The Benitez Thread

[Heisenberg 1,824]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSzNYstaAh0

[zolayes 14,489]

There is a certain hypocrisy on the part of those who boo Rafa for defending his team, Liverpool, when it was being constantly attacked in the press by Mourinho and Ferguson the two most active members of the anti-LFC tag team. The same people were delighted that Ferguson and Mourinho used "mind games" to good effect. But they don't like it when Rafa used them back successfully.

Mourinho, for example, used to boast about silencing the KOP. In one game he ran towards the KOP with his finger on his lips after Chelsea scored.

The guy in a post above who "quoted" Rafa as saying that he and Mourinho were friends until Rafa started winning got that (and several other quotes) wrong. Rafa said that about Ferguson,

Mourinho boasted that he had been offered the LFC job before Rafa. LFC subsequently denied it and said Rafa was always their first choice.

The fact is that Mourinho always wanted the Man Utd job (even when he was at Chelsea) and played politics with Ferguson against Rafa in the hope of sucking up to Man Utd. Mourinho still wants the Man Utd job.

Rafa is the only manager who has stood up to Ferguson. People said his "rant" about "facts" cost LFC. The fact is that LFC won more games after the "rant" than before.

Rafa does not have a six month contract with Chelsea. He has an 18 month contract despite the fact that he has agreed to a review at the end of six months.

your profile and date of joining tells all we need to know about you.

[CHOULO19 24,332]

An open letter from Rafa Benitez: http://www.rafabenitez.com/web/index.php?act=mostrarContenidos&idioma=in&co=2007

[warnie_666 1,081]

Ok I hated Rafa. I fucking hated that guy. But for me my team, and the club and their performances on the pitch is important. The fans who are calling for Rafa's head arent helping the team much when they start the boos.

Get the FUCK BEHIND YOUR TEAM and your COACH!!...

[LDN Blue 7,903]

An open letter from Rafa Benitez: http://www.rafabenit...ioma=in&co=2007

Fair play. He's trying to build bridges with the fans, can't fault him for that.

[The only place to be 11,313]

Fair play. He's trying to build bridges with the fans, can't fault him for that.

Exactly. Some of the crowd singing anti-Rafa songs when we were 3-0 up have to have a word with themselves.

And that chant they kept singing is fucking awful.

[termninja 5,290]

I said it just as we brought him. I don't like the guy. There was a lot of fire between us and Liverpool in the past, and any normal Chelsea fan doesn't have warm feelings towards Rafa...

That said, he is our coach now. More importantly, he still hasn't done anything in order for us to slate his sorry ass like obsessed monkeys...

For me, he has a clean dossier and the way he fills it is the way I'll support him.

So far, he has done a good job. First 3 games were really difficult, Man City, then 2 London derbies, and we all know that in those, our opponents are ready to die on the pitch even for a point.

He strengthened the defense, which, let's face it, hasn't been good at all under Robbie this season. Torres also started scoring which can only be a good thing. It either means we can raise his price and evaluation or keep him and get Lukaku back without spending anything.

What I also noticed, is that we managed to play around the box much more then before. Under Robbie, it seemed that a big part of our possession was around the center of midfield and our defense...

Robbie is still one of my favorite people in world of football though. I'm still sad to see him go after everything for what he has done, but I am not the kind of person to cry over the spilt milk, but to clean it up and continue going forward. He is gone, and we as fans have done our part in making it known to him that we love him and appreciate him for what he has done for us.

His name will always be said with a smile at SB and he will always be remembered as the man who made something impossible happen in order to give his club the toughest and most valuable competition trophy in European football.

We are Chelsea supporters and Benitez is a current manager.

On to Tokio...

[Tomo 21,751]

I don't like admitting this, but the more i think about it, the more i think he can actually be a success with us if we get behind him.

[Backstreet09 499]

Gerrard in his book: My Autobiography

Henry Winter

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has hailed Rafa Benitez as an "outstanding" manager, lauding the Spaniard's "clever" handling of Jose Mourinho's mind games and his "tactical masterstrokes" against Chelsea and Barcelona in Europe.

One of the performances of last season came at the Nou Camp on Feb 21, 2007, when Liverpool tore into the then European champions. "Rafa's game plan was to shock Barcelona," Gerrard writes in the paperback update of his autobiography out next week. "Barcelona felt Liverpool would be really negative. Rafa did the opposite."

