After a period of promise and setbacks Rafael Benitez needs to deliver a league title to the red half of Merseyside.
For a man obsessed with reducing the variables through the analysis of statistics and the imposition of systems, Rafael Benitez displays a curious affinity for extremes. Having begun his tenure as Liverpool's manager with the most unlikely and dramatic comeback in more than half a century of European Cup finals, he arrives at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday on top of the Premier League but with no consensus over his ability to take the club to their first title since May 1990.
An FA Cup victory over West Ham United the year after that thunderous night in Istanbul is the only other senior trophy to have come to Anfield since Benitez took over in the summer of 2004. The story has been one of promises and setbacks, of players coming and going without leaving a trace, of patterns slowly emerging and then dissolving in displays suggesting the side's inability to achieve the sort of consistency necessary to win the championship.
This season has been different but unpredictable. The highs have been very high indeed: a first league victory for Benitez over Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United at Anfield in September, followed a few weeks later by the ending of Chelsea's 86-match unbeaten home record with a display of quite outstanding intensity, particularly from Liverpool's midfield, which gave a superlative demonstration of the art of pressing, a stratagem learnt from the manager's favourite team: Arrigo Sacchi's Milan of 1987-1991.
The lows, however, can be seen in a series of lacklustre performances in their Champions League group matches — although they are not alone in that — and, most of all, in their home record in the domestic league: unbeaten but with four draws in nine matches. Eight points have been dropped at Anfield against Stoke City, Fulham, West Ham and Hull City, a statistic that may be turning the manager's neat little beard grey as the season nears its end.
The beard, which made its appearance last year, is just one of the signs that Benítez is among nature's late adopters. After 4½ years in England he finally seems to have taken on board the belief that the league is the competition he must secure not only to satisfy the fans' hunger but to ensure his place in Liverpool's history alongside the great names of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley. Even Kenny Dalglish, the last beneficiary of that great dynasty, won the old First Division in its ante-penultimate season. And it may be that the Spaniard will never have a better chance than the one that faces him as the present season nears its halfway point.
For him the present situation in the English league bears a similarity to the one he found in La Liga when he succeeded Hector Cuper in the head coach's job at Valencia in 2001 and took the club to two titles in three seasons, their first in more than three decades, followed by victory in the Uefa Cup. His logic, however, will not please everyone. "For me, Valencia and Liverpool resemble each other," he told Javier Prieto Santos and Simon Capelli Welter in a recent interview in France's So Foot magazine. "For these two to win, it's necessary for the big teams in the league to do badly. When I won the league with Valencia, that's exactly what happened. Real Madrid and Barcelona were in transition, which made it easier.
"For Liverpool to win the Premier League, it's necessary for Chelsea, [Manchester] United and Arsenal, who have far greater economic resources than us, to have a bad season. But normally it's very rare that these three clubs fail at the same time — it's not possible to wait for our direct opponents to make a faux pas, because that won't happen."
The difference, he said, is that when he arrived at Liverpool he had to start from ground zero. "To build a team and mould it the way I wanted took a bit of time. At Valencia it was different. The club had played in two European Cup finals with a squad including many automatic starters."
He is right that Cuper's team was a well-established unit studded with talented and experienced players, although its most creative influence, Gaizka Mendieta, and its most dangerous striker, Claudio Lopez, left the Mestalla just before Benitez arrived. But Liverpool were hardly down to the bare bones when he took over from Gerard Houllier. On the playing side the first-team squad was stocked effectively enough to enable him to use not just Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher but Sami Hyypia, Jerzy Dudek, John Arne Rise, Milan Baros, Djibril Cisse and other established names in his first season, before starting to refresh his resources.
Given those foundations, Benitez's rebuilding process took an unconscionable amount of time. The run of 99 league fixtures in which he failed to name the same starting line-up for two matches in a row became a source of derision, and his decision to retain the 99th line-up for the 100th match made it look as if he had done it just to avoid the three-figure headlines — a minor indication of mental weakness.
His buying policy often seems haphazard — for every Pepe Reina, Luis Garcia, Dirk Kuyt or Fernando Torres there is a Gabriel Paletta, an Antonio Nunez, a Jermaine Pennant and a Robbie Keane, and his attitude to home-produced talent remains at best ambivalent. Stephen Warnock and Danny Guthrie, both of whom might have expected to become long-term regulars under previous administrations, were allowed to go to Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United, while a quintet of English 17-to-20-year-olds with current squad numbers — the midfielder Jay Spearing, the central defender Martin Kelly, the full-back Stephen Darby, the midfielder or defender Steve Irwin and the striker Nathan Eccleston — may find that their FA Youth Cup exploits are no guarantee that they will ever get a game with the seniors.
His man-management skills, too, often appear to lack finesse. The handling of Gerrard's position on the field became nothing less than a soap opera and, having seen Xabi Alonso become one of the squad's key players, Benitez tried unsuccessfully to sell him to Juventus in the summer and did not rebuff parallel inquiries from Arsenal, while attempting, with equal lack of success, to sign Gareth Barry.
Yesterday the manager learnt that his next assignment in Europe will be against Real Madrid, the club for whose junior sides he played as a teenage midfielder before beginning his coaching career with the Bernabeu's age-group squads. The link has been revived by rumour and speculation in recent seasons, often coinciding with stories about Benitez's contract negotiations or his unhappiness with the regime of George Gillett and Tom Hicks.
It was to Real Madrid that Benítez sold Michael Owen during his first weeks in charge and with 12 months left on the striker's contract. He would please many of Liverpool's fans, and probably Gerrard and Carragher, too, by reversing his stated lack of interest in bringing Owen back to Anfield during the January transfer window, for a price some way below the £9m that Real Madrid paid four years ago. Eight or 10 of Owen's goals during the run-in might just do the trick but Benítez's history suggests that his intransigence is final.
