Yes Martinez, followed by Sousa and then Rodgers. Swansea got their managerial appointments bang on at that time. Each being an excellent fit to the one that went before. You could even see the logic of appointing Laudrup after Rodgers.
I had no objection to Rodgers appointment at tje time. In hindsight, I felt duped by a car salesman in the end. Several shortcomings became very evident, one of which wad tiki taka that we never saw and he still hasn’t delivered anywhere.
With hindsight, it has obviously panned out quite well for us and you’ll hear no complaints from me about the timing of Klopp’s appointment. But I still think that fsg could have done better than to appoint Rodgers at the time. You can’t tell me that there weren’t better managers ready to come to the club, rather than a young rookie with a single PL season behind himself.
Anyway, it’s history, and we’ve had the luck to land the best manager we could have wished for. He has completely transformed us and hopefully he’ll stay a long time yet!
I’m not sure actually. I think Van Gaal was mooted, but it never went anywhere. There was some ITK stuff about who turned the club down. I think Ragnick might have been a name on there. Possibly Ancelotti.
I think when it came down to it, the serious interested candidates were Brendan, Paul Lambert and Roberto Martinez.
Something I said at the time regarding Kenny was that if he’s not Kenny that you sack him at that point. The way the team collapsed in the league was horrific, and the signings were abysmal.
But he’s Kenny. If he wanted another year, then he gets another year. I didn’t have a lot of confidence that he was going to take us anywhere, and there were rumours that he wasn’t massively involved in training, but fuck it. It’s Kenny. After what he went through for us and the toll it took on him, if he wanted another year I’d have been happy to drift along as he did it. Winning isn’t everything.
FSG were never going to see it like that though.
I thought quite a few fans were hoping that the club would bring back Benitez as well?
Yeah, there was a fan campaign about it wasn’t there. Would have Benitez back at that point, but it was never going to happen.
I had that hope, for sure. I still think that had he come in at that point in 2012 instead of Rodgers with a relatively stable situation behind the scenes and no concerns about having to basically make do that he’d have led us to success as well if perhaps not down the easy route. The challenge would have been getting the other faction of fans behind him again but anyway.
The idea of the war between Rafa and the committee would have made Rodgers issues with the committee a slight, civil, disagreement. Rafa has never got on well with any club set up due to issues over not getting players he wants and getting given players the club thought were better. It’s more pronounced here, now than it’s ever been at any of the club’s Rafa has been at. Great technician but bit of a control freak. Klopp is willing to trust others opinions and go with their recommendations and decisions. Rodgers couldn’t and Rafa never has during his career so far anywhere.
Rafa has unfarily been portrayed as that in the media. It’s just a soundbite with no actual meaning to it. One has to clarify that statement with the clubs and owners that Rafa has worked with and under. He’s an honourable man and generally wants the best for the club, and most importantly, their fans, while he is custodian. A lesser character would probably have been more than willing to work under the likes of G & H and Ashley with nary a hint of self reflection. Rafa just wasn’t that type of guy and now has to unfairly live with the reputation of being too difficult to work with when people like Mourinho are known to destroy clubs upon his departure yet still get the jobs thereafter.
Rafa was tired and burnt out by the end of his struggles here but his sacking was the final ‘Fuck You’ to the Club by G & H.
Im not going off just his time here. He hasn’t gotten along well at any club he’s been at. He would not accept our transfer committee buying players for him that weren’t his choice just like at Valencia. It is always a war between him and his recruitment teams at the club’s He is at. He needs total control to be happy and that isn’t here. It’s not at many clubs anymore.
Just curious, when has that happened at Liverpool? When has the transfer committee bought a player against a manager’s wishes (and we’re only talking Rodgers or Klopp here)? Bearing in mind that both had/have a veto.
That is a massive generalisation that you have absolutely no way of substantiating. It’s all ifs and buts but I personally think a Rafa left alone at Liverpool to do his thing with the evolution that took place at the Club would have been more than happy.
See that’s where you are using lawyer language and it might be that Rodgers “accepted” and Klopp happily accepts the recruitment teams suggestions. But they aren’t always players the manager wanted. Klopp famously was brought the recommendation of Salah for instance and happily gave it the go ahead. Rodgers had to accept Firmino if he wanted to bring in Benteke (Not his finest hour) and wanted Eriksen but was persuaded to accept the committee’s choice of Mikhitaryan which I think ended up eventually being Moses on loan? Rafa would have caused a war over such situations.
Kind of the point.
But the thing is, Rafa wanted to come back to the club. A club where his previous experience was that he wanted to buy Gareth Barry and was told the club would be signing Robbie Keane…then told they didn’t have enough money left to buy Barry. He didn’t resign, he got on with it.
He certainly wasn’t happy about that but the situation that he would have found on his return to Liverpool two or thee years later was vastly different to the one he left. Not only were the owners of an entirely different mindset but the technical support that they had introduced in that period was chalk and cheese.
