Liverpool owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks prefer sending statements to the club’s official website or via emails to Rafa Benitez to show they mean business. But Rafa’s statement did not come off some polished PA’s fingernails. Rather, his canvas is a green sheet of grass with a bouncy border surrounded by a Red sea of human emotion.

Benitez added four glorious goals to his 'company’s' assets on Wednesday, and conceded one as a liability, so a clearly profitable night's work. We have to analyse the crunch game against  Porto as if we are talking about money and investment, and not football, because of the blinkered manner our American owners view their latest business acquisition, Liverpool FC. No passion, no understanding whatsoever of the intricacies of football, or as they would call it, “saaker “.

Steven Gerrard called for the players to focus and not get distracted by off-field developments, and rightly so. They had to show their backing for Benitez by getting a good result, which would be their statement of backing Rafa. Gerrard led by example and was all over the place, in a positive way that is! It was through his corner that Torres headed the opening goal, his penalty conversion made it 3-1 - and another brilliantly-directed corner found Peter Crouch to head home the final goal. That is a truly the definition of a captain’s example.

'The night belonged to Liverpool’s manager, and the ear-bustingly vociferous crowd made sure of that. Anfield was rocking to the sound of Rafa’s name as the fans showed their full backing for the embattled Spanish supremo'

But the night belonged to Liverpool’s manager, and the ear-bustingly vociferous crowd made sure of that. Anfield was rocking to the sound of Rafa’s name as the fans showed their full backing for the embattled Spanish supremo. I hope Messrs Gillett and Hicks at least came out of their busy business meetings to hear the support Benitez has, and acknowledge the fact that he yields far more respect than the two owners ever will.

For one thing, Benitez is there for every game, so too is David Moores. And while Rafa is there through the good periods and the bad, Gillett and Hicks seem to pop up when they think that things are going belly up and they might lose some money.

Sven-Goran Eriksson has been given close to £50million for rebuilding at Manchester City and at least Thaksin Shinawatra seems to understand the rule of modern-day football, that evolved with Roman Abramovich’s spending to buy success. It has now become incumbent to spend big to win big; great managerial skills most definitely can't win you the league.