If you’re a Liverpool fan, you’ve been waiting a long time for league success, and you’ll continue to wait the way things are going. You may as well forget about breaking into the top two, never mind winning the league, and start preparing for your Champions League qualifying games in July 2009 unless there is a revolution at Anfield this summer.

It’s not that I don’t like Liverpool, but they’re a largely foreign side with three world-class players in the form of Steven Gerrard, Javier Mascherano and Fernando Torres, with a handful of players who could be world class but are as inconsistent as a British summer with cameos from several useless, overpaid prima donnas.

Liverpool have a tendency to buy mediocre players. Rafa Benitez has signed a number during his time, while Gerard Houllier before him did the same. Steve Finnan isn’t worthy of a Liverpool shirt, Harry Kewell was there much longer than he should have been, while Andriy Voronin would struggle to get a game in the Championship. Big-money signings that bring in next to nothing when they are shown the door, in addition to a lack of silverware, are hardly great value for money and add up to perennial failure.

Benitez needs to sort out the club’s scouting – they find all of these unknown players that fail to make the grade. He’d be better off picking up some English players if he wants to waste money like that.

I’m sure his intentions are honourable, but with the exception of the miracle of winning the Champions League, he’s done nothing to convince me that he’s capable of leading Liverpool to the Premier League title.

If he sorts out his signings and gets players who are prepared to play week in week out, then he can worry about the other area he’s continually been poor in, and that is getting his formations right. Not only does he have players who don’t play well, he has players playing out of position as well. There is only so much your best players can do, but Liverpool always appear to have a vulnerability about them.

Benitez is a great manager – he deserves to be called that after his limited success, but he’s not the man to lead Liverpool to pick up the trophy that all of their fans want.

The best thing for the American owners to do is to bring in a new man. Managers don’t always get enough time to make their mark on a team in the Premier League, but Benitez has had the time, and money, and his time should be up at the end of this season.

Until change comes, I am reminded of the reworked version of You’ll Never Walk Alone I heard at a Liverpool game: “Dream on, dream on/ no hope from the start/ ‘cos you’ll never win the league/ you’ll never win the league.”