Tomkins : Why Rafa needs time to get it right

Paul Tomkins - 26 October 2005

It's proving a tricky start to the season, and I'm sure no one is pleased with the domestic form. But it's still early days.

Back in January, you couldn't escape the "Liverpool in Crisis" stories. Some crisis last season proved to be.

Part of my motivation for writing 'Golden Past, Red Future' was to put into context the difficulties the club faced in escaping the overbearing weight of the past, and the way everything is judged against the kind of highs that no club can maintain. Every failure gets magnified, and nothing remains in perspective.

I felt the project, which had until then been just a series of notes and random ideas, started to come together when I wrote an internet article in January, the opening (and highly ironic) gambit of which went on to become the opening lines of the book:

There can be little doubt: Liverpool Football Club should have sacked Bill Shankly back in 1961.

It was an attack on impatience, of course, and not the incomparable Shankly who, like Bob Paisley and Alex Ferguson, took time to get things right. All had difficult starts.

We are an impatient society. Everything we touch is designed to work immediately, at the touch of a button. I know: I always was one impatient so-and-so. But once I had had a child, I began to see my behaviour in him. Kids scream if they don't get what they want, when they want it.

In the modern day and age, calls would have been made for Shanks' sacking, as he took time to get Liverpool promoted to the top flight. Thankfully, the board was patient, recognising a great talent at work, even if the players weren't quite cutting it.

Around the same time last winter, I also wrote a piece criticising Alan Hansen's comments about how Benitez was getting it all wrong, a variation of which also made it into the book. I just didn'tbuy certain aspects of his piece, especially the idea that Benitez should have gone British in the transfer market, not Spanish, as Hansen insisted.

For a start, the club didn't have the millions for the home market, and I didn't see any English players of the quality of Xabi Alonso; if they existed, they'd have cost £30m.

While Hansen is often correct in what he says, I do feel there are some major problems when he comments on Liverpool. In his latest Daily Telegraph piece, he refers to 1978, and how Liverpool failed - by finishing only 2nd.

That's all well and good as an example of falling short when you have a settled side which has been dominating English and European football for a few years; I don't recall Rafa inheriting a side so successful. Nor was it the start of Bob Paisley's second season in charge; it was the end of his 4th.

We all want to see Liverpool at the top again; but let's stick to the present day.

When Hansen addresses the issue of Liverpool needing pace in key areas, he is dealing with the present, and I find myself very interested in what he has to say, and in this instance, agreeing with him. (It's also something Rafa himself has been trying to remedy in the transfer market, and has done so, starting with Mark Gonzalez.)

Mentioning 1978 doesn't help anyone.

Alan Hansen will always remain a hero of mine, for what he achieved, and his sheer brilliance on the pitch, and seems an intelligent, likeable man. But I'm just not sure you can compare what happened 30 years ago with today.

Also, Hansen mentions how he found it easy to cope playing midweek European games followed by league fixtures, and that the adrenaline rush would get him through weekend matches. Maybe, but his last European game was in 1985.

Can you expect players to get by on adrenaline now? Everyone acknowledges that the pace of the English game has increased exponentially (watch an old video for shocking proof). Apart from Manchester United in 1999, no English club has managed to excel both domestically and in Europe in the same season since English clubs were re-admitted. It's either been one or the other.

Hansen understandably draws on his experiences - and what glorious experiences! But it's like comparing the biplane aerial combat of the First World War with the Spitfires and Messerschmitts of WWII thirty years later. Time has moved on, and the English game has never evolved more quickly than it has since the early '90s.

When Arsene Wenger took over at Arsenal in 1996, did he hark back to Bertie Mee in 1971, or even George Graham in the late '80s?

No. He changed everything with modern thinking, looking forward, not back; just as Shanks had in 1959: the legendary Scot didn't base his thinking on the 1930s. Shanks introduced new methods.

Meanwhile, Wenger filled his team with Frenchmen at the expense of English grit, partnered a centre forward who spent all his time on the left wing with a Dutchman who spent most of the match in midfield. In 1978 he'd have been labelled crazy. Maybe in 1978 it would have been crazy. It's about the right solution for the present day.

Justified optimism

I feel I was proved right in preaching patience and perspective back in January. I don't believe in blind faith, but I do believe in giving a manager time and space to create what he's after. After all, works-in-progress can often look messy.

If anyone thinks I offer only blind platitudes of hope, I would like to point out that I went public in March, before the Juventus first leg, to say that Liverpool would beat the Italians, and then almost certainly face Chelsea, who they would overcome in the way Chelsea had beaten Arsenal the previous season (tense games, tight margin, Chelsea feeling the pressure). The final, as a one-off game, would be anyone's, and as such, we could win it.

Like most 'pundits', I get plenty wrong. But if you can find anyone else who said, after the Bayer Leverkusen game, that Liverpool were going to win the Champions League, and described how they'd do so, then please let me know. If memory serves, no one gave us a cat in hell's chance.

While I don't yet foresee such greatness this season, I do feel we'll see marked improvement in the coming months. I don't see all the components in place to get within touching distance of Chelsea, but I do see enough top class players to be legitimately optimistic.

Players returning from injury need to find their sharpness, while others need to rediscover their form. The new players need to integrate into the team, and a few new faces are still needed, as everyone appreciates. None are insurmountable problems, and the core of a great side is there.

It's worth remembering that the group stages of last season's Champions League were as patchy for the Reds as the league form, with limp away defeats at Olympiakos and Monaco. The doom and gloom was much like it is now, only then it was for both the league and Europe.

It took until after Christmas for Rafa to turn his team - looking so average in Europe - into world beaters. No one - certainly not me - saw that coming, back in the autumn. Sometimes it takes a spark, and against Olympiakos there was a distinct turning point. We now look mightily impressive, and consistent home and away, in that competition.

It might take longer in the Premiership, but the class the Reds show on the continent proves there is quality present. Rafa may have more to learn about the English game, but let's not get drawn into the black-and-white assumption that he does not - or cannot - understand football in this country.

After all, it was Liverpool's first really poor away performance of the season, and the first away defeat in all competitions: that's ten games including the Super Cup final.

The confidence is there in Europe, but it hasn't yet translated itself into the league. The club is struggling to find its feet - and lungs - after midweek games, as a lot of teams in Europe are; it remains a problem Rafa needs to solve.

But it also seems a bit of a psychological hang-up, possibly in the way Arsenal could conquer all in England but not win a game in the Champions League (until this season, when it's reversed somewhat).

In the last year, Liverpool have played Chelsea seven times: three games in the league, three in Europe, one in the Carling Cup final. Chelsea won all three league games, but Liverpool remain undefeated in the other four games over 90 minutes (the length of a league game).

A good win in the league could change all that, and kick-start things.

If it is hard for fans to be patient, and, after Gerard Houllier's tenure, baulk at the notion of five-year plans, then they need to accept that unless you have unlimited money or inherit near-perfection, building a successful side has no shortcuts.

You do as Liverpool have done: you get the right manager, and you give him time.

Just as they did in 1959.

je l'aime bien Tomkins. Ce qu'il dit sonne juste.

j'ai pas tout compris a cause mon anglais moyen mais il m'a l'air objectif sur la situation.