05
Mar
09
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Rafael Benitez could still leave Liverpool football club in the summer. That’s a sentence that should send a shiver down the spine of every Liverpool fan following a week that will be looked back on by many as, quite possibly, the best ever in the club’s recent history. The fact that there is still a semblance of doubt over whether Benitez will stay at Anfield beyond the summer after this glorious last week for the Merseysiders tells you all you need to know about the internal fighting which has dogged the famous English club this season.
Benitez not only masterminded a brilliant 4-0 win over Real Madrid in the Champions League last week, he then had the temerity to plan and execute a dumbfounding 4-1 success at the home of the Reds’ greatest rivals, Manchester United, on Saturday. However, despite these monumental victories – ones that should finally lay to rest the myth that Benitez is a limited, negative coach – his new contract on the table at Anfield remains unsigned and there are still key elements of his future job specification to be resolved before the Spaniard does commit.
Benitez wants assurances that he will have full control of the club’s transfer policy. It’s been a stubborn pursuit which has already yielded one job casualty with chief executive Rick Parry being forced out of his position at the end of the season but, when results were not so good on the pitch earlier in the campaign, it was Benitez who some fans wanted out.
Manchester United supporters were made to look silly with their “Rafa’s cracking up” chants early on at Old Trafford on Saturday and, who knows, maybe it’s Sir Alex Ferguson who needs the straight-jacket after claiming his side were the better team after the game. It was, make no mistake, a comprehensive 4-1 defeat that could even have been worse for United.
But unless the off-field politics, power struggles and bruised egos are not sorted out at Anfield by the summer, then it’s the hordes on the Kop who will surely need medical help because Liverpool’s best manager since Kenny Dalglish might just walk away and not get the chance to finish a job he has started so well.
Aidan Perkins is a sports journalist who writes for Betfair.
