RED WATCH: Time to put traumatic months behind us

Oct 31 2007

IF Tom Clancy’s epic novel The Hunt for Red October had been about missing form rather than a missing submarine, he’d probably have had to add in September as well.

The last two months have been somewhat traumatic for our particular Reds, dampening the optimism generated in August and all but submerging our Champions League campaign for this season.

The spirited performance against Arsenal notwithstanding, it’s been a grim period of poor performances, baffling team selection and heavy media criticism.

An honest and calm retrospective would come to the conclusion, in my view, that all parties need to up their game – the manager, the players, and yes, even the fans.

It cannot be avoided that Rafa Benitez has experienced his most difficult period in charge over the last two months. We can disregard the phone-in phonies demanding his replacement as hysterical over-reaction, but nevertheless some of his recent selection decisions and public utterances have carried unwelcome echoes of the dying days of the Houllier regime.

Rafa deserves credit for the 4-2-3-1 formation deployed against Arsenal which allowed Gerrard to produce his best display of the season, and he was unlucky to be undone by the injuries suffered, without which we may well have secured victory.

Yet even here the inclusion of Voronin in a withdrawn left-sided striking role left you wondering whether Benayoun or Babel would have been better suited to this formation.

The Ukrainian forward has been deployed in a number of positions to which he is ill-suited; for me he’s a straight swap for Kuyt supporting a leading striker like Torres or Crouch.

To play against Voronin and Kuyt as a striking partnership, as Rafa fielded against Everton and Besiktas, must be like being chatted up by Michael Douglas – there’s a lot of huffing and puffing, but you’re in no real danger.

Can it be that Crouch, Benayoun and Babel are being ‘saved’ for later in the season, in a new twist on the R-word philosophy? It’s hard to think of another explanation given our poor form of late.

Throw in the failure to substitute Momo Sissoko during two poor performances against Marseilles and Everton (removing Gerrard instead in the latter) and his baffling defence of the performance in Besiktas, and it clearly has not been the best period of Rafa’s tenure.

Could it be that, with the troubled departure of his long-time confidant, Pako Ayestaran, he has lost the checks and balances required to reign in his more fanciful ideas?

We can all benefit from a friendly critic to challenge our beliefs, and you can’t help but wonder who is fulfilling this role at present. As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

As for the players, well let’s face it, as a group they’ve been downright disappointing. Faced with the challenge of the loss of key players, and the subdued form of the skipper, how many can truly hold their heads up and say they’ve responded as they should?

How can so many players suffer a loss of form at the same time? There’s no doubt in my mind that certain players have been ‘hiding’ in recent weeks, while others have passed the buck rather than the ball.

Nor can we, the fans, place ourselves above criticism. Though the atmosphere was good for the Chelsea and Arsenal games, others have been played in a near-funereal calm.

But most disturbing by far was the poor turn-out at Besiktas, where around 1,000 supporters purchased tickets but chose not to travel, merely clocking up fan card points for more attractive games later in the competition.

That looks a bit sick now, but not as sick as the empty seats in our area of the Inonu stadium. Are we just not going to turn up, both physically and metaphorically, for the big games now?

If so perhaps we should change our anthem to “You’ll Never Walk Alone – Unless There’s A Better Game On The Horizon”.