It was a throwaway remark but it carried within it a damning indictment. "We seem to be becoming like Newcastle," said Liverpool's veteran centre-half, Sami Hyypia. "Every time you pick up a paper, there seems to be something new."
The papers Rafael Benitez would have picked up in the team hotel in Yorkshire on Saturday morning contained leaks from Bayern Munich that their newly appointed manager, Jurgen Klinsmann, had been offered his job.
The relationship between the owners of Anfield and their manager continues to corrode like the rusting bits of steel you still stumble upon in this part of Teesside.
With its horizons framed by the black Cleveland Hills and refinery chimneys, Liverpool have never enjoyed the Riverside Stadium and, as if to emphasise it, their bus was involved in an accident on its journey to a scene of regular crashes. Under Roy Evans, Liverpool were swept away in a League Cup semi-final here and four years later, in November 2002, their last credible title challenge began to come adrift at the Riverside when Gareth Southgate stuck home a loose ball. Liverpool, hitherto unbeaten, did not win again for another two months.
For Gerard Houllier it marked the beginning of the end and until Fernando Torres scored Liverpool's first goal on Teesside for six years, you might have said the same for Benitez.
Hyypia, like virtually all footballers, knows that the politicking between boardroom and dug-out is outside their orbit and perhaps their understanding. "We have to keep concentrating on the game," he remarked, something Liverpool have not been doing well lately. "That is our job. In the football world, some things happen very quickly and you can't do anything about them. If there are some arguments, the players hope they can be sorted out."
The only men who can sort it out - with a single statement confirming that Benitez will continue to manage Liverpool at least until the end of the season - were not at Middlesbrough. Had they been, George Gillett and Tom Hicks would have noted a vast banner carrying a picture of the Boro chairman, Steve Gibson, who was hailed as, "One of Us". The Americans, even if they decide not to sell out to Dubai, are unlikely to see anything similar at Anfield.
Yet there is evidence that the drip-drip of uncertainty has begun to seep into the dressing room, however much the players might fix their gaze at the pitch. The unease surrounding Benitez broke to the surface in Liverpool's last game in the North-East - the 3-0 demolition of Newcastle that exposed the full inadequacies of Sam Allardyce's regime - when Benitez accused Hicks and Gillett of not understanding the transfer system.
Since then, Liverpool have lost to Reading, Manchester United and Chelsea and stumbled to four straight draws, each more unconvincing than the last. And to underline football's perversity, Liverpool have also produced the kind of great escape in the Champions League they so rarely conjure up domestically.
Southgate is fortunate to be in the employment of a man who is reluctant to sack or panic and who has invested deeply in home-produced talent. "The game is crackers at the moment so Rafa's situation doesn't surprise me," he said.
The Middlesbrough manager had his own problems. Illness threatened to deprive him of both Mark Schwarzer and Gary O'Neil and injury did for Jonathan Woodgate, whom he would have needed against Torres. Instead, David Wheater, another young product of the Middlesbrough academy, largely shackled a striker who even at 23 is approaching greatness. Wheater had spent last season on loan at Darlington and confessed that this felt like more than just a point. To Liverpool it would have felt much, much less.
The papers Rafael Benitez would have picked up in the team hotel in Yorkshire on Saturday morning contained leaks from Bayern Munich that their newly appointed manager, Jurgen Klinsmann, had been offered his job.
The relationship between the owners of Anfield and their manager continues to corrode like the rusting bits of steel you still stumble upon in this part of Teesside.
With its horizons framed by the black Cleveland Hills and refinery chimneys, Liverpool have never enjoyed the Riverside Stadium and, as if to emphasise it, their bus was involved in an accident on its journey to a scene of regular crashes. Under Roy Evans, Liverpool were swept away in a League Cup semi-final here and four years later, in November 2002, their last credible title challenge began to come adrift at the Riverside when Gareth Southgate stuck home a loose ball. Liverpool, hitherto unbeaten, did not win again for another two months.
For Gerard Houllier it marked the beginning of the end and until Fernando Torres scored Liverpool's first goal on Teesside for six years, you might have said the same for Benitez.
Hyypia, like virtually all footballers, knows that the politicking between boardroom and dug-out is outside their orbit and perhaps their understanding. "We have to keep concentrating on the game," he remarked, something Liverpool have not been doing well lately. "That is our job. In the football world, some things happen very quickly and you can't do anything about them. If there are some arguments, the players hope they can be sorted out."
The only men who can sort it out - with a single statement confirming that Benitez will continue to manage Liverpool at least until the end of the season - were not at Middlesbrough. Had they been, George Gillett and Tom Hicks would have noted a vast banner carrying a picture of the Boro chairman, Steve Gibson, who was hailed as, "One of Us". The Americans, even if they decide not to sell out to Dubai, are unlikely to see anything similar at Anfield.
Yet there is evidence that the drip-drip of uncertainty has begun to seep into the dressing room, however much the players might fix their gaze at the pitch. The unease surrounding Benitez broke to the surface in Liverpool's last game in the North-East - the 3-0 demolition of Newcastle that exposed the full inadequacies of Sam Allardyce's regime - when Benitez accused Hicks and Gillett of not understanding the transfer system.
Since then, Liverpool have lost to Reading, Manchester United and Chelsea and stumbled to four straight draws, each more unconvincing than the last. And to underline football's perversity, Liverpool have also produced the kind of great escape in the Champions League they so rarely conjure up domestically.
Southgate is fortunate to be in the employment of a man who is reluctant to sack or panic and who has invested deeply in home-produced talent. "The game is crackers at the moment so Rafa's situation doesn't surprise me," he said.
The Middlesbrough manager had his own problems. Illness threatened to deprive him of both Mark Schwarzer and Gary O'Neil and injury did for Jonathan Woodgate, whom he would have needed against Torres. Instead, David Wheater, another young product of the Middlesbrough academy, largely shackled a striker who even at 23 is approaching greatness. Wheater had spent last season on loan at Darlington and confessed that this felt like more than just a point. To Liverpool it would have felt much, much less.
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