Red Hot Summer, Where to Next?
Last updated : 16 August 2005 By John Roache
By the end, I did indeed feel as if I was surrounded by red hope, feverish urges to sing my favourite Kop anthems and a need to watch the team again, even after a frustrating afternoon in Middlesbrough.
I had just returned from a two-week hiatus in Portugal. Anybody who has been abroad at such a time should know that finding news and transfer updates can be particularly difficult; newspapers change the things they tell us seemingly every day and frequent visits to the internet café can turn out to be expensive and, actually, a total waste of time. In fact, I managed to take just two trips to check on how things were going online the whole time I was there, and I learned very little on each occasion. That’s despite having a whole week’s information to scroll through both times, and a sufficiently long siesta from the sun in which to do it.
Truth is we don’t get told anything official until the club announces it on Liverpoolfc.tv, and even then, as in the case of Mark Gonzalez, it can be slightly misleading. Don’t get me wrong, I’m one for the gossip column as much as the next avid Liverpool fan; put simply, I just don’t believe many stories anymore – I try not to think about a player signing for us until I’ve actually seen pictures of him stood next to Benitez in our shirt. It won’t stop me from constantly checking the rounds of websites for news on a daily basis, but it will prevent me from getting my hopes up too high before they’re crushed by some event or another.
So I’m left to my own personal hopes for the new season, and a good read of several articles outlining their author’s ideas about the new season and our developing squad. They reflect on a summer passed winning the European Cup, persuading Steven Gerrard to remain at the club and then making a good handful of promising purchases. All appears to be positively gleaming. Yet whilst the optimism is there in my heart, when I did really begin to ponder Liverpool’s actual situation over in my head, I admit that I was a bit lost.
Isn’t the European Cup the trophy that clubs build towards winning, through claiming several domestic titles and bringing in ridiculous amounts of big money buys? The Champions League is the big one, the one we all dreamed of before May 25th but never really felt that we could touch; I do confess that at half time that night, it felt as though our European success was a slight mirage of what may materialise in the next few years. We got it though! The biggest trophy in club football! A brilliant night! The biggest night at Liverpool for two decades! Roll on the next season!
…
“No, no – to be honest with you, I don’t think Liverpool have the kind of quality that can challenge Chelsea for the title. We all know they fluked the Champions League, somehow, and now Rafael Benitez and his men need to come back down to earth a bit.”
Let’s not call that any kind of direct quote, as such. Think of it more as a general summary of the critics’ feelings towards us this season: we’ve got no chance of winning the Premiership. We are therefore a team in limbo; have been for many years. Expected by everybody to perform well and better than most, yet not thoroughly expected to achieve a thing. How it can be argued that a journey through the entire Champions League was a fluke, I’ll never know; what with two group stages, a round of 16 over two legs, and then two bouts with both Juventus and Chelsea, followed by a win against Milan which was never in doubt. I suppose it’s just something we have come to either accept or challenge reverently. The critics don’t rate us, no matter what we do!
So, European Champions not even expected to break into the top three, several signings which are more potential and talented than world class, a bunch of experts telling us we’re still rubbish, our club captain saying he wants to leave us, then doesn’t, and all of a sudden hope might sour a little bit and turn to slight concern.
Do we really even rate ourselves? Is this season just going to be a good, old-fashioned anti-climax, in which we are again inconsistent in the league and don’t manage quite the same successes in Europe as we had last time? With Gerard Houllier in charge, I might consider it a possibility. He’d still be saying, “The boys were tired today after May 25th, and ‘Boro defended really well.” But a man who knows all about his possibilities is Rafael Benitez. He is the man, who just got in the back of the taxi that is our team, and said,
“Success, please.”
“Uh – not sure where that is, mate.”
“It’s okay. For us, I have many possibilities.”
“Eh?”
“Okay. I say, okay, we have done a good game. For sure.”
“Sorry pal-”
“Okay, it’s okay. I know the way. Just drive and I’ll direct you.”
Rafa knows the direction in which he wants to take this team. When I began to think that, maybe, this season will be another let-down, as last season would have been without that night in May, I countered my own feelings with the fact that we have him in charge. In Rafa’s taxi, he has a brilliant, powerful engine in Steven Gerrard; he has strong wheels which carry the taxi forward smoothly in Xabi Alonso; he’s got an aggressive exhaust pipe which deals with all the trouble in Jamie Carragher; a strong bumper with Pepe Reina; superlative acceleration and pace in Djibril Cisse and that touch of class like a lick of red paint on the side in Luis Garcia.
Sorry for the extended silly metaphor, but it shows exactly how Benitez is building his squad, his team: like a car, and when you think about the team as a physical thing, it is easier to understand how the boss is doing it.
He knows the road to success is the right one for us to take, and has two league titles, a UEFA Cup and a European Cup to his name. Rafa knows the direction of success, and whilst sometimes he may falter, make mistakes, or just experience bad luck, he never lets his own head go down or those of his player’s. The only times he conveys any particular emotion are when he has hit a real rock, a low ebb, like the defeat last season at the now-League 1 team Crystal Palace, or when he’s just won the biggest trophy in Europe.
The boss has told us himself through interviews that he likes not to think emotionally, because emotion can cloud your judgement. At half time in Istanbul, if he was as dejected as he surely should have been in that dressing room, Rafa may not have made the right changes or told the players the right things. But he did, and he managed to instil even that tiny flicker of belief which can then lead to a cracking Steven Gerrard header, or a stunner from Vladi, or a rebound from Xabi. Or all of them.
He is a football man who has Liverpool in his heart now; approaches from a more lucrative prospect in Real Madrid, which is also the team he supported, have been dismissed with the wave of a hand. Rafael Benitez managed to bring home the European Cup in his first season at what was, let’s be honest with ourselves, a faltering club under Houllier. The critics said he couldn’t do that, so maybe this year we’ll prove them wrong again: we might even fluke the league! (At least that’s what they’d call it)
We might not see where he’s coming from at times, but in Rafa we really should trust. If Porto winning the European Cup under Mourinho was a valid victory and show of a manager’s class, then so was our win. Rafa now just has two or three additions to make to his taxi before too long. They could be the buys which bring home another trophy this season. A centre-back to replace Sami, not an easy thing to do, is needed urgently. If not to take his place this year, then next. A right winger is in desperate need also, in order to allow Garcia to come inside where his potency is far more lethal on the ball. But before those two come to the fore, we also appear to be bringing home Michael Owen. Taking the Michael, you could say.
I denounced Owen in a piece about Peter Crouch not so long ago; I don’t like players who turn their back on this club. Not many people leave Anfield to be a success at their new club, very few, in fact. Yet as much as I feel he betrayed us, if he’s willing to really return and announce that it was a mistake to leave, then he will bring us 20 goals a season, and that’s something I won’t turn down, no matter how long it might take for me to forgive him fully. And like I said, in Rafa I trust. If Mickey is who he wants, then that’s who I want.
So, what lies ahead for Liverpool? No, not more mediocrity. We won’t be aiming for fourth place much longer. I don’t feel as though we will be a team in limbo for any longer this season; we’re a team actually on the up, and soon to arrive back in the place where we actually belong: the cream of English football. The top. Rafa is going to bring home the title in the next three years.
All things red look pretty rosy. Watch out Chelsea, we’re going to be breathing down your neck sooner than you think.
I’m with Chris Maddox. In Rafa we trust.
