King Kenny could be canny option after bill is settled on Benitez era

Published on Saturday 5 June 2010 01:47

IT'S NOT the most dignified of epitaphs for Rafael Benitez's Liverpool career. Cruel YouTube footage shows Benitez getting up on stage for the finale of a theatrical reconstruction of that 2005 night in Istanbul. If you have ever seen a tubby man in his 50s dancing frantically (and we've all been to family weddings), you can supply your own pitying cry of 'oh the humanity!'

Then again, if you look a little closer, perhaps you can see some pathos in the manic wobble of Benitez's midriff. It was all steadily downhill from that summit of Benitez's first season. There was the delightful plateau of another penalty shoot-out win in the 2006 FA Cup final, another Champions League final in 2007, but after that it was all tense expectation, financial meltdown, and tetchy squabbles with most of his key players. So perhaps we can understood the punching arms and thrusting hips of an ageing man remembering, just for a minute or two, when he was young and successful.

After the club and Benitez seemed to find some common ground in the broad savannah stretching between their offer of a 3million pay-off, and the 16million his contract entitled Benitez to, the manager's parting statement was an exercise in understated dignity. Liverpool though may be in for a few more embarrassments in their immediate future.

With George Gillett and Tom Hicks seemingly unlikely to be bailed, erm, bought out, by any credulous Emirates investors any time soon, Liverpool's summer looks likely to be even more disastrous than their season. The club's two unsellables, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres are in South Africa brooding about their future.There are only a handful of clubs who could afford to buy them. In Gerrard's case, Real Madrid might acquire a player Jose Mourinho has always coveted. Torres has been mulling over a move to Chelsea. Javier Mascherano might also be humming a few bars of the Leaving of Liverpool.

Benitez has been squeezed between the owners' financial difficulties and his players' sense of self-preservation. Gerrard and Torres have identified the club's inability to invest in an overhaul of the playing staff as the main obstacle to their committing to Liverpool. The manager, though, has hardly helped, seeming to retreat into an extended sulk, rather than attempting to work with his limited resources.

Benitez is a prickly customer, who had previously departed acrimoniously from Real Madrid and Valencia, but part of the problem has been his willingness to air his grievances. This amounts to a cultural difference, in that English Premier League bosses are expected to keep their disillusionment to themselves, and get on with the job.

Received wisdom, i.e. glib simplification, suggests that Liverpool's 2009 title campaign foundered on Benitez's rant about the way Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United influence referees and the FA. In truth it wasn't a rant, rather a considered and somewhat persuasive statement of a readily-observable trend that Benitez was not alone in identifying. It was spun, not least by the media's plethora of Manchester United apologists, as Rafa's lost the plot.

Liverpool fans will be unamused by the realisation that, unless a new buyer for the club emerges in the next month, the first requirement for Benitez's replacement will be their cheapness. The timing is hardly propitious, with few respected managers available. One of the more suitable candidates, Avram Grant, has just signed a contract at West Ham for about a tenth of Benitez's annual salary. Grant would have been an ideal fit for Liverpool, a heads-down, uncontroversial safe pair of hands, who might also have persuaded one of Liverpool's key players, Yossi Benayoun, to stay. Instead, Grant has been snapped up by a rather more fiscally-adept double-act, David Gold and David Sullivan.

Punters' money has accrued around Martin O'Neill, as short as 6-4 favourite on some books to succeed Benitez. O'Neill, an intelligently cautious sort, might balk at swapping one American owner with a certain reluctance to splash out in the transfer market for two of the same. Roy Hodgson has already expressed his happiness with his present Fulham job, and if he were inclined to be more ambitious, the Internazionale vacancy looks more attractive. The notion of a Big Four club (albeit the one that finished seventh) under an English manager does have novelty appeal though, and Hodgson has proven ability at over-achieving with a depleted squad, which will be the Liverpool job brief for the immediate future. Guus Hiddink would be a popular choice with the fans, but a man who has been on the payroll of the Russian FA reaches a certain level of expectation when it comes to financial remuneration. It would be refreshing to suggest that Hiddink would be more interested in a new football challenge than the salary, but Hiddink's 2007 conviction for tax fraud in the Netherlands suggests a man not indifferent to financial matters.

An intriguing outsider is the elderly (59) Brazilian Oswaldo De Oliveira, who has earned most of his managerial plaudits with Kashima Antlers in Japans J-League. Arsene Wenger honed his managerial talents in Japan, but then again, so did Osvaldo Ardiles. The Brazilian would represent a desperate gamble.

Third in the betting, but surely an untenable solution, is Kenny Dalglish, the head-hunter briefed to find the best candidate, but tipped by observers who should know better. English football people, let alone Hicks and Gillett, won't be familiar with the black farce of Dalglish's spell in charge of Celtic but his Liverpool achievements came in a completely different era of English football. His only conceivable advantage is that he would come very cheap.

Dalglish then? Mebbes aye.