With speculation growing that Inter manager Rafa Benitez will be sacked in the coming days, there has been a clamour among some Liverpool fans for a return of the Spanish coach to Anfield. After long hard thought I can say I won’t be one of those wanting his return. No one can doubt his capabilities as a manager, and his record compared to Roy Hodgson’s 35 year career is incomparable, but for me, there is too much baggage if he were to return to Anfield.
If we put aside the fact that the British media really had it in for the Spaniard; there are other issues that would need to be resolved. There were rumours that the dressing room was not the happiest place in the final six months of Rafa’s reign and it would be difficult to see how Benitez could come back in after six months as if nothing had happened. Even Kenny Dalglish said in his autobiography that he felt it was time Rafa left in the summer:
“It was right for everybody that Rafa Benitez left – for him and for Liverpool Football Club. There just comes a stage in every manager’s career when the board says, ‘You’ve been good for the club but we feel it would be best if you go’. Sometimes it works the same way for a manager – ‘I’ve done my time. There’s no animosity but it’s time to have a go somewhere else’.”
Certainly performances had become stale in the last months of his reign and some of the abject away performances were hard to stomach. There are certainly some Reds fans who will certainly not welcome Rafa’s return, and although this may well be a minority, a new manager should indicate renewal, and should unify all the club’s fans behind the new boss. This cannot happen with Rafa and it would be difficult to see how he could reunite the fan base with his past history at the club.
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This week it is former Liverpool WAG Abigail Clancy!
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Your use of the word “fanbase” gives you away.Are you a wool? I assume you mean ‘supporters’?
Rafa needs to come back. Given a stable club with supportive owners, he would show Hodgson what can be done at Liverpool FC.
So the point of this article is that David wants a new manager because like us, he’s lost patience with old fat Roy but he doesn’t want Rafa back.
We’ve got rid of H&G and have new supportive owners who want to bring success to the club and provide funds for transfers. I’m pretty sure Rafa would be able to work with the board and the new owners now the clowns H&G and Purslow are gone. Last season was poor under Rafa because he had to work all by himself without the backing of the board and owners who didn’t provide him with funds and wanted him out.
Not sure if Rafa would be able to work with a technical director in Comolli but I for one would love to see Rafa return as I don’t even know why he was sacked in the first place after all the success he brought to the club. One bad season and they decide to sack him, forgetting he won us the Champions League, got to the final again, won us the FA Cup, dominated Europe and won away at the Nou Camp, Real Madrid, Inter, Old Trafford, got us second in the League (our highest ever finish and point tally).
The sooner Roy goes the better and I would like to see either we get Rafa back or we appoint an established world class manager like Hiddink.
no to rafa.he is a failure.he is too arrogant,cant talk to his players well.he killed our tem softly removing important asserts out slowly leading to the death of the team.all the suffering we are in now is becoz of rafa.anybody who wants rafa back is a manchester united fan,becoz they know rafa will destroy our team and make man u winers again.
Your playing with crayons again tee. you alway write total b*****ks.
I would love to see Rafa return. His passion for the club was always clear to see and given the chance i think he would bring pride back to our great football club.
WOULD BRING PRIDE BACK?????BENITEZ?????you’re having a laugh mate! with all his stupid rants, ego, arrogance and public airing of laundry (which HE started) the man brought shame and ridicule to our great club, in my opinion. rubroy is a fool but to revert to the fool he replaced is a non-starter for me!
Right with you Steve – just because Hodgson was the wrong man to replace him, that doesn’t mean that it was the wrong decision to move Benitez on.
Rafa is history – let him stay there
I am afraid the five names are not very convincing – certainly none have Rafa’s pedigree. I also suspect that the dressing room (with the exception of Babel) would welcome Rafa back.
The obvious advantage of bringing back Rafa Benitez would be that he would require no adaptation time, since the bulk of players and coaching staff have worked with him before and he is well acclimatised to the Premier League. The Academy – which has been in the spotlight in a positive way this season – was practically rebuilt by Rafa from scratch.
I see no better alternative for Liverpool at this juncture than Rafa Benitez, a man with unfinished business in England and at Liverpool (namely that elusive Premier League title). NESV and Comolli could do worse than look back to the future in these circumstances.
no thanks – I’d rather stick with Hodgson for the rest of the year than have another five years of Benitez!
Totally agree with Jay
How long will it be before we hear the words BACK ME OR SACK ME? before he clashes with the owners, the Director of Football ………… etc!!! The Leopard doesn’t change his spots, he’s had this rant everywhere he’s coached the only reason he has endeared himself to the fans is Liverpool was always in with a chance to win everything. Yet in 5 years 1 Champions League win. Don’t get me wrong but Silverware is what we crave & winning the CL final was great but number 19 is what we want above all else!!! Enough said THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES RAFA BUT NO THANKS!!!
