Benitez must roll back the years

IF Rafael Benitez was a character in a John Ford western long ago he would have drawn his wagon train into a circle.

By now he would be cowering behind one of them watching his enemies gather and the arrows fly while reloading his Winchester rifle one last time.

No doubt about it, Liverpool v Inter Milan in the Champions League is Benitez’s last stand.

Which is why tonight, against the Italian league leaders at an Anfield bursting with European emotion, Benitez must at last buy into the Liverpool tradition.

He must send out a side bursting with attacking intent, a team committed to rolling over the opposition as in the European days of old.

Too much of Benitez’s reign on Merseyside has been characterised by caution, mediocre buys and his obsession with rotation.

On Saturday, Liverpool fans watched their side exit the FA Cup against Championship side Barnsley while star striker Fernando Torres sat in the stand and talisman Steven Gerrard sat on the bench for 75 minutes.

That is not acceptable. Not at a club which has failed to win the league for 18 years and this season lies fifth in the Premier League, 19 points behind leaders Arsenal.

It is why boos were heard from sections of the crowd and why former players such as Tommy Smith have taken pot shots.

“He (Benitez) keeps going on about winning four cups and all that but it’s not even entertaining at Anfield at the moment,” says Smith.

The danger to Benitez, however, comes more from the thoughts of current home town star Jamie Carragher.

“I wouldn’t call this just a bad spell, it’s been a lot longer than that,” Carragher admits.

“We realise that we are not playing well enough. It’s simply because we have not been good enough.”

That is either a withering criticism of Benitez’s powers of motivation and organisation or a damning indictment of his transfer policy. Either way it reflects badly on the Spaniard.

Yet when it comes to Europe, Benitez is up there with the best.

The comeback against AC Milan in the Champions League final in Istanbul in 2005 has gone down in Liverpool folklore.

The defeat against AC Milan in the final last season, this time when Liverpool had their chances to win, also did his European credentials no harm.

Two Champions League finals in three seasons is some achievement and in my book that alone should be enough to buy him more time.

But Liverpool is no longer the oasis of loyalty and reason it once was.

The club has American owners in Tom Hicks and George Gillett for whom memories of European nights in the 1970s and 1980s mean nothing, men who haven’t the faintest inkling what the five stars on the Liverpool shirts, denoting the club’s European Cup triumphs, mean to the fans.

It has a man in Hicks who admits he went behind Benitez’s back last year in an attempt to line up Jurgen Klinsmann.

And a manager in Benitez with a tendency for childish ripostes and who stubbornly refuses to see the error of his ways.

It is a club which legendary manager Bill Shankly would barely recognise. One which washes its dirty linen so publicly that it might as well be strung high between the city’s famous Liver Birds.

Yet I hope Liverpool beat Inter Milan and then go on to a third Champions League final in four seasons.

Mainly because four cups (Champions League, FA Cup, Super Cup, Community Shield) and seven finals (runners-up in Champions League, Carling Cup and Club World Championship) in Benitez’s Anfield reign is hardly failure and sometime, somewhere, football has to rid itself of its sacking culture. True, Benitez spent £46m (€61.2m) in the summer.

But while a £21m (€27.9m) chunk of that was spent wisely on Torres it is the only time Benitez has been allowed to buy with the really big boys.

Contrast that with Alex Ferguson spending £31m (€41m) on Rio Ferdinand, £26m (€34.5m) on Wayne Rooney, £17m (€22.6m) on Owen Hargreaves and £12m (€15.9m) on Cristiano Ronaldo plus Chelsea again declaring their intention to pay when it matters with their £15m (€19.9m) acquisition of Nicolas Anelka.

Apart from Torres, Liverpool’s owners have been short on any real substance which says they intend to restore Liverpool to their once-dominant position in English football.

It is why the arrows keep on coming. And why, against Inter, Benitez needs an old-fashioned Anfield triumph to rival those of yesteryear.