This job needed someone with balls of steel who doesn't give a flying what people think of him.Here's what Benítez supporters seem to be missing:
Nobody is denying that there are deep-seated issues at this club that need serious change and reform to be addressed.
What people find it hard to swallow is the notion that the person to carry out this reform is a divisive, monomaniacal has-been who's presided over our worst run of form in years, who's alienated half the squad and most the fan base, who's line-ups are consistently baffling, who's football manages to be both ugly and defensively inept, who was appointed solely on the basis of his name and distant achievements by a football-illiterate chairman.
Analogy: It's like refusing to take mercury for cancer. It's not that I think that my body ain't riddled with tumours, it's that mercury is a poisonous, long-outdated medicine that isn't going to do a damn thing to save me. And I suspect the doctor prescribing it might actually be a shady billionaire who thinks thieving a small nation's GDP makes him qualified to prescribe medicine.
He was probably the only one of that ilk we could find.
We didn't need a Potter or Arteta to carry on the same crap. It needed sorting once and for all.
If people are happy finishing 8th - 12th every season then crack on with the hatred.
Me personally am willing to give him time to see what he can do.
This season was always a write-off and I think you will find the majority of fans accepted that at the beginning of the season if they could see something happening. Granted not a lot happened up to now but with half a season to go I am expecting an upturn.