Rafa Benitez And Liverpool Remain Defiant About Manchester United

Liverpool manager Rafa Beneathus is adamant Manchester United are not untouchable. Every season begins with 20 teams all filled with their dreams and ambitions for the forthcoming season. Maybe only 6 teams include winning the Premier League in their list of desires. But as the season progresses the six become five, four and so on and so forth.

And now there are two.

Manchester United are stringing together a remarkable run of games in which they have broken the record for the most consecutive clean sheets. Currently they have gone 14 games with out conceding, the previous record was a mere eleven by Chelsea. They remain unbeaten since the World Club Cup in Japan and Edwin Van Der Sar has become the holder of all records for golakeeping in the process. Chasing United has cost Luiz Filipe Scolari his job and has made the usually defiant Arsene Wenger bow down and say United are untouchable. Rafa Bentiez remains unbowed though, for now.

The Spaniard has good reason not to cede defeat, despite United's imperious form. In his second title season with Valencia in 2004, with 12 games to go, Benitez's side stood eight points behind Real Madrid. Valencia, of course, went on to win that title, and win it in style. They finished five points ahead of Barcelona, with Real seven points adrift.

Despite the bad news that Steven Gerrard has not recovered from a hamstring strain to face Manchester City tomorrow and will only know on Monday if he will make Wednesday's Champions League tie with Real Madrid, a five point lead is not nearly enough for Benitez to follow Wenger's lead and throw his shield at Ferguson's feet just yet.

He said: "It would be better if we had a five point lead on them, but clearly you can manage it if you win some games in a row. We did that at Valencia and it gave us more confidence, and it is the same here. It is too much to say United are untouchable. They won a lot of games 1-0 and then they have scored three or four in a couple of games and everyone has been talking as though they were playing well for the whole season. But you can see a lot of games where they were not playing well. Clearly we cannot say we think they are unbeatable. We have to think we can win our next games, then go to Old Trafford and win."

If Liverpool are to catch and overhaul their great rivals, then Benitez knows they must start to take games by the scruff of the neck early on, rather than leaving it until the last minute to snatch victory, as they did against Portsmouth two weeks ago. Tomorrow's visitors have already felt the full effect of a Liverpool late show, losing 3-2 at Eastlands thanks to a last minute Dirk Kuyt strike. Refusing to give in is a fine characteristic, but if Benitez is to protect his players from burnout, he needs them to kill games off.

He said: "It would be easier for the team, for the fans, for my heart if we scored early. It is better to score in the first half when you have had plenty of possession, as we did at Portsmouth. I watched the tape and there were three clips in the first 10 minutes. We have been controlling these games but it would be so different if we scored the first goal. If you do, they open up and you have more space.".....Back To Home Page...

Arsene Wenger - One Of The All Time Greats

Arsene Wenger sits on the bench at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff one Saturday in May. His team, Arsenal, are contesting another FA Cup final, their third in as many seasons. Out on the pitch his players are at it again, for one last time before the sun sets on another year. Thierry Henry receives the ball on the edge of the penalty area, waits for Dennis Bergkamp to make the run outside him on the right before sliding a pass into his path. Bergkamp twists and clips the ball back inside to Freddie Ljungberg, whose near-post shot bounces off a defender and into the path of Robert Pires. There is no other word. It is poetry - the metre and the rhythm, the beauty and the beat; France, Holland, Sweden, France; the blending of skill and athleticism and intuitive awareness that the players have of one another's movements.

On the bench Wenger watches, at once intensely involved and perfectly excluded. As the ball crosses the line he springs up and, walking towards the pitch, does his familiar celebration, elbows at his side, fists clenched and pumping discreetly. Then he applauds. Then he goes and sits down again. His is only a half -celebration, but then winning the much-eroded FA Cup is perhaps only a quarter triumph after the devastation of the preceding weeks, when Wenger's
world seems slowly, incomprehensibly, to have caved in.

To anyone accustomed to his body language, defined by its restraint, its marked lack of passion, it is as if Wenger had a personality transplant in the spring of 2003. For months Arsenal had played what may even have been the best football ever produced by a British club. Power, in Wenger's prediction, was sprinting south. And then they blew it, they blew their lead, and Manchester United, with Sir Alex Ferguson urging them on like a whip-happy charioteer, remorselessly chased and chased and ground Arsenal down.

Few people had heard of Arsene Wenger when he came to Arsenal in 1996. He remains an enigma - a cultured, media-shy Frenchman who neither looks nor behaves like a football manager. But now he is probably one of the most influential figures in the English game.

In August 1996, the name Arsene Wenger meant absolutely nothing in north London. "Arsene Who?" ran the Evening Standard headline that greeted his appointment. It was the story of his life, from the moment he took charge of his own team at Nancy 12 years earlier. In every new job, he didn't just have to prove himself; he had to introduce himself. When Rioch was sacked, one of the papers had three or four names as a replacement. It was Venables, Cruyff and then at the end Arsene Wenger. Trust Arsenal to appoint the boring one that you haven't heard of !

Because they didn't know who he was, one Saturday two weeks before his arrival, Wenger appeared by live satellite link on the video screens at Highbury. They should have played it in the dressing room too. It was one thing for the club's most famous fan not to have heard of Wenger, quite another for the club captain. Tony Adams didn't know the new man from Adam.

There was a feeling of "who the fuck is he ?" and "what is he going to do ?" and "What is he ?". "Rioch had been sacked, caretaker manager Stewart Houston had left for Queens Park Rangers and Adams and Rice were "kind of just getting on with it", recalls Tony Adams. "I got a call from the chairman along the lines of, 'I hear the shit's hit the fan back there. Er, don't worry, rally the troops. Good man on his way. Be patient.' It was quite hilarious." Did he know anything about
Wenger ? "No." Literally the name meant nothing? "No. Nothing at all. He wasn't an English top-of-the-tree coach with proven experience. He wasn't an Alex Ferguson. He wasn't a renowned manager of that time - a George Graham."

Wenger's appointment was announced on August 20, he met the press on September 22 and took official charge on September 30, a Monday morning. "He arrived unnoticed at the training ground," Lee Dixon recalls. "A meeting was called, the players filed in and in front of us stood this tall, slightly-built man who gave no impression whatsoever of being a football manager."

It was an extremely precarious moment in Arsenal's history. With Manchester United now dominant, Arsenal had become entirely dependent on an impregnable defence and the goals of Ian Wright to keep them in contention. There was no reason why they couldn't have turned into Spurs after Rioch. But after the arrival of Wenger, people began to think it's part of the natural order of things that Arsenal and Manchester United were always one and two in the Premiership more or less every year. However, it was not in the natural order of things. It was entirely because of Arsene Wenger !

He doesn't buy success, that's easy to do. He cultures it, he finds the raw, basic talent and he nurtures it, takes care of it and produces some of the most amazing teams I have seen for very, very little money. If it were possible to turn back the clock and re-run his 12 years with Arsenal WITHOUT Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford, Wenger would be one of the greatest managers that ever lived. It would have been Arsenal winning title after title and FA Cup after FA Cup. Sadly for Wenger though, Sir Alex Ferguson does exist and he has cast a shadow over what I believe to be one of the best managers ever to grace the English game.

That's Arsene Wenger.....Back To Home Page.....

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