Jay Wright,thank god there are other people thinking what i think..i mean we Hodgson may not be a top class manager but for me,last year was worse than this year..this year i see there is optimism in the club trying for the future and we might be in a bad position,but i see that some people give their 100%..last year,i was bored and stopped watching liverpool..benitez played Lucas-Mascherano in midfield and our football was a mediocrity at best..Roy has tried 4-4-2,4-2-3-1,4-5-1,..and is mixing things up..also listen to what babel said about roy..he said that roy goes and talk with his players and tries to find solutions while benitez never spoke with the players.benitez had lost the dressing room last year and i think that if he came back,he would do even more damage to liverpool..also remember what torres said at summer.he said that it was time for a change cauz everyone was bored of the same and same awful tactics.BENITEZ STAY AWAY!!!
Benitez is not the answer.
I love Rafa and have great respect for him and the things he achieved for LFC – bringing back King Kenny, overhauling the academy, 2 CL finals (one win), a league cup final, a memorable FA Cup triumph and runners up in the EPL for 2008/09.
However, he was also responsible for some very poor buys. H&G money problems aside, Rafa still had the final say on who came and who went in terms of personnel and he was the one who thought Pennant, Plessis, Josemi, Itanje, Gonzales, El-Zhar and a host of other sub-par players were good enough for LFC.
Under Rafa, and this remains the case now, we don’t have enough natural pace or creativity in the team. Two or three players only, with this ability, is not enough to win league titles IMO.
Yes, he brought in some top quality players, but he let a lot of those same quality players go (whether bought or inherited), without replacing them adequately (Alonso, Crouch, Bellamy, Riise, Benayoun, Hyypia … and these are just names off the top of my head).
Judging by all accounts, Rafa is not the best man-manager either.
And I’m not even going to bother to talk about his ego and need to publicly air his dirty linen.
I prefer the gaffer (whoever that may be) to do their talking through the team, not the media.
So, Rafa, thanks for the memories, but no thanks. It was the right time to leave, when you did. You’ll always have a place in our hearts, but I think we need to move forward, not back.
I don’t think Roy Hodgson is the long-term answer either; he’s too negative for me.
The gaffer should be talking up the team, believing in every member of the squad and focusing on what we can do, not the opposition.
I’m hoping the NESV team are taking this time to come up with a shortlist of top candidates to take over in the Summer.
Our next manager needs to be someone who will believe in the Liverpool footballing philosophy of pass and move, not be afraid to take chances or dropping “top” players when they don’t perform.
I know they broke the mould but we need a man like Shankly.
My candidate for the job in the Summer: Owen Coyle.
He’s young, hungry, and he’s teams play attractive, attacking football. Yes, he’s unproven in Europe and doesn’t have a glittering, managerial, CV, but neither did Shanks, Paisley or Dalglish.
They seemed to do okay in the job. 🙂
YNWA
Spot on!
Relieved to see someone else is also thinking of Mr. Coyle.
Tottally agree the club needs a fresh younger outlook Roy and Rafa do not have this, Coyle is the sort of manager who could still be there in ten years.
I think Rafa back at the club he has a passion for with a board that has a passion to succeed would be a great combination.
Imagine Rafa and the board working together with one sole purpose to make LFC champions again.
Rafa lost his way because he had to wheel and deal and look for free transfers and had to settle for bargains rather than real quality. He was pulling one way, the board was pulling the other, that was never going to be a success.
Rafa is young, vastly experienced and much more aware of the premiership and the English media, this combined with a true passion for LFC and it’s fans and a genuine love for the city of Liverpool has surely got to be the recipe for success.
The only thing I would say if he came back is that he must shave that awful goatee.
His last summer transfer window saw the big money signings of Aquilani and Johnson, following on from the big money purchase of Robbie Keane. Doesn’t look much like “wheeling and dealing” for free transfers to me…
Last year was worse than this year? Stick with RH for the rest of the year? yeah and we will be seeing the back of Torres and Reina. What drugs are you on, anyway?
Liverpool are currently stuck with a manager the fans – and probably the current leadership – would never have chosen in the first place and certainly do not rate after the terrible start to this season. Meireles aside, grave errors in the transfer market (entry of Poulsen and Konchesky, exit of Aquilani) have not made Hodgson especially popular with practically ANY section of Liverpool fans.
Roy is surely a competent manager, albeit one better suited to manage a country as opposed to a club team. Rafa, on the other hand, has proven again and again that he is one of the top managers in the world, often performing miracles against expectations (Istanbul, a second final and semifinal in the Champions League, earning enough points for Liverpool to top the European rankings, his pre-last season in the Premier League, his two Spanish championships with Valencia against Real’s galacticos and Barcelona, his UEFA victory with Valencia, and so on) and rebuilding Liverpool from the bottom up (the revival of the Academy is due entirely to Rafa’s reforms and shrewd recruitment of staff and players).
Rafa would fit back into Liverpool FC like a glove – especially with the new regime. If only our new owners would make this daring move, I have no doubt that they and Liverpool fans would be richly rewarded.