[lfc-news] Benitez: I'm working for the present and future - Post

Liverpool Daily Post, 25 Jan 2005
I'm working for the present and future
By David Prior, Daily Post

RAFAEL BENITEZ has had to wait just two dozen league games to sample the
kind of vitriol that inescapably follows a poor Liverpool performance
these days.

"This is the worst Liverpool side in history," ran one critique
yesterday. The worst in 40 years, reckoned another. Alan Hansen merely
rated the performance at Southampton as the poorest for 14 years.

What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that the purveyors of
such doom will have to wait a lot longer not only before the Spaniard
actually reads it, but perhaps more importantly before he pays any
attention to it whatsoever.

It's not that Benitez hasn't been shocked by the events of the past
week. He's as dismayed as any fan and disarmingly honest when it comes
to conceding his own role in the most dispiriting run of results Anfield
has had to bear for years.

Benitez does however possess one vital tool no fan or critic can boast -
an objectivity that comes with having had only a seven-month association
with the club. Amid all the clamour of the past few days, his has
remained the coollest voice. Through all the wailing and hand-wringing,
he has retained a sense of perspective and detachment that is nothing if
not admirable.

Ihave been a coach for 18 years," he says.. "I have won a lot of games,
and I have lost a lot of them. I have won trophies, I have lost finals.
We are here for winning now and for the future.

"I am the manager and it is my resposibility to decide things. I choose
the XI that start every game. When we play very, very well against
Arsenal and Olympiakos, everyone talks very well about me, so when you
lose you need to accept that. It's not a problem.

"But if I am always thinking about these things, then I lose my
concentration. I need to be focused on the next game and I am working
with my players.

"We accept the critics, but we need to do our job as well as possible. I
don't like it, but I accept it. If we win tomorrow, the supporters will
be very, very happy. And then if we win against Charlton and Everton
lose, then everything changes again.

"You need to look at the bigger picture - I am here working for the
present and for the future."

He added: "We have 15 games left in the Premiership, we are in the
Champions League and we are in the semi-final of the Carling Cup. It is
not the worst situation in history.

"We know that we didn't play well, but we know that if you want to
change something, you need to try. You can't say, oh it is impossible.
You must try again."

Perhaps another manager could be accused of blind optimism, the kind of
ill-placed hope that led the band to keep playing even as the Titanic
sank to the ocean bed.

But Benitez espouses a fairly straightforward logic as justification for
this optimism. It's based on injuries to vital players, of new players
taking time to adjust, of unfortunate if crucial mistakes, of especially
low confidence, and of his own settling-down period at the helm. As far
as the manager is concerned, there's really no secret to the current demise.

That's not to say the performance at the St Mary's Stadium was not
unacceptable; indeed, the Spaniard deemed it necessary to call an
unscheduled meeting of his players on Sunday to discuss the debacle.

"You need to talk sometimes with individuals and sometimes with the
team," he said.. "We needed to talk with the team this time to analyse
the situation and to hear what they thought about the situation.

"The players are a fantastic group of professionals and they need to
understand our ideas, but we also need to hear what they think about the
situation at this moment. If we have mistakes, sometimes it is my
mistake as a manager. As the manager I make decisions but sometimes they
are bad decisions.

"We've analysed the performance and we know the solution - which is, as
always, to work harder. We are very disappointed. We understand the
supporters and we want to give the best for them."

As ever, his criticism of the team does not exclude himself. "Against
Southampton, their wingers played better than our wingers, the
full-backs played better than our full-backs, and the manager better
than me," he adds.

"They played better than us - I tried many things, and if you can't
change the situation then you need to analyse why. You cannot say as a
manager that you always have a solution or that you always do the right
thing.

If you see the second half against Southampton, we ran a lot, we shot
about 12 times. We made lots of changes, we changed the front players,
but if you are losing 2-0 and the other team are working hard and
playing well, sometimes it is not possible. If Gerrard had scored when
he hit the bar, we would be talking about another result I'm sure."

The result Benitez wants to be talking about now must come at Vicarage
Road tonight. "For us it is so important to win this game because there
are the possibilities to play in a final. How many players play finals
in their life?"

The hip injury to Sami Hyypia has presented an untimely problem ahead of
what, in terms of club morale, is a game that ranks up there with any
Champions League clash or fourth-place decider in recent years.

There'll be no Turf Moor-style miscalculations tonight. For all his
attempts to treat this game like any other, the consequences of defeat
are dire, but they, like everything else that seems to come his way, do
not faze Benitez.

"If people think we will go into the game afraid of the criticism we
would get if we lost, they're wrong. If we win, that's normal because
we're Liverpool Football Club. If you lose, we play again next week -
you can't think about the criticism."


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