Sure, he might still not have been able to sign his first choices but the process was far more collaborative than the one he’d left and he wouldn’t have been faced with a situation where players were bought against his wishes or without his fully informed consent as to how everything would all fit together.
At Valencia he famously complained that he would ask for a table and end up with a lamp but that wasn’t the situation at Liverpool in 2012.
I love Rafa and I would have loved to have seen him back in 2012 but if I’m being fair, I think things had moved on. It is a massive regret that we didn’t have owners like FSG during Rafa’s tenureship as I strongly believe we would have won the lot in those six years, but that period burned the poor guy out. He wasn’t the same after that. He needed to get away. There’s no knowing how it would have turned out had he come back 2 years later but my feeling is that he would have done better than Rodgers. Of course, that might have meant we wouldn’t have ended up with Klopp so…it all worked out well in the end.
That is taken entirely out of context of the whole post. Kudos for misrepresentation of what I just said.
Now you bring this up, why didn’t it happen? I’ve always found that his analytical mind would have matched fsg’s very well. Everything was still in place from his time at the club. They way he was f*cked off by Purslow and g+h was a disgrace in itself, so it would have been a brilliant way to put that right.
Rafa would have been a great appointment: a top class proven manager, instead of going for an unproven rookie. It would have found the backing of most fans, and Rafa himself would have been more than happy to come back.
Edit: Given the above, fsg must have avoided to go for him because he was too big to handle for them at that point. Just like Rodgers, they must have felt insecure about their position at the club, and so, it has some logic that they went for a manager they thought would be more easily manageable for them. As it proved later, they were totally wrong about that. Rodgers was the one who became unmanageable after he had tasted some semi-success.
Fortunately, Klopp happened to be available when the wheels started to fall off, and the rest is history. A good chunk of luck is needed in order to be successful, they had that in spades at that moment.
Actually this is exactly the kind of reason why A it wouldn’t work with Rafa and B why it would have resulted in an absolute shit show with the fans.
Rafa wanted Keane, he also wanted Barry to play as a left midfielder and was prepared to sell Alonso who he’d had a falling out with over the birth of Alonso’s child and taking some time off. Parry spent more on Keane than Rafa thought he was worth and failed to reach a deal on Barry by being a couple million short. Parry then bought a left midfielder Riera off the list of alternatives AND kept Alonso. Instead of carrying on with the plan (Keane off Torres and a left midfielder Barry/Riera with Gerrard and Masch central) and having an extra high quality player in Alonso it caused absolute murder. Keane was froze out and sold back for a loss 6 months later (a player he actually wanted and performed for us better than he did the season before) and it eventually led to Parrys (overdue due to other issues) departure.
Now imagine Rafa here with us under this set up. Image Salah wasn’t on his radar like he wasn’t on Klopps and after failing to bring in Goetze (the managers pick) the transfer committee put Salah in front of Rafa. Seriously Rafa is a great manager but there would be proper civil war here over the way we operate.
It really isn’t just on Rafa’s time here it really isn’t it’s pretty much been the underlying reason of unhappiness between him and every club has been at is not being backed in the way he wanted on targets or funding. He is extremely particular about how he has to be the one 100% in charge.
Rafa is massively more capable than Rodgers, but I agree there would have been issues with recruitment with Rafa, and it is unlikely we would arrive at the situation we have enjoyed with the collegiate approach behind the scenes.
I’m glad the way it all worked out. Everything made sense at the time we did it. Arguably Kenny was chopped a bit too soon, and arguably Rodgers stayed on a bit too long, but it has all worked out well. And I maintain that when we hired Rodgers it was a reasonable choice on an up and coming manager… almost an inspired choice, but he just fell short of that title.
Edit
Rafa’s return would have been divisive too. I would have welcomed him back, as would many fans. But there were plenty who were not especially in favour of it, and at that point, rather than going back, we made a choice to go forward with an up and coming manager. It was reasonable enough at the time.
Rafa knows when a good player is put in front of him. Had you made a player of Salah’s quality available to him, he’d bitten your arm off, on the radar or not (given his maniacal approach on following players from everywhere, he’d have most likely been on his radar anyway).
Also, while Rafa had issues with the Valencia board, with g+h and with the Inter Milan owner (who sold the club very soon after that), he has since then managed the Napoli board (remained cordial all the way as far as I know), and then… Mike fucking Ashley.
It wasn’t H&G that sacked him though, it was Rafa that pushed it through according to Martin Broughtin https://www.thisisanfield.com/2017/04/former-liverpool-chairman-reveals-interesting-background-rafa-benitez-departure/#:~:text=Sir%20Martin%20Broughton%2C%20former%20Liverpool,insisting%20he%20wasn’t%20sacked.&text=Benitez%20ultimately%20left%20that%20summer,very%20sad”%20to%20be%20leaving.