For me, this season is a write-off; that doesn’t mean giving up on the two cups, but all I want now is a top four finish (which should be possible) and a chance -- please -- to start afresh next season with all the turmoil a thing of the past.
I take everything connected with the club far more personally these days; maybe all fans do to varying degrees, but feeling expected to write about every significant issue (either from the pressure I put on myself, or from emails I receive, some requesting my take on things, others more confrontational) takes it’s toll. But it’s also hard for me to stay quiet, particularly when I read something really stupid being written about the club. My instinct is to leap to the defence of the player or manager who is being unfairly criticised.
It’s impossible to judge the performance of the team right now, because it’s an almost unworkable situation. Talk that the off-the-field issue won’t affect the players makes no sense; it won’t turn them into rubbish footballers overnight, but you need an atmosphere conducive to success from top to bottom, and clearly that isn’t the case right now. For example, Spurs were doing really well under Martin Jol until last summer, when his position was undermined.
No matter what he then did, that team were a mess until he was finally replaced. I’m not saying that Benítez needs to be replaced; quite the opposite, in fact.
I can’t think of one club that has succeeded on the pitch while there’s been this much unrest off it. Indeed, clubs have faltered with far less disruption. As well as Martin Jol, the recent list pretty much proves that Benítez stands no chance of getting the team to anywhere near its true level unless things are resolved behind the scenes. Manchester United suffered during the Glazer takeover, although that was far less painful than this. They did fairly well in the league, finishing 2nd, but went out of the Champions League at the group stage just a few months after the takeover. The club also had problems when Ferguson was planning to retire; the uncertainty affected the team.
Everton were a mess until they got the stability of Kenwright and Moyes as a partnership; Moyes’ first few seasons were very up and down (big highs, terrible lows), but after six years he’s finally establishing them as a decent side. Newcastle have moved from one crisis to another, while moving from one manager to another. And as soon as Mourinho and Abramovich fell out, that was the end of Chelsea as a real force, as Manchester United overtook them.
Benítez isn’t so much as a dead man walking as a neutered manager working in limbo; even if Gillett and Hicks now believed in him 100%, no-one would ever believe it, short of the most remarkable gesture. Uncertainty helps no-one. Stability and security are needed to thrive. You need relaxed players, not those carrying a weight of pressure; nervousness breeds failure. And you need a manager who is in total control.
So much of football is psychological, be it confidence or belief or a relaxed state of mind, and that becomes even more complicated when it’s an issue surrounding the whole club.
It’s been a season of bimonthly catastrophucks to derail progress: September, with the departure of Pako Ayesteran just as the team were purring; November, with the big Rafa/owners fallout; and January, the Klinsmann revelations and the whole thing going nuclear. No team can flourish in such circumstances.
Clearly there’s a lot that’s right with the team, in amongst all the shortcomings. Indeed, with such a strong youth team, and the reserve team also doing so well, there’s a lot right with all the teams. There are a number of world-class and top-class players in the first team squad. There may be a few not cutting the mustard, but as I’ve said before, there’s no-one clearly taking (or on) the ****. Just like Arsene Wenger, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes Benítez makes in the market, he always lands one, two or three stars each season.
The senior side is proving hard to beat, and is keeping going to the end of matches to score late goals.
There is far more attacking talent on the books this year, with Torres in particular, and then Babel and Benayoun (the pair have seven goals each which, given they’ve been in and out of a side they are new to, is very good by January. If not totally exceptional, then certainly an improvement on the output of Gonzalez and Pennant, and more like having two Luis Garcias instead of one).
The issue of who partners Torres is still unresolved, and maybe that’s an issue for the summer, if no-one puts down a firm marker in the meantime (the difficulty with Crouch being that, like Torres, he’s best as the spearhead, and no top team players with two of those these days). But despite some problems, the team have scored four or more goals nine occasions now (only one of those against really inferior opposition), and can clearly take teams apart, once the two-goal margin is in place.
But at present the side clearly has a big mental block when that second goal isn’t scored. And no manager alive can act to definitively remove such a block; the team needs to retain its belief, and even if it gets lucky holding on for a couple of 1-0 wins, doing so will go a long way to ridding the ‘curse’. It’s particularly true at Anfield, where Benítez had such a strong record before this season. There’s no reason why that can’t return once the cloud is lifted. But with the cloud, it will be extra difficult.
Whatever their intentions when they pitched up, the whole situation regarding the fans has backfired on Gillett and Hicks to a spectacular degree. They may choose to cut their losses -- or rather, make off with their winnings; or they may opt to stick around for the long-haul, either to try and turn things around (however unlikely that may seem with fan opinion so low), or to further expand their chances of a windfall years down the line. Right now, I have no idea what it’ll be.
I still have some doubts about DIC, and find myself a little uncomfortable at the way they’re being treated as saviours without having actually done anything to merit that.
But while I believe it’s possible things could get worse whoever is in charge, if they did buy the club it would certainly give the clean slate and fresh start that would be almost impossible now under the current regime, no matter what the Americans attempted by way of pacifying the fans. Even if they tried everything possible, I don’t know how Kopites would ever trust them again. It’s easy to see why fans are clinging to the hope that DIC, with the money being their own and a genuine fan running the organisation, would be a better bet right now.