Benitez's command to his players was simple: "Go for the jugular." The Liverpool manager ordered his team to attack Barcelona down the flanks, and use Bellamy's pace to embarrass the hosts' centre-backs, Carles Puyol and Rafael Marquez. Bellamy and Riise both scored in a famous victory.

Gerrard claims that the media fuss over Bellamy's spat with Riise "fuelled our motivation" to excel in the Nou Camp.

Barcelona were greeted with "another tactical masterstroke from Rafa" as Liverpool sat deep, stifling Ronaldinho and company. Eidur Gudjohnsen scored late on, but little was seen of Barcelona's vaunted attacking strength.

Liverpool's semi-final with Chelsea was preceded by a rare outburst from Benitez, attacking Mourinho's presumption that he was the 'Special One'. "Straight in. Bang. Take that, Jose. He went to town on Jose. By stating that Liverpool's fans were the real Special Ones, Rafa was being really clever."

The Kop was at its fervent best when Mourinho's men visited. "Chelsea walked into a wall of noise," Gerrard adds. "And a classic sting." Benitez had worked his players on a special free-kick routine, and when Gerrard cut a free-kick back to Daniel Agger, Chelsea were caught out.

"Rafa had really done his homework on Chelsea," Gerrard writes. "While watching tapes of them, we noticed that when defending set-pieces in wide areas, they backed off. If you piled a lot of bodies into the box, distracting John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho and Michael Essien, the pull-back was on. The manager drills us on dead-ball situations, day in, day out."

Agger's goal, and subsequent penalties, took Liverpool to the European Cup final against AC Milan. "Rafa came up with the right game-plan in Athens," recalls Gerrard, citing the manager's decision to swamp Milan's midfield with a 4-5-1 formation.

[Rupert 130]

your profile and date of joining tells all we need to know about you.

Why don't you just stick to the FACTS and stop feeding on prejudice?. ("Prejudice" means pre-judgement - judging before the facts. I joined this site because as a Chelsea supporter I was embarrassed by the behaviour of the booers towards one of the game's leading managers who also happens to be Chelsea' manager. We are lucky to have him).

[zolayes 14,489]

Why don't you just stick to the FACTS and stop feeding on prejudice?. ("Prejudice" means pre-judgement - judging before the facts. I joined this site because as a Chelsea supporter I was embarrassed by the behaviour of the booers towards one of the game's leading managers who also happens to be Chelsea' manager. We are lucky to have him).

you are a Liverpool fan like Backstreet get back to the RAWK

[TorontoChelsea 4,064]

So far, he has done a good job. First 3 games were really difficult, Man City, then 2 London derbies, and we all know that in those, our opponents are ready to die on the pitch even for a point.

He has done a good job? We've had five games and four of them should have been wins. Fulham at home and West Ham away are not particularly difficult matches in the Premier League. I knew this would happen-our schedule for the first 10+ games with Rafa is so insanely easy, that early success is inevitable which will inevitably lead to people acting as if we needed Rafa to defeat teams like Sunderland , Leeds, and Southampton .I do agree with your broad point-Rafa is going to be here to the end of the season so we might as well tolerate him.

[Laylabelle 9,546]

Not difficult but if you play like crap they can punish....we've had little luck in London derbies last season and dont seem to be having much better this season

[osgoodisgod 150]

I was trying to respond to others in the Torres thread but it wasn't letting me. People need to listen to what I was saying rahter than what they choose to hear. I wasn't saying any previous managers (AVB Mourinho rtc) had Cheslea in their hearts - on the contrary I think very few have since Abramovich arrived. They are good managers who were here for different motivations e.g going to other clubs, topping up their pension. What I'm saying is that I particularly think Benitez does not have his heart here, he's not even ambivalent to us - he doesn't like us

I don't think he's that good a manager. In many cases he's been successful with other managers teams or when the opposition was not good. He doesn't have a good record of sustaining performance either and he can demotivate some players as much as he can motivate one.

