Irrespective of Rafa Benitez and his team’s public denials, Liverpool have regressed without Pako Ayestaran’s involvement.

Pako’s friendship with Jose Mourinho was a minor factor. Ayestaran and Benitez’s relationship was the special one, and when Pako left, he took with him 11 years of shared knowledge, mutual respect and, according to Spanish football expert Guillem Balague, Liverpool lost “the man who says NO to Rafa Benitez.”

Balague spoke in The Times’ TheGame podcast last September, and claimed the rift had begun 18 months earlier, when Benitez started isolating Pako due to a growing mistrust (which he sadly did not delve into).

'Imagine how much Rafa could use Ayestaran’s trusting advice now, when he’s hardly receiving any support within the club?'


The club lost more than a fitness coach, the level to which Rafa attempted to reduce Pako. That he was probably the best fitness trainer in the world (says Balague) is a huge loss in itself, but also Ayestaran added balance to Benitez’s work with his analysis.

He identified things that could (and were) going wrong, things which Rafa needed persuading on from time to time. Pako was also able to cushion the blame for some of these things, thus acting as a buffer for Rafa.

Imagine how much Rafa could use Ayestaran’s trusting advice now, when he’s hardly receiving any support within the club.
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Balague pointed that it was Pako who developed relationships with players on a daily basis, something Rafa is unwilling to do, not interested in, or not good at, because he does not regard it as part of his job.

In saying that, Balague admitted that Rafa could be called a great coach, not manager. The difference between the two is that a great manager has good people around them, and that is what Benitez lacks right now, not in terms of competence, but as a confidant. The point is that there’s no-one to tackle Rafa, to say NO with the authority Ayestaran commanded.

Fan and writer Jaimie Kanwar attracts more than his fair share of vitriol from Reds supporters, but he makes a salient point; that Benitez, “eschews the human aspect of management" and relies more on statistics and data. Apparently, everything is OK because, according to the statistics, the players are ‘running more’ and ‘covering more ground’.

Pako was the human element to our coaching that has evaporated. There’s no one getting into the players' heads, gauging confidence levels, and responding accordingly, and our players are playing like low-skilled, park strangers. Don’t expect Rafa to raise confidence with words of encouragement. It is anathema to his style.

We cannot take Rafa’s claim that Ayestaran was just a fitness coach seriously. Why try to prevent a fitness coach joining someone else? Rafa said: “His contract is very clear. When you talk about this level (of football) you cannot move from one side to another with all the information you have. I don’t know the exact situation right now because the lawyers are working with it.” (The Liverpool Echo, September 15, 2007)

What information? It is Rafa who “normally conduct(s) 80 or 90 per cent of the training session.”  (Telegraph,  October 6, 2007).

Most Liverpool fans have probably read two rumours: that Pako was the brains-trust, and that in some Spanish circles, Benitez is regarded as a man who got lucky with Valencia at a time when Barcelona and Real Madrid were on a downward spiral.

I don’t subscribe to either, but circumstances make it quite obvious that Pako had a lot more to do with Liverpool’s training and preparation than Benitez lets on, and now that we’ve lost him, Benitez has lost 11 years of reference, statistics, insight and knowledge in one hit.

The Liverpool Daily Post (September 7, 2007) reported that Alex Miller would assume more responsibility for coaching the first team, though we can discount Miller, promoted by Benitez on the strength of his analytical capacity and reading of the game, from being a confidant.

In a 2006 Telegraph interview, he said: “I'm not Rafa's closest confidant. That is Pako Ayestaran. He is the assistant and arranges all the training. He's been with Rafa for eight years. He sits on one side of Rafa during matches and I'm on the other side. Then there's Paco Herrera, who deals with scouting mainly and also speaks to Rafa all the time. I do the video tapes and analysis. We all work together.''

Balague concluded that he believed Liverpool would be OK in the short term but, tellingly, he also drew a parallel with Gerard Houllier’s reign.

In the latter’s instance, results and transfer signings started going awry after he’d lost his trusted backroom team. Rafa no longer has his original team either, and we’ve been bipolar in our results and performances, to say the least.