2021/22 Rafael Benitez

[Marius57]

So that

Hi mate, do you still have me on ignore.

FYI - I didn’t bore off

He mustn't have followed through with his threat of ignoring me. As he has been responding to my posts. No backbone.

 

[Tubey]

What has Bid Sam, Marco and Ronald done to warrant the Everton job in their careers though mate!
This Everton Job is as hard as it comes
I think Benetez is more qualified experience wise to be fair

It's funny how Benitez's brain has apparently melted because he hasn't won a European trophy in a few years; meanwhile Graham Potter is the answer because he's won 28 out of 100 games at Brighton.

 

[BlueToff]

What has Bid Sam, Marco and Ronald done to warrant the Everton job in their careers though mate!
This Everton Job is as hard as it comes
I think Benetez is more qualified experience wise to be fair

I mean BFS shouldn't haven't been here - how is using him being here an example that Benitez should have got the job? It just shows the crap decision making up even more?

Silva - our owner had it for him for some reason but he was at least a young, up and coming manager who within two years of him being here had impressed with Olympiacos in the UCL, had taken a tiny club in Portugal to Europe a few years before that and wanted to play progressive footy. The job was too big for him ultimately but he brought in Richarlison, he got the best out of Digne. He wasn't helped by the rug being pulled out under him in that 2019 window. Not to say he shouldn't have gone, cause we would have gone right down to the wire if he'd stayed in charge that season.

Koeman had had two very good seasons at S'ton immediately before he came to us.

Benitez was crap in China for most of the last two years, before that got Newcastle to mid-table in two seasons with identical stats to those of Bruce, and couldn't keep them up when he was tasked with doing that.

 

[Simon Buttle]

What has Bid Sam, Marco and Ronald done to warrant the Everton job in their careers though mate!
This Everton Job is as hard as it comes
I think Benetez is more qualified experience wise to be fair

Well at that time the Count of Monte Bisto was the best man for job as we were struggling, Silva I actually like but the job was too big for him, and Koeman is living off his rep as a player. Yes he has had some success as a manager but a lot of the jobs he has had have ended in disaster, he never actually wanted to leave Southampton by all accounts.

 

[BlueToff]

It's funny how Benitez's brain has apparently melted because he hasn't won a European trophy in a few years; meanwhile Graham Potter is the answer because he's won 28 out of 100 games at Brighton.

Why does it have to be such an extreme example though? I don't actually want Potter, btw, and I don't think he'd want Everton in the way it is atm anyway.

I don't think Benitez's brain has melted at all. I just think his footy is outdated. It suited the 2000s, even the early 2010s. Now it doesn't fit. His insistence with playing 4-4-1-1 is an example of that. We've got worse defensively under him, and he's telling our one attacking full-back not to cross the halfway line.

Injuries haven't helped but even with our players fit we weren't that good. For him to actually come out and say 'wait for the second half of the season' has completely rattled me. He's the manager, wtf is he doing about it until then?

 

[Tubey]

Why does it have to be such an extreme example though? I don't actually want Potter, btw, and I don't think he'd want Everton in the way it is atm anyway.

I don't think Benitez's brain has melted at all. I just think his footy is outdated. It suited the 2000s, even the early 2010s. Now it doesn't fit. His insistence with playing 4-4-1-1 is an example of that. We've got worse defensively under him, and he's telling our one attacking full-back not to cross the halfway line.

Again pretending the injuries don't matter. They're the primary factor. First few games he had a near enough full squad to pick from and we won our first three home games for the first time in over 30 years.

Your view isn't backed by any evidence. You've just arbitrarily decided his football is archaic.

 

[kenada_blue]

There's such a thing as relative quality. The upper echelons of the league have vast squads packed with quality, where even if they have seven or eight injuries they'll cope "ok". Chelsea have barely noticed Lukaku being missing for example.

Everton, to put it mildly, don't. We have the joint worst injury list in the league and that's been the case for some time now. The other clubs - Brentford and Watford - have eight injuries too, but half the players on the list you've never heard of.

Add to that Voldemort missing and Gbamin and Tosun being 'fit' only by the loosest meaning of the term, we are - by far and away - the most afflicted club in the league. Indeed pretty much our entire bench, in any normal scenario, would be with the reserves until a sale was arranged or until they actually developed into first team footballers.

This can't be just brushed aside as an 'excuse'. Every team will have injuries throughout the course of a season, but they've hit us like a truck now and results have suffered accordingly.

Yet you have people ignoring it nearly totally, because they're desperate to have a pop at the manager at all costs - even normally reasonable sensible people on here seeing logic blinded by pure hatred of one man based on a club he managed once upon a time.

And despite all that we're still as we stand right now bloody 11th, not 20th! It's ridiculous. This was an honest-to-God Premier League substitution we had to make the other day and people have the audacity to blame Benitez for our ills.

