The Centre Circle

The Titanic was registered in Liverpool. It set off on it’s maiden voyage in 1912. The builders and owners said it was a mechanical marvel of the world, it was “unsinkable” they said, “nothing could go wrong”. We all know the rest of the tragic story.  

Benitez is as stubborn individual like the makers, the owners and the crew of the Titanic all those years ago. “We will make fourth spot” he said. We all know the story of Liverpool’s season since he uttered those words. The obstinacy of Benitez shines through all the time. You know it as soon as you see him interviewed. He will only ever answer the questions if they show him and his team in a good light, otherwise he stonewalls the interviewer. This stubbornness also extends to the field of play and to the people who work with him. On the pitch, he seems loathed to try things, to experiment. We all know of the weaknesses of his zonal marking system in defending corners and free kicks, yet he sticks rigidly to his way of defending. He always seems to play with two holding midfielders. Other managers know that the likelihood of threat to goal coming from a deep position is almost non-existent with Liverpool, there are rarely midfield runners going beyond the strikers and so the element of surprise is taken away and thus they are easier to defend against. Last season, Liverpool only got away with it as Alonso was master of threading a ball through the eye of a needle. Look back how many times he provided the killer pass to Torres or Gerrard for them to score? Alonso is now gone, and so much of the creativity of last year has also disappeared. On the rare occasions that Liverpool have actually attacked this year, the prime example being against Portsmouth and recently against Sunderland, when he did sacrifice his principles and Lucas and Aquilani were allowed to bomb forward, they destroyed the opposition in double quick time. Why hasn’t he gambled if this approach works? Because Benitez is afraid of defeat, too stubborn and obstinate to change his way of thinking in the pursuit of winning a football match, unless he knows the opposition is incredibly weak or out of form. People like this only learn to adapt one way; the hard way; when they have gone beyond the point of no return.

Let’s move forward to last weekend. As manager of any football club, from Sunday League division 6 on a muddy park pitch to the very pinnacle of the national game at Premier league level, what is the one task you face each week when your player cross the white line and enter the field of play? It is to organize and motivate your team to make sure it has the very best chance of winning the game. Liverpool at 1-1 desperately needed three points to give them even the slimmest chance of keeping up with Tottenham and Manchester City. So what did he do after 65 minutes? He substituted his top striker, possibly the best in the world, the only realistic hope that Liverpool had of getting a positive result out of the game and replaced him with David Ngog, who is, let’s be frank, still finding his feet in top level football. Why? The reason was that “I thought he was tired” was the incredulous reply. Why didn’t he take off a defensive midfielder and play with two strikers to go for the win? It is because Rafa Benitez is too stubborn to change his principles and too afraid to take a chance. I think that when Benitez substituted Fernando Torres against Birmingham yesterday, he failed in his obligations to the players, officials of Liverpool Football Club & to the thousands of fans that follow the Reds all over England and Europe. He may well have just held up the white flag and surrendered any hope his team had of getting three points, against one of the more miserly defences in the league. The look of disbelief and disappointment on Fernando Torres’ face and on that of Liverpool’s talisman Stephen Gerrard was plain to see.

Liverpool I fear this season and for the next couple of seasons, have now gone beyond that point of no return. I see no way back for them in their pursuit of Champions League football, and the resulting lack of finance for next season and in the future, as their star players leave for clubs chasing bigger dreams, will almost certainly, bring an age of mediocrity to a proud football club. A crisis of large magnitude is coming, the iceberg is appearing into view. For Gerrard, Mascherano and Torres, it may be time to man the lifeboats…