead by all accounts) and Beckham (wanted out, under performing in the eyes of everyone, thought he was bigger than the manager). Benny Noon never spoke out in the press and was treated like shit for what was seen by everyone bar Benitez as good performances.

Babel playing out of skin? You the only person to notice this?

Umm... also didn't Torres head the Gerrard/TORRES/Carragher player movement to get Benitez out and has obviously been mystified by his actions for his career, especially this season?

Also quoting a meerkat is hella lame.

lol was wondering how the benayoun interview would play out.

chris, he is, obviously, a terrible man manager. come on.

Torres and Mascherano were world class players before they went to Liverpool. Think Reina would have made it at most clubs as well, it's not like there was some magical stardust that Rafa sprinkled over them. It's his failure to get the best out of less talented members of the squad that was the problem.

There will be dispute over whether west ham's mascherano and perennial failure at atletico torres were world class before they went to benitez.

the dispute will be incorrect, but it will exist nonetheless.

perennial failure at atletico

How so?