Rafa Benitez, Football Manager

And since the last post I've made...

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01790/rafa_1790651b.jpg

£50,000 in compensation.

spanish lack of succession

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/1429/photopd.jpg

It's strange how a manager with a proven track record and multiple trophy wins, such as Benitez is portrayed as an incompetent buffoon., whilst a bloke with a single FA cup win in 25 years of management,such as Redknapp is portrayed as a genius.

No one thinks of Redknapp as a genius.

cant believe redknapp didnt win league at bournemouth tbh.

Benitez makes tactical/managerial/pr decisions that most fans would consider stupid/questionable. Enough of these decisions prove sufficiently memorably counterproductive that a manager like redknapp, that makes fairly obvious decisions, seems the picture of common sense by comparison.

Simple enough concept, imo. Rafa overthinking everything neither makes him a genius nor a better manager than redknapp. And rafa being a cunt (publicly, publicly) harms his effectiveness far more than his vaunted tactical ability gains him.

The middle bit's about right. The odd thing for me is that tactically Rafa's outstanding, but put him in a scenario beyond the intricacies of winning a particular football match - man management, strategy, allocating resources - and it goes to shit as often as not. He'd be the ideal number two, or to have a director of football handling the high-level stuff, but it appears that he'd never countenance either of those things.

i'm not actually convinced of the tactically outstanding part, tbph, but it's accepted wisdom at this stage.

Thing is for tactics to really work they have to fit the players you've got and their mentality, otherwise it's just abstract theorising.

i suppose when you take out pr, man management and transfers, if you accept that he's professional-management level at all then you logically have to tick 'tactical genius'

benitez p much inspired the thread i started about the modern managerial skillset.

Ismel prob right on 'coach' being rafa's position. Under commolli (lol) he might be half decent.

"Tactical genius" = mostly assigning your best players to their preferred positions and assigning somebody to kick the shit out of the opposition's creative outlet.

second part redundant when that actually is mascherano's best position tbf

I think the greater part of tactical knowledge is being able to respond to developments in a game in progress and adjust what the team is doing accordingly. Stubborn managers frequently struggle in this respect and infuriate the fans with bizarrely timed substitutions and failure to adjust to glaring on-pitch failings.

what i'll give rafa, for his whole time at liverpool, that was in any way above what you'd expect from anyone in his position;

Dour negativity worked brilliantly in europe

Torres, reina, alonso and mascherano all worked out

Had the perfect publicly contrarian personality to get fanatical scouse support

Making them tough to beat and realising that carragher couldnt get censured in any way in the league was good enough for second in a terrible league that one time.

Stop denigrating Liverpool 2009, they were great (long sequence of uninterested draws in Jan/Feb apart). By all means attack the other five years if you must.

the thread i started about the modern managerial skillset

Did I miss this or am I just forgetting? Would quite like to see it broken down - Redknapp would score highly on man management I feel, and possibly strategy, but not so much on tactics. And he doesn't appear to see allocation of resources as part of his job at all.

i'm sure i did start one, but would struggle to locate it while surfing on the phone tbh.

I think the greater part of tactical knowledge is being able to respond to developments in a game in progress and adjust what the team is doing accordingly. Stubborn managers frequently struggle in this respect and infuriate the fans with bizarrely timed substitutions and failure to adjust to glaring on-pitch failings.

This is why Mourinho wins, basically.

xp could have just been a detour on one of several threads, tho- off season, wc2010, maybe this one.

mourinho's plan a is usually p good, read quotes from fatty lumplard to the effect that each player gets a folder before each game on the opposition.

ismael, you're failing miserably as a biter here btw. I suppose chris, venga and ronan et al will all show when i'm on lunch

Sorry, I am too placid and reasonable to be a good goadee. Also too fickle and unscouse in my affections - Rafa used up my goodwill a long time ago, and I really don't want him back.

course he could end up at spurs pretty easily if capello goes. Him or woy.

Genuinely tough call imo, obv like woy more, and we've always worked better under a man manager than tactician imo.

but it would be nice to see jenas and bentley get rafa'd

Bentley's basically been Rafa'd anyway.

nobody does it better tho

Actually being Harry'd = get dropped for a year and come back twice the player. Being Rafa'd = get dropped and never heard from again.

I hear Aquilani is currently running tings in the Juve midfield though.

all woys fault, that

Would be happy with Rafa going back to Anfield and running a sweepstake on how quickly he can get Liverpool fans to turn against NESV for "not investing seriously".

He'll probably use the same excuse when the Benitez children are vocally disappointed with their Christmas presents.

"I am fully focussed on buying you Kinectimals for the Xbox 360 and the Gossip Girl DVD box set for Christmas"

"i asked for a playstation and i received a game gear. You will need to ask fr christmas why"

Hahaha.

I love Rafa but I don't think I'd want him back. Not yet. The press would make his job impossible, there are still fans who don't like him, and this thread would be unbearable! He needs to take some time out, recharge his batteries, spend time with his family, and stay out of the spotlight for a while. I'd have loved him to have stayed at Inter and won everything, but he did get them playing better football than Mourinho did, and he gained the respect of the fans, who were singing for him to stay after the Club World Cup victory. General concensus is that he was right to challenge Moratti, but it probably wasn't the best time to do so.

I think the greater part of tactical knowledge is being able to respond to developments in a game in progress and adjust what the team is doing accordingly. Stubborn managers frequently struggle in this respect and infuriate the fans with bizarrely timed substitutions and failure to adjust to glaring on-pitch failings.

This is why Mourinho wins, basically.

Jonathan Wilson says much the same about Harry Redknapp, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/dec/01/the-question-harry-redknapp-tactically

Chris, have you actually watched this Inter side? Because I have 3 times. Once was the 4-3 against Spurs where yes, they played some nice stuff (until he told Coutinho to cut it out). The other two times they looked like a nasty bunch who didn't know what they were doing and were less pleasing on the eye than Mourinho's.

Excellent article on 'Arry and Cloughie, that.

o lol

o holy lol

inter now denying he's been sacked

dude is like football schizophrenia, he makes crazy shit happen wherever

x-posts, yeah, i have been watching inter. fans and players seemed to be happy, eto'o said he prefers benitez's pressing game - it's no coincidence that he's already scored more goals than he managed in the whole of last season.

cant believe he was complimentary about his current manager.

Inter have been a disaster under benitez, so far.

why is it so unbelievable that eto'o would credit benitez for encouraging the team to win the ball higher? given that other teams have strengthened more than inter, and that inter have had bad luck with injuries, i wouldn't say it's been a 'disaster'. unlucky, but far from a disaster. still have 2 games in hand.

all teams have bad luck with injuries. its not a good excuse anymore. last season inter had bigger injury problems imo (curse of their left backs, no stankovic, muntari or zanetti for long periods means at least 2 positions weren't covered for most of the season), didn't stop them then.

muntari is waste tbf

ageing squad, hardly strengthened in the summer. chelsea have had bad injuries and their form's been shocking.

defending benitez at inter is stupid

he's done some interesting stuff tactically but in terms of any aspect of management that involves considering players as ppl, he's an unmitigated disaster

ageing squad, barely strengthened in summer, trouble with injuries.

Guess hodgson is doin pretty well so far all told.

defending benitez at inter is stupid... itt. tough crowd