Dark days are fresh for Rafa Benitez

Sep 16 2008 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

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THINGS were somewhat different for Rafael Benitez the last time he and his team boarded a flight to Marseille. Nine months ago, it wasn’t just Liverpool’s Champions League aspirations that were on the line.

With the emergence of Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s meeting with Jurgen Klinsmann straining his relationship with the club’s co-owners even further, Benitez himself was seemingly teetering on the brink.

Failure in Southern France would have dumped Liverpool out of the competition and the Spaniard out of the job.

How times change. Now Benitez heads back to the Stade Velodrome this evening with his stock riding high having finally broken his Premier League duck against bitter rivals Manchester United.

Certainly, talk of managerial change is furthest from the thoughts of supporters infused by the belief that Liverpool have provided the final evidence they can launch a genuine championship challenge this season.

But for Benitez, those dark days last December remain fresh in the mind.

“It was a difficult time for me but I did not let it get to me,” he says. “I have some experience of these situations, don’t forget. This sort of talk has been going on for years and you learn to live with it.

“When people are saying things about your position, you know you want to change anything by talking about it yourself.

“The only way to deal with it is by working harder than ever and making sure you get the best out of your players.

“That is how I approached things when we went to Marseille last season and you saw the response from the team.

“They played really well and got the result we needed.”

That the result was needed and Benitez’s future was in such grave danger was due to Liverpool’s poor start to last season’s Champions League group stage.

One point from the first three games, which included a 1-0 home defeat to tonight’s opponents, left the Anfield outfit needing to win their final three games to have any chance of progressing.

They managed it in some style, scoring 16 goals and conceding just one, before hopes of a third final in four years were ultimately dashed by Chelsea in the semi-finals.

Benitez, though, would rather avoid the need for another escape act, particularly as PSV Eindhoven and Atletico Madrid make up the rest of what could be a troublesome Group D.