Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Mark Lawrenson: Rafael Benitez Owes The Liverpool FC Fans

The supporters at Liverpool have been great with Rafael Benitez – at a lot of other clubs he would no longer have a job.

They are a patient bunch at Anfield and in times of trouble they go to the manager and say ‘how can we help?’

So in light of some of his comments which emerged at the weekend about the interest from Juventus, Benitez has got to be careful.

If he decides to go to Italy then he must realise he will be managing a game of chess; the game is played at walking pace at times over there.

Although he says it was flattering to have Juve interested in him, would he rather manage there after being in charge of Liverpool in the Premier League? I would have thought not.

One of the main signs of encouragement from Liverpool’s win at Bolton Wanderers on Saturday was the more attacking line-up Benitez selected.

I have said it before, but Liverpool do not need two holding midfield players, they need to be winning games now if the club still harbour hopes of a fourth placed finish – draws are of no use to them.

With teams like Aston Villa and to a greater extent Manchester City, having games in hand, Liverpool need to be winning games.

Alberto Aquilani, who the manager brought in to add an attacking threat at the expense of Lucas against Bolton, came in for some criticism for his performance.

We need to give him between 15-20 starts in the Premier League before we can properly judge him – he has only had four.

At the moment he has just been a bit of a peripheral player and with the injuries to Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres the hope was he would have been a bit more of a game winner.

But we have to give him 15-20 games, it is only fair and he hasn’t played that much football over the last year so let’s just wait and see – though at present he doesn’t look like a world beater.

Although I am loath to talk about the American owners, Tom Hicks’ appearance at Anfield on Saturday was unusual given it was not a particularly high profile game; call me cynic but it would suggest he was just over here on business.

It will be three years this month the Americans put the spade in the ground at Stanley Park and made all these grand claims.

I know we have gone through a recession but the supporters have been left with broken promises.

It is a shame because managing director Christian Purslow seems like one of the good guys who is trying to do something about it all, though the situation seems impossible to resolve unless we accept a loan with massive interest rates.

Everyone tuning into the derby on Saturday will be hoping for a better game than the one in November.

Much like you had the feeling when the sides met at Goodison Park, whoever gets the first goal will probably win the game this time around.

For Everton, there has never been a better time to go to Anfield and play against a Liverpool side without Fernando Torres.

Liverpool are on a decent run of undefeated in six Premier League games but are still not playing that well.

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