Whoever ended up as Liverpool manager this summer was guaranteed to have a job on his hands. Transfer money had been mysteriously vanishing from the spending kitty for a couple of seasons, gradually depleting the squad, and there would be no Champions League football to help attract new players.
Nothing in life comes with only positives; even miracle medicines have side effects (those hair-restorer pills I took which made my teeth fall out and my toes turn green. And ‘restored’ hair only to my ears). Roy Hodgson deserves to be judged at Liverpool on his Liverpool performances only; however, until we get around to those, it’s important to know his strengths and weaknesses.
How much value is removed from a squad each season in terms of personnel who, due to age or contracts running down, are lost to a club? Whether or not players are bought and sold for profit, there will always be the inevitable wastage.
For me, complaining about the manager is like being concerned with a splinter while suffering from cancer. The cancer is what needs excising. But the trouble with cancer is that not only does it spread, it affects the body as a whole. Even seemingly unrelated physical problems trace back to the underlying disease.
So, was he overpriced? Overrated? Should he instead play on the wing? Glen Johnson wasn’t the most straightforward of signings, right from the start. Portsmouth still owed in the region of £8m for signing Peter Crouch a year earlier; money that, with hindsight, clearly wasn’t going to be paid in cash.
Of all the falsehoods that get spouted about Benítez, the misrepresentation of his record in the transfer market is perhaps the most baffling. John Toshack is the latest to be quoted criticising, saying that Rafa has spent €300m and only signed three good players: Torres, Reina and Alonso.
I’ve said for ages that Benítez will never get a fair assessment from certain fans, and sloppy, or vindictive journalists. I’ve spent years fighting the myths that surround the manager, and now is the time to draw a number of those points together, in short recaps (with links to the more detailed analysis).
The season where Liverpool’s first tactical substitution was on average the latest after the opposition’s (2008/09), was the most successful league season the club has had in years. More relevant to this study, it was the year with the highest number of substitutions that turned losses to wins: six.
Such is the importance placed on being in the Champions League, the thought of Liverpool missing out on the top four will be treated by many as the same as relegation. Last night’s defeat against Wigan won’t have helped ease such fears.
This is an abridged version of a chapter-length piece published on here five weeks ago for members, which examines various facets of the media, and how it affects perceptions of Liverpool Football Club.
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