Christ.

It's key areas too.

The drop when one of Doucoure or Allan is injured in midfield is not just in quality but in how the midfield operates. We replace Doucoure with Tom Davies. I don't even have to explain that to anyone.

As for that sub...we have 3 fit central midfielders. Delph can't play more than an hour (been subbed at 60mins in the last 2 games, even one he was MOTM for) and Gbamin is a ghost. So we have really 1 senior midfielder in Allan.

But yeah, we have to do better apparently.

 

[Tubey]

It's key areas too.

The drop when one of Doucoure or Allan is injured in midfield is not just in quality but in how the midfield operates. We replace Doucoure with Tom Davies. I don't even have to explain that to anyone.

As for that sub...we have 3 fit central midfielders. Delph can't play more than an hour (been subbed at 60mins in the last 2 games, even one he was MOTM for) and Gbamin is a ghost. So we have really 1 senior midfielder in Allan.

But yeah, we have to do better apparently.

It's the spine of the squad, completely ripped away. If it were Ancelotti, the same people having a pop at Benitez would acknowledge the obvious.

But they don't, and we all know the reason why.

 

[Steve EFC]

It's not reasonable for any manager, 14 games into his tenure, having won 1 game in 9, to be saying 'wait for the second half of the season'

Of course Benitez wants to win games. He's just not very good at doing it.

I want to be a rock star but I'm not very good at playing guitar.

Not sure anybody would be any good at winning games with the current crop of crap we have available.

 

[Marius57]

I can't recall them having key strikers and midfielders out. They had a CB issue while still having Henderson, Mane, Salah, Firmino, TTA, Robertson, etc score the joint 3rd highest amount of goals, finish 3rd, and have the 4th best defence in the league.

Shocked they coped to be fair.

I mean, yeah their strikers were there, but midfield and defence were battered At end of season they had vvd, Gomez, matip, kabak and davies injured from cb. They had significant injuries through the season to Henderson, keita, fabinho, thiago. As well as milner, Jota, oxlade, and origi.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/liverpool-fc/ausfallzeiten/verein/31/plus/1?reldata=GB1%262020

You can look for yourself on the above link and see their injury issues. I said earlier, it's not hard to do a 20 second Google and actually back up your claims they had one injury of vvd if that's the case. Except it wasn't, so you haven't provided any evidence.

I get our midfield issues, but we have no defensive crisis as we are missing one defender, and are missing 1 striker when we have 3/4 strikers on the bench each game, including the managers favoured striker of rondon as well as richie who can play there.

One of the differences is, while he is a smarmy ****, their manager gets the most out of his players, regardless of whether they are first 11, back up, or youth.

Can you seriously say to me that benitez is getting the most out of the players he is picking?

 

[BlueToff]

Again pretending the injuries don't matter. They're the primary factor. First few games he had a near enough full squad to pick from and we won our first three home games for the first time in over 30 years.

Your view isn't backed by any evidence. You've just arbitrarily decided his football is archaic.

I’m not pretending the injuries don’t matter. Not one bit, of course they matter, but we have to deal with them. That goes for every team. I want us to change things up so we don’t have as many injuries. Hopefully this new guy Benitez has got in does that - I’ve said loads of times I’m happy with that - though on recent evidence we’ve picked up 2, possibly 3, muscle injuries in the last 2 weeks now depending on Allan.

Our performances in those matches weren’t good. We did enough but the first half v S’ton was dreadful. The first hour v Burnley we got outplayed and played well for 15 minutes total. Our third home game was the worst Norwich side I’ve seen. Even in between those, we were done by QPR, Villa beat us comfortably and we were absolutely atrocious at Huddersfield.

We’ve had two good performances so far this season, and the Man Utd one could be considered two points dropped given their form but I won’t be harsh, we did well in that match with what we had fit. Since then it’s been atrocious.

Erm, there’s plenty of evidence. We don’t string together moves of 10 passes or more, so we don’t keep the ball (we’re 18th in the league for it). We’re also 18th in the league for possession. The eye test backs up that we’re a shambles defensively, and Digne has been told to stay back - there’s even an interview on the club site where Digne himself says that. What more evidence do you want?

 

[BlueToff]

Not sure anybody would be any good at winning games with the current crop of crap we have available.

We got 59 points last season with pretty much the same squad (and I was fairly critical of Ancelotti btw) - we should have won a lot more games too

 

[Marius57]

I’m not pretending the injuries don’t matter. Not one bit, of course they matter, but we have to deal with them. That goes for every team. I want us to change things up so we don’t have as many injuries. Hopefully this new guy Benitez has got in does that - I’ve said loads of times I’m happy with that - though on recent evidence we’ve picked up 2, possibly 3, muscle injuries in the last 2 weeks now depending on Allan.

