When the inevitable happens, if it hasn’t already by the time your depressed little eyeballs glance across my dread filled ramblings (midnight Tweetings suggest so), we are left fretting on the appointment of our next leader. A patient bunch by nature, we have been portrayed as a baying mob in the papers, spurred on by the recent success in rallying together to drive out the previous Yankee filth occupiers who wont here be named.
We have always offered our full support to our manager, which has always made me proud. In the case of our last boss this was particularly important as it was clear to anyone who cared that Rafa was our finest manager of the last 20 years. Nothing controversial or original there I’m sure you’d agree. Given that the all our problems can be rooted back to the removed two, why are we being told that it would be a wrong move to reappoint Rafa. I accept that he would have extreme difficulty working with Damien Comolli and herein lies my main concern. How many top coaches would be happy to work with Damien Comolli?
I will add here that this is no attempt to slam the Director of Football Strategy nor any other figure at the club, but these positions so often have an unsettling effect . Quite often the first move of a takeover, one must assume on advice, this role is drawn up and filled, but often ends up in separation. A technical director with power that supersedes the manager’s own in the transfer market? Not many great coaches enjoy working this way, and if he is to be all powerful then we must hope he displays more patience and less interference than he demonstrated in his overrated stay at Spurs. He oversaw the removal of Martin Jol and installation the accomplished Juande Ramos who was portrayed as hopeless whilst Comolli enjoyed the plaudits until Redknapp came in, fired him and ran the club properly.
Its true Harry benefited from some of the talent left behind by Comolli and in his job as scout for Arsenal he can claim some success, so why then not simply be a scout? With Eduardo Macia leaving the role is open. But a Football Director also has the definitive say on who the next boss will be. So why should one person, with law qualification have the authoritative say on who our next boss should be, whilst the masses scream in the corner for the return of one of two former bosses. Comolli has been Installed here for two months, whilst you and I have a lifetime of support and obsessing about this very club and its individuals.
We fund it and should be taken seriously. We are more than qualified yet find our opinions arrogantly swept aside and scorned by the media, so often wrong themselves, yet act as though we are to cretinous to understand what is good for us. The media dumb it down so the little football fan on the street, who subscribes to their channels and buys their papers, can understand what is required by those who truly know the game which we cannot access. Ex-players (of other lesser teams), pundits and the journalists, most of whom have little experience of the professional game from within.
Yet I read, at the weekend that we have been encouraged, as militant fans by recent mob group victories. So what if we have, shouldn’t more fans? I also read that Liverpool fans should stop looking to the past, but again why? Who out there, right now would be better for us than the two individuals we all want.
The media’s blame Rafa attitude suggests he is responsible for the mess we are in and would mark him down as a failed manager, disbelieving why we love him so much. But this season I believe that good players are playing well below their capabilities not shite mediocre players playing at their limit. The most out of depth creatures at the club remain, Konchesky and Poulsen, not the remains of the Rafa side which after all was our best side for the last 20 years, all that’s really missing there, is Xabi and Masch, but Masch was still there in August. So this again is unfair on Rafa and were he still to have been in charge this season I honestly believe that this side, with Aquilani another year in the country and (Alberto’s starting win percentage last year?) that with everyone else in the league stumbling around like Rooney in a whorehouse, we could have won the title with this side. The point is if we were at least given considered input into appointments then the club might be in a better position right now than it is. But I read, with no admitted authority, that the club fancy a new appointment, from out of left-field, and this I think is a shame because we the paying public know what we want and very seldom get it.