Rafa Benitez admits: Liverpool must finish in top four
THE Big Freeze claimed Liverpool’s crucial match against Tottenham, but the chill wind of anxiety blowing through Anfield is likely to last into high summer.
Liverpool's Fernando Torres would top any club's wanted list
Today’s scheduled showdown with close rivals Tottenham could have gone
a long way to deciding whether or not Liverpool will fail to finish in
the top four this season and thus prompt the break-up of the team built
by Rafa Benitez.
Despite the current lean spell of form for Liverpool, nobody can doubt
that in Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard,Pepe Reina and Javier
Mascherano, they have four world-class stars of the modern era.
The big fear on The Kop right now is that missing out on fourth place,
and qualification for the Champions League, will mean all four players
considering a move elsewhere.
Certainly, the quartet’s loyalty to Liverpool would be tested by
big-money transfer bids from rival teams preying like vultures around a
stricken club with a massive debt burden.
“Finishing in the top four is the key to keeping everyone together,” said Benitez, when he was asked about the issue yesterday.
Amid the usual managerial guff about his team playing as hard as they
can in every game for the rest of the season, here was one plain
sentence of stark reality about the situation at Anfield.
Torres, Gerrard and Reina may be on long-term contracts, but everyone
knows that won’t matter a damn if a player wants to leave or the owners
of the club want to cash in on a sale. It is a prospect that Benitez
prefers to keep out of the spotlight, witness his recent “guarantee”
that Liverpool will finish in the top four this season.
Yet when his side are in seventh place, four points behind Spurs in
fourth, and with credible challengers in Manchester City and Aston
Villa also in contention, this is defi ant optimism rather than
profound certainty.
Much as he dislikes it, the questions about the future won’t stop.
Benitez was also asked whether Liverpool would be able to resist a
£100million bid from oil-rich Manchester City for Torres should it
occur.
“At the moment we have to do the best for the club – and the best for the club is trying to improve the squad,” he said.
The question came again, and he admitted: “We would have conversations if we had to decide about this.”
It was another plain sentence. Of course, the ‘we’ in that statement is
American joint owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett, whose financial
plan for the club would surely alter without the riches of a Champions
League season.
Perhaps it was for the best for Liverpool that today’s game has been
postponed. Tottenham are the side in superior form at the moment, and a
victory for them could have opened up a psychologically significant
seven-point gap.
But Benitez is also phlegmatic about what he can do in the January
transfer window to improve the squad around his star players. One
target is Argentine winger Maxi Rodriguez, a close friend of
Mascherano.
“We are working at this moment on improving the level of the squad,” he
said. “Sometimes it’s bringing in players, sometimes it’s players
leaving and managing the atmosphere in a different way.
“We are selling two players, Andrea Dossena and Andriy Voronin, because
they were not playing too many games and wanted to play every week.
“So we had to manage the situation and try to do the best for them, and
for us. We are doing contract extensions with others because we want to
keep a strong squad. We have to try the best for the club.”
Invalid email
We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our Privacy Policy