LOL
If Arsenal had played 5 in their attack minded midfield and drew would you have doubted Wenger? When Fergie rotated Ronaldo out and lost to Bolton was he hammered for rotation? How comes when Man U beat a team in the 90th minute after playing terribly it's championship winning form but when Liverpool score twice in the last ten minutes to beat Fulham we're lucky to get a result?
To answer your question...
Kuyt and Voronin have been pants and Crouch hasnt been playing and when he has hes not been his usual annoying self.
Add to that 5 other teams have come to Anfield this season and gotten something - usually by parking the bus, even when we've played THREE strikers.
Then, as most reds will realise, our wingers have been our best threat this season whilst at home (Gerrard aside).
So Rafa plays high wingers (much higher than a 4-4-2) hoping to pull defenders out of position and it works as we do open them up earlier than normal. (That we went on to concede has nothing to do with one up front)
Could be why he's a very successful manager and all the pundits out there are simply pundits.
Wenger and Ferguson don't get criticised by their own fans as they are living legends at Arsenal and Man U. The media back off as well, firstly because they have both won multiple titles in their reigns and alot of criticism will seem ridiculous.
Im good mates with Liverpool season ticket holder and he comes out with this "zomg teams come and park the bus in front of the goal" speel, well you think teams don't do this at Highbury, Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford? Course they do the other teams are just better at breaking them down.
Benetiz is a good manager imo, but will never get universal approval until he wins the title, which lets face it is the big one not the champs league.
I'm not bothered about approval becuase it's generally influenced by "expert" pundits such a Paul Merson and Andy Gray and The Sun newspaper.
Perspective would be nice though....
So everyone bar the living legends are open to critisism no matter how well they've done? Benitez is quite clearly a decent young manager (relatively) who's done little wrong and a lot right at Liverpool. Yet no one in the press or outside of Liverpool wants to see it. Liverpool are MILES ahead of where they were when he took over. We're now one of the top 6 teams in Europe maybe? We werent even making the Champions League when he arrived.
Wenger and Ferguson only had one major team above them to overhaul when they both arrived. Although Wenger didnt have huge resources admittedly, Ferguson did. Benitez has 3 teams above him all with huge resources if they need it whlst being denied clearance to sign a FREE Kahkaber Kaladze! And he's FREE! Not quite the same playing field really. We're probably going to lose out on Mascherano too.
An interesting stat... prior to last summer's spending Benitez had spent within £4 million of Wenger yet won more trophies since being here. Obviously that's not true now with the players we've recently bought but people still thought Benitez should be sacked going into this season! No perspective whatsoever.
This is complete guesswork but I'd love to see the points per £ ratio between the top 4 since Benitez was here. I think he'd be second behind only Wenger.
"Im good mates with Liverpool season ticket holder and he comes out with this "zomg teams come and park the bus in front of the goal" speel, well you think teams don't do this at Highbury, Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford? Course they do the other teams are just better at breaking them down."
Precisely my point on my first post in this thread - we need better strikers.
As for universal approval, I'm not sure any manager will get that whilst managing Liverpool purely because large sections of the press hate us and are so obviously happy to write untruths and people believe what they read.
An example... 6 months ago it was Sven. He's going to get City relegated etc becuase he had bought players no one had heard of blah blah blah. I'm sure it was mentioned on here too. Obviously that one was spot on....
I hate most of our media. Rant over.
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