One of the key misconceptions of Benitez’s reign at Liverpool was that he was a bit dense when it came to the transfer market. In fairness, in six seasons he brought in around 80 players including a disproportionate amount of expensive flops which became a stick with which to beat Benitez with when things went badly. For every Reina, Mascherano, Alonso, Torres, Luis Garcia, Arbeloa and Kuyt he signed – there was a Robbie Keane, Kromkamp, Nunez (Legend!), Dossena, Bellamy, Morientes or Josemi. In total, Rafa Benitez spent £229.3m during his stint in charge, contributed too by the expensive signings of Aquilani (£17m), Johnson (£17.5m), Keane (£19m), Torres (£20m) and Mascherano (£19m).
However, as Rafa was so keen to point out, despite his huge expenditure the club did manage to recoup much of that money back. In total Liverpool recouped £151m from player sales during his reign and overall Rafa’s NET spend was £78.3m which is not a huge deficit in Premier League terms (Also Liverpool have profited further from big money sales of players Benitez brought to the club, notably Torres and Mascherano). Meanwhile in the same period Fergie’s United have posted a NET spend of £27m, helped by the £80m gained from the sale of Ronaldo, Chelsea have NET spend of £186m , Manchester City’s spending in the same period doesn’t even bear mentioning whilst Arsenal have made a profit of £27m in the same period. So in comparison (other than Arsenal who are renowned for their tight-fisted approach to the transfer market) Rafa Benitez didn’t actually do that badly so the argument that he was a bit of a pudding in the transfer market actually carries little weight in comparison with their rivals.
Although his impact during his time in charge is up for debate, what cannot be denied is his visionary work behind the scenes. He was often criticised for not bringing through any young local players but how could he if the talent was not there. He brought in a lot of young players to the academy to raise the standards of the youth team which in turn saw a return of 3 FA Youth Cup final appearances and 2 wins and weaned a couple of youngsters in the League Cup.
Meanwhile he brought in both Jose Segura, the highly regarded former Barcelona Youth coach, as technical manager at Liverpool’s Youth Academy and he brought back ‘King’ Kenny Dalglish in 2009 to oversee the Academy with the aim of raising the standards of the youth and local talent so they could challenge for a first team place.
This work is now beginning to bear fruit as in recent months the likes of Jay Spearing, Jack Robinson and John Flanagan have broken into the first team and performed very well, whilst the academy boasts 5 England U-19 internationals and a hatful of England U-17 internationals. This would not have been achieved without Benitez’s determination to invest in the youth team.
Overall, I think Benitez did a fairly good job given the resources available to him and the boardroom struggles that went on. He converted Jamie Carragher from utility man to one of Europe’s best centre-backs whilst adding a lot of quality to the team and for a period in 2008-09, Liverpool had probably the best first-eleven in the league. His legendary ‘Rafa Rant’ about Sir Alex Ferguson, although with hindsight probably wasn’t well judged, though it wound Fergie right up and that’s always nice to see. Memorable victories against AC Milan, Real Madrid and Manchester United demonstrated his excellent tactical nous and will live comfortably in the memories of Liverpool fans.
With Kenny Dalglish at the helm Liverpool will hopefully go from strength to strength and build on the work done by Rafa whose tenure should be considered on the whole, as a positive one for Liverpool Football Club, despite his poor last season in charge.
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The best thing rafa did was start the youth overhaul but cos Rafa was too worried about losing fourth place he failed to take risks and use the much needed flair that the would win tight games,
Rafa also ruined the potential of some players by not using them enough and made poor choices in the transfer window. Good luck to Rafa but i wanna talk about our future and if we do talk about the past we have more worthy managers to think about in LFC history
Fair point about there being a distinct lack of flair in his sides, particularly after Luis Garcia went, he was overcautious for too long. However I disagree with your point about him ruining some players potential by not playing them, the same could be said about Man U in recent years and Chelsea and Tottenham who have not played some of their most promising kids enough, but when you are fighting for a top four finish managers cant risk blooding youngsters in important games, anyway, many of Liverpool’s younger players have been sent out on loan to get 1st team exp and many haven’t covered themselves in much glory either. good to see some of the lads breaking through now tho. Next season Liverpool will be a force
strange we dont see those rafa transfer spending comparisons with other teams now, since torres was sold ? alonso, macherano, torres, babel, £110 million recouped.
The 2 failures which I did notice was, he was not successful with his transfers and he was always depending on our start player to deliever ever game!
Bull shit he was better then Houller!!!!
He just messed up at the end!..but even Mr. Ferguson messes up some times and he is never sacked..this shows …We didn’t trust one of the best tactician in the world!
Miss u Rafa!
YNWA!