And, I get the previous football allegiance thing - I'm not as stupid to think that every Chelsea player or manager has been or should be a die hard blue. I do get this, I've been following Chelsea for over 40 years so I've picked this up at least along the way. Having said that, Ashley Cole was not signing Arsenal tops a few days after he signed for us and Lampard likewse did not sign West Ham tops a few days after he signed with us - the fat waiter however was happily signing Liverpool tops for supporters at the airport just after he signed on as manager. Hardly endearing but hardly surprising either.

People say who else would have taken on the job at short notice for a short period of time - apart from RDM we could have done a lot worse than Sparky and Wilkins -they speak and understand Chelsea.

There was life and a football club called Chelsea before Abromovich - a very decent, honourable, respected club that was never that far away and was getting there under its own steam. I think we consider instant success over anything else at our long term cost. We managed fine before him, we'd manage fine without him and we'd certainly manage without the revolving door.

[The only place to be 11,313]

I was trying to respond to others in the Torres thread but it wasn't letting me. People need to listen to what I was saying rahter than what they choose to hear. I wasn't saying any previous managers (AVB Mourinho rtc) had Cheslea in their hearts - on the contrary I think very few have since Abramovich arrived. They are good managers who were here for different motivations e.g going to other clubs, topping up their pension. What I'm saying is that I particularly think Benitez does not have his heart here, he's not even ambivalent to us - he doesn't like us

I don't think he's that good a manager. In many cases he's been successful with other managers teams or when the opposition was not good. He doesn't have a good record of sustaining performance either and he can demotivate some players as much as he can motivate one.

And, I get the previous football allegiance thing - I'm not as stupid to think that every Chelsea player or manager has been or should be a die hard blue. I do get this, I've been following Chelsea for over 40 years so I've picked this up at least along the way. Having said that, Ashley Cole was not signing Arsenal tops a few days after he signed for us and Lampard likewse did not sign West Ham tops a few days after he signed with us - the fat waiter however was happily signing Liverpool tops for supporters at the airport just after he signed on as manager. Hardly endearing but hardly surprising either.

People say who else would have taken on the job at short notice for a short period of time - apart from RDM we could have done a lot worse than Sparky and Wilkins -they speak and understand Chelsea.

There was life and a football club called Chelsea before Abromovich - a very decent, honourable, respected club that was never that far away and was getting there under its own steam. I think we consider instant success over anything else at our long term cost. We managed fine before him, we'd manage fine without him and we'd certainly manage without the revolving door.

So Benitez isn't a very good manager, but Mark Hughes is?

I can agree with your points about Chelsea before Abramovich (although we had our detractors and issues) but it isn't just about 'instant success', it's about building something long-term and he simply didn't fancy Robbie for that so he needed a stop-gap. I would've liked Wilkins back at the club but that wasn't ever that likely, so you have to look at who was available on a short-term contract.

Hughes was actually employed by QPR at that time.

And signing shirts isn't really that bad is it?

[Laylabelle 9,546]

Had RDM not won the cup we'd not had signed him and guess feel the need to.But still been nice to maybe treat him a bit better then he did.The building long term needs to actually start at some point cause we just seem to go around in circles

We should never have got rid of Wilkins that was a weird move..to move forward or something..but we didnt really move forward that much instead went downhill a bit.

[Sheva. 5,373]

Rafa is clearly better and more experienced than Sparky and Wilkins.

[Sheva. 5,373]

He has done a good job? We've had five games and four of them should have been wins. Fulham at home and West Ham away are not particularly difficult matches in the Premier League. I knew this would happen-our schedule for the first 10+ games with Rafa is so insanely easy, that early success is inevitable which will inevitably lead to people acting as if we needed Rafa to defeat teams like Sunderland , Leeds, and Southampton .I do agree with your broad point-Rafa is going to be here to the end of the season so we might as well tolerate him.

"insanely easy" ? I have not checked the schedule, but I'd argue there's not a lot of easy games, especially for a side who have been really off form like we were.

[Laylabelle 9,546]

Easy on paper bloody hard on the day...

[The only place to be 11,313]

"insanely easy" ? I have not checked the schedule, but I'd argue there's not a lot of easy games, especially for a side who have been really off form like we were.

It does surprise me when some fans think any game in the prem is 'easy'

Swansea away should probably be 'insanely easy but any fan of the prem knows that any team can turn over another on it's day. We should've probably won away to QPR on paper but the reality is very different, especially with London derbies.