Good article By Tony Barrett

http://timesonline.typepad.com/theg...need-a-new-manager-they-need-new-owners.html#

 

Tony Barrett

There is a growing feeling, in some quarters, that the time has come for Rafael Benitez, the Liverpool manager, to be relieved of his duties and sent back to Spain with three Premier League defeats in the Anfield club’s first eight games of the season having made knees jerk the length and breadth of the land.

There is a debate to be had about Benitez’s ability to guide Liverpool to the league title and it is one which will become more vociferous and increasingly polarised as the campaign wears on should results fail to pick up significantly. Until and unless he takes his team to the promised land after almost two decades in the wilderness then the Spaniard will be open to criticism, some of it justified and some of it not. That comes with the territory of being the manager of one of the world’s most famous and most successful clubs in a league which is becoming increasingly competitive.

Should Liverpool and Benitez fall short, mitigating circumstances will be put forward by those who believe he really is the real deal with blame for failure being laid at the door of Liverpool’s American owners, while the seemingly growing army of nay’sayers will argue that he has had enough time and enough money to be able to deliver regardless of the shambolic goings-on off the pitch.

That debate is healthy and it is totally justified. Benitez must be subject to the same kind of judgment as his predecessors at Anfield and only time will tell if he can live up to the standards that he set for himself last season when Liverpool fell just four points short of winning that all important first league title since the days when John Barnes’s shorts were tight through choice rather than because of an expanding waistline.

But anyone calling for his removal is missing the target as spectacularly as Ronnie Rosenthal did at Villa Park all those years ago and it is actually as ridiculously misplaced as fans of relegation-threatened clubs who argue that dropping down a division might actually be a good thing.

Firstly, who would make the decision? Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr are the owners and therefore the powerbrokers but they attend Liverpool games about as regularly as they are spoken of in glowing terms, so how could they possibly make an informed judgment about what is best for the team?

The fact that the duo are barely on speaking terms – a situation which won’t have been improved by Gillett wrongly accusing Hicks of being the one who claimed a spade would be in the ground to signal the start of work on Liverpool’s much-promised but still to be delivered new stadium within 60 days of their takeover in February 2007 – so how could they possibly come to a reasoned conclusion about the manager’s position?

There is also the Klinsmann factor to take into account. It was only a couple of years ago when Hicks and Gillett approached Jurgen behind Benitez’s back with a view to the former German international replacing the Spaniard in the Anfield hot seat. Since then, Benitez has guided Liverpool to runners-up spot in the Premier League while Klinsmann is probably now back driving a battered Beetle around Miami’s wonderful Collins Avenue having been found to be totally out of his depth running the show at Bayern Munich. If Jurgen was the answer back then, then heaven knows what the question was that Liverpool’s owners were asking. Would anyone really want them to ask it again?

Of equal importance is the problem which no-one seems to have provided a solution to. That is, who in their right minds would agree to manage a club as dysfunctional as Liverpool have become? Any top manager with a modicum of common sense would surely run a mile if offered the position. The job description would allude to running one of the world’s greatest clubs, working with players of renowned ability like Steven Gerrard, Pepe Reina and Fernando Torres and an opportunity to become an absolute legend to fans who crave success.

The reality, though, would be a job in which you have no guaranteed money to spend; an interest repayment-inspired book-balancing exercise that does not allow you to compete in the transfer market; owners who have failed to provide the kind of leadership which makes a manager’s job easier; the possibility of new investors coming in and not particularly fancying you; the kind of instability and disunity which makes progress, if not impossible, then certainly difficult in the extreme; and all this without a reduction in sky high expectations.

Liverpool do not need a change of manager. They need new owners, the kind who can make a proper, reasoned judgment of how their manager is performing. Until they have that then replacing Rafael Benitez would be about as logical as an argument put forward by George Gillett Jr.

Ferguson's manipulation of the press

Sober, reasoned analysis is almost as difficult to find in English football as pitches that Didier Drogba hasn’t tumbled on. The Premier League has become a place where he who shouts loudest is heard most, with Andy Gray topping the decibel chart on a weekly basis.

The more worldly wise in the game are all too well aware of this, knowing that a diversionary post-match comment can wrong-foot sections of the media as easily as a Cristiano Ronaldo shimmy bamboozles a full back. Which is why Sir Alex Ferguson chose to question the fitness of referee Alan Wiley immediately after Manchester United produced their worst performance of the season to date in their 2-2 home draw against Sunderland.

Fergie knows the beast, he helped create it after all. He also knew full well that a storm of criticism would surely come his way for his team selection, formation and tactics, not to mention the poor form of several big money signings, and so Wiley got it in the neck. It didn’t matter that the referee had enjoyed a decent enough game or that questioning his fitness amounted to little more than an attack on his professionalism, the Staffordshire official had become collateral damage in the United manager’s media war, a battle he has waged with some success for more than two decades.

The most surprising element of all is how many danced to Ferguson’s tune, especially seeing as he didn’t even have the decency to perform it in front of Her Majesty’s press, choosing, as per usual, to speak only to MUTV, the club’s in-house television channel, a platform on which there is about as much chance of his opinions being questioned as there is of a re-run of the 2005 Champions League final being shown.

The media at large cannot complain about Ferguson’s behaviour though, not when it is indulged to such an extent. The fact that he does not have the decency to hold a post match press conference, a duty which is not beyond any of his Premier League counterparts, but still knows he will be quoted by the press without having been subjected to the usual scrutiny, puts him in a position of immense media control.

Similarly, the fact that everyone knew his comments about Wiley were a diversion was not enough to stop them from taking the spotlight away from a poor result and performance. It is media management at its most powerful and for some reason Ferguson gets away with it again and again and again.

The UK press recently stood up to Ken Bates, the Leeds United chairman, when he chose to admit only photographers from Action Images and Varleys, two picture agencies, to his club’s recent Carling Cup clash with Liverpool. In light of this, the national newspapers refused to use any pictures supplied on the basis that the restrictions were impinging on their ability to record game’s events as they saw fit.

No such sanctions have ever been applied to Ferguson, though, and his dealings with the media have a far greater effect on them than anything Bates has ever done.