Our performances in those matches weren’t good. We did enough but the first half v S’ton was dreadful. The first hour v Burnley we got outplayed and played well for 15 minutes total. Our third home game was the worst Norwich side I’ve seen. Even in between those, we were done by QPR, Villa beat us comfortably and we were absolutely atrocious at Huddersfield.

We’ve had two good performances so far this season, and the Man Utd one could be considered two points dropped given their form but I won’t be harsh, we did well in that match with what we had fit. Since then it’s been atrocious.

Erm, there’s plenty of evidence. We don’t string together moves of 10 passes or more, so we don’t keep the ball (we’re 18th in the league for it). We’re also 18th in the league for possession. The eye test backs up that we’re a shambles defensively, and Digne has been told to stay back - there’s even an interview on the club site where Digne himself says that. What more evidence do you want?

We haven't even been playing in that time. It was international break. Davies in training. And Gray was 15 mins into the game so its like to be his conditioning/training that led to that. Yeah, issues with medical team, but would also indicate issues with training as well.

 

[Tubey]

I mean, yeah their strikers were there, but midfield and defence were battered At end of season they had vvd, Gomez, matip, kabak and davies injured from cb. They had significant injuries through the season to Henderson, keita, fabinho, thiago. As well as milner, Jota, oxlade, and origi.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/liverpool-fc/ausfallzeiten/verein/31/plus/1?reldata=GB1%262020

You can look for yourself on the above link and see their injury issues. I said earlier, it's not hard to do a 20 second Google and actually back up your claims they had one injury of vvd if that's the case. Except it wasn't, so you haven't provided any evidence.

I get our midfield issues, but we have no defensive crisis as we are missing one defender, and are missing 1 striker when we have 3/4 strikers on the bench each game, including the managers favoured striker of rondon as well as richie who can play there.

One of the differences is, while he is a smarmy ****, their manager gets the most out of his players.

Richarlison has been missing a fair chunk of the season.

To visualise it, here's what's missing for Brentford, and a large chunk has been missing for a while now.

That's literally our first choice midfield and attack. I've deliberately left off Gomes, Davies and Holgate just to make that point, but even then you have to consider they still have a role and it'd mean Simms, Branthwaite and Onyango weren't clogging up the bench years before they're ready, if they ever will be.

Your point that we don't have a defensive crisis is a misnomer. Setting aside Mina being our best centre half, the problem is our midfield and attack are now so abject that we can't get up the pitch. Not won't, can't. Rondon has been a dud and is finished and even when Richarlison has played he can't play up front on his own and has proven it over and over again. So the ball keeps coming back at us. Defending is a team game just as attacking is - you can't get your full backs flying up the wings if you're relying on the Iwobis of this world plugging gaps, as you get exposed.

We simply can't cope with those losses - we're not Man City. There's no Mahrez etc. to replace a De Bruyne, so the drop off is minimal; no, we go from Doucoure to Tom Davies, from Gray to Iwobi. It's can't be glossed over and explained away; the truth is obvious - no manager in world football could get consistent results with what we have available.

Could another manager be on, I dunno, three or four more points now? Maybe, but they'd be working absolute miracles to do so. And that's why I don't get the Benitez abuse, or rather I do get it but I find it bloody ridiculous.

 

[Richard Alex]

I mean BFS shouldn't haven't been here - how is using him being here an example that Benitez should have got the job? It just shows the crap decision making up even more?

Silva - our owner had it for him for some reason but he was at least a young, up and coming manager who within two years of him being here had impressed with Olympiacos in the UCL, had taken a tiny club in Portugal to Europe a few years before that and wanted to play progressive footy. The job was too big for him ultimately but he brought in Richarlison, he got the best out of Digne. He wasn't helped by the rug being pulled out under him in that 2019 window. Not to say he shouldn't have gone, cause we would have gone right down to the wire if he'd stayed in charge that season.

Koeman had had two very good seasons at S'ton immediately before he came to us.

Benitez was crap in China for most of the last two years, before that got Newcastle to mid-table in two seasons with identical stats to those of Bruce, and couldn't keep them up when he was tasked with doing that.

You asked the question about what as our current manager done to warrant being here. I was just asking what other managers have done. Like you blaming the choosing proves.
Koeman is one of the worst managers we have had the unfortunate luck to come across as manager. He was lazy and was only interested in holidays and golf. The joke was too big for him.
Marco was a rabbit in the headlights. Doing ok at a club with no pressure compared to us
Even Carlo couldn’t wait to get away.
So I asked a question in which nobody replied to 2 weeks ago. Who realistically can we get as manager? Don’t choose anybody that’s already employed though as we don’t have any money by all accounts