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129 million reasons why Rafa is Liverpool's king
Benitez has spent the princely sum of £129m on players since he became Anfield manager in 2004 - and there are plenty of people who think he's wasted a lot of it. But in the first of a four-part assessment of the Spaniard's investments, Sean Maloney begs to differ.
by Sean Maloney on 05 March 2008
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After all the talk of how much money Rafa Benitez has spent, I felt compelled to look at his purchases a little more clearly so as to defend the Liverpool manager. So here is a little look at each player he has brought in since he became our manager almost four years ago.
So much has been made of the £129 million he has spent, which has become a stick that many have used to beat him. This is both unfair and in many ways untrue, especially when you consider the £50m plus we have got back from sales in recent years. All these figures are from soccerbase.com so if you feel they are incorrect, blame them and not me.
Josemi (£2m from Malaga): Benitez’s first signing and fortunately not a sign of things to come. A very average full-back who went on to become a makeweight for the Jan Kromkamp transfer in 2006. 4/10
Luis Garcia (£6m from Barcelona): A scorer of crucial and quality goals - I was a big fan of the Spanish star. Great attitude, loved by the fans and a player who clearly enjoyed the game. I was sorry to see him go, although the timing was probably about right. 8/10
Comments (8)
by Fran on March 05, 2008
I more or less agree with you on these but i do feel Carson could have been worth keeping
by Martin on March 05, 2008
Rafa always gets slated for his transfer spending and i think your list helps to correct this misapprehension.
on March 05, 2008 on March 05, 2008
This is not just about the amount of money spent. When you decide to sign a player, you automatically choose not to sign all other players who were candidates for purchase. Now just imagine how different our faith would have been if we'd sign good players instead of Josemi, Nunez, Morientes, Pelegrino, Gonzalez, Bellamy, Kromkamp, Itandje, Sissoko... And yes, we could have done better with the same amount of money we paid for the players above.
by Kenny Harper on March 05, 2008
Well it is a game of opnions but I do dis agree with that one, even Rafa would Im sure, and if he didnt why is it he hasnt picked him so many times this season ? There are a couple of thinsg i would say about rafas transfers, one is if you throw enough darts at the board eventually you'll hit at least one bullseye, secondly I reckon you have two possibly three real quality players, Carragher, Gerrad and Torres and two of them were already there when he arrived. Granted Reina and Alonso are decent but theres better in the prem, in fact theres better on merseyside.
by IJM on March 05, 2008
"I more or less agree with you on these but i do feel Carson could have been worth keeping" I wish to point out that we still do have him and he's still only out on loan. While there has been lot's of speculation in the papers regarding his impending sale, Rafa has yet to say anything about selling him. Still I suppose it's handy to know that we either have a very good keeper or £10m to call in if we should ever need.
by test test on March 05, 2008
What people always fail to acknowledge in these wonderful pieces of analysis is whilst Rafa has often managed to get a fair bit of money back on players sold, he's not there solely to balance the books. He has made some very good signings, but he's also bought a lot of rubbish, that has had to be shipped out after a season or two - this has constantly left us needing 3 / 4 new players for the first team every summer. How can you expect to progress when every summer there are 5-6 players in, 5-6 players out.
I would be interested to see what quality it is he has bought, you can measure quality by how many of them would get in a top four team, like say Man u, Arsenal Chelsea or Everton( at least until tonight anyway)
on April 14, 2008 on April 14, 2008
Woohoo, you wrote a list. Well done you, now you have succeeded at preschool journalism maybe you should try to actually write something.
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