REACTION FROM EUROPE

From the Kop End
One foot back in Europe,
Ejaz Khan

Gillets and Hick prefer sending statements to the club’s official website or via e-mail’s to Rafa to show they mean business, but Rafa’s statement does not come off some polished PA’s fingernails. Rather, his canvass is a green sheet of grass with a bouncy border surrounded by a Red sea of Human emotion. He has just added 4 glorious goals to his “company’s” assets, and conceded one as a liability, so a clearly profitable nights work. We have to analyse the crunch game last night like we are talking about money and investment, and not football, because, this is the blinkered manner that our American owners view their latest business acquisition, Liverpool FC. No Passion, no understanding whatsoever of the intricacies of football, or, as they would call it, “Saaker “

Steven Gerrard called for focus from the players, not to get distracted by off field developments, and rightly so. They had to show there backing for Benitez by getting a good result, which would be there statement of backing Benitez. Steven Gerrard lead by example and was all over the place, in a positive way that is!
It was through his corner that Torres headed the opening goal from, and his penalty conversion that made it 3-1, and another brilliantly directed corner found Peter Crouch to head home to make it 4-1. That is a truly the definition of a Captain’s example.

But the night belonged to Liverpool’s manager, and the ear -bustingly vociferous crowd made sure of that. Anfield was rocking to the sound of Rafa Benitez’s name as the crowd showed their full backing to the embattled Spanish Supremo. I surely hope that Messrs Gillet and Hicks had ateast come out of their busy business meetings to hear the support Benitez has, and acknowledge the fact that he yields far more respect than Hicks and his business counterpart ever will. For one thing, Benitez is there for every game, so to David Moores. And while Rafa is there through the good periods and the bad, wheras Gilett and Hicks seem to pop up when they think things are going belly up and they might lose some money. Sven Goran Errikson has been given close to 50 Million pounds for rebuilding and at least Thaksin Shinawatra seems to understand the rule of modern day football, that had evolved with Abramovich’s spending to buy success, it has now become incumbent to spend big to win big, great managerial skills can’t win you the league, most definitely not. You need the best to be the best, and it comes at a price, a heavy price for big stars is inevitable. But Benitez has spoken about getting players on free transfers, so he is correct in stating that Americans don’t understand the transfer market. A lot of people have been speaking about Andriy Voronin, but he too has arraived on Bosman.

It is naive to say that he should worry about coaching the tam only and leave transfers to Rick Parry. Rick Parry will not be working with the players on tactics and on match play, so obviously the Manager will have the biggest say in transfers , because he will have to work with the players and turn them into the pieces to his League title puzzle

December 16th is approaching fast and it remains unknown if he will back down and be “the obedient one”
Liverpool have now got one foot back into qualification, but Benitez will be hoping that he will have both feet on the ground.
For now, it is the American Duo that have to back down and accept the Rafa is the man for Liverpool, now and in years to come…..