Benitez is the greatest manager we have had for 19 yrs. Keep faith in him!

I was listening to todays 5live podcast earlier tonight and figured the media is giving Rafa a lot more stick than he deserves considering how well he has performed.

If you asked me if I wanted anyone else to take charge at Liverpool right now, I do not think I could name one guy.

Guus hiddink is great but would he really go back to Liverpool after his close bonds with Chelsea and Roman?

Jose morinho is a great manager but would he really go to Liverpool if he didn't have loads of money to spend.

Apart form them two I do not think there is anyone I would want to manage our team rather than rafa. It speaks volumes that so many pundits are still behind him and do not want to see the guy leave anfield.

Rafa finally got control over transfer policy this summer and in terms of bringing money in that has worked wonders for the club.

In terms of signings I do not think it has been great yet. Aquilani could still turn out to be a great signing but he is way too injury prone to be worth 20 mill.

Maxi I thought was a great signing. Hopefully we can ship out riera as rafa clearly has lost faith in him as well. It would be nice if we could recoup maybe 6 of the 10 mill we spend on riera and get a decent striker as backup for torres.

Another player I think we need is a better central defender as back up to agger, carra and skretel. Kyriakos is not a bad man and he had a fantastic game yesterday but he simply is not quick enough and does not possess enough qualities (most importantly PACE) to be in a top 4 club. The same could be said for Lucas, degen and kuyt at least as first eleven players, they are not good enough. I honestly have a hard time critizing kuyt after the progress he has made at Liverpool however he is not winger. I think he should be starting each game alongside torres now that we do not have alonso anymore. Previously I could see the argument of playing the 4231 position as we had three world class midfielders in Gerrard, Mascherano and Alonso. Unfortunately that is not the case any longer and we would do a lot better with reverting to 442. We still need more top class strikers but if Rafa puts faith in Kuyt over time I think he can come good, just like he sort of has done on the wing. (I still retain my view that he is not an out and out winger since he is not good at beating players 1 on 1)

I am still surprised it has not happened yet.

What if we went back to 442. With kuyt and Ngog up top and gerrard and macherano in the middle and maxi and benayoun or aurelio on the wings.

The first time I have seen 442 in a while was this weekend. It was kind of forced upon rafa with the injuries but still...

I thought it really worked.

I know gerrard was not on the pitch due to injury and same with torres and maxi from the start but imagine if we could start the next game with the same team we had this weekend but with Lucas switched out with aquilani and with maxi in for degen.

All of a sudden the team is looking decent in my opinion.

I would also switch carra over to right back and skretel into the middle with agger.

It should be said that degen and kyriakos had good games against stoke. Kyriakos was probably the right choice as well for that kind of game (kyriakos) so kudos to rafa for that one.

However, going forward I think we would be better served with playing skretel ahead of kyriakos, aqulani ahead of Lucas and kuyt up front before he plays winger.

Looking forward to seeing more of maxi, aquilani and kelly.

There was a nice article on the echo yesterday about him.
Keep believing in rafa, we do trust in him and do not forget, we have 4 starters out at the moment and still deserved to win. Benny, el ninho, stevieG, and Johnson!

Stian
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