Is Benitez Losing Favour With Hicks and Gillett?

As with many Liverpool fans, I have been unsure about who is best for the future of the most succesful football club in English history. Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the club chairman who now seem more aligned in their plans for the football club, or Rafa Benitez, the manager and fan favourite who has failed to deliver the biggest prize of all.

Unlike many Liverpool fans, I have been coming down on the side of our far too vocal American owners for a few months now. We all know their faults, they dislike each other, say one thing and do another on a regular basis and would appear not to have too much of a plan for the club's future including, worryingly, the future of 'New Anfield'.

However, no one can say they have been shy in the transfer market during their time at the club, as we have purchased more world class players or players with potential than at any other time in recent memory.

Yes, we have sold but we had as we had a lot of mediocre players sitting in the reserves lining their deepening pockets. Torres £23m, Keane £20m, Babel £13m, Mascherano £17m plus the likes of Lucas, Ngog, Dosenna are all names previous owners would have baulked at the price of.

Yet Benitez seems intent on making poor business decisions and spending a bottomless pit that isn't there.

It makes no sense to sell Alonso and buy Barry at a loss when we have 3 other players in that position, especially when all can see a winger/creative player is the big hole in our squad, a fact which the Americans have called by backing the signing of Silva over the over priced Barry.

I applaud their stance on this and Liverpool fans take note, maybe they have done their research. Barry is a good player but never worth this hassle and £18m. Rafa also wasted £3m when swapping Riise, a great Kop servant whose morale was squashed by Benitez, for Dossena.

Benitez has a stubborn reliance on rotation and a nature which makes him discard players who may provide a better option, just count the splinters in Crouches rear for that fact. He has favoured foreign talent over any of our English youngster, losing the cover of Warnock, Hobbs et al and bringing in average foreigners at increased wages etc.

This is a big season for Rafa, had it not been for an easy run in and him actually sticking to a set team we would not be playing Sporting Lisbon but awaiting the Uefa draw this month, lets hope he can prove he is a great manager and not an expensive European specialist, otherwise United will be exceeding our league record. 

But in the mean time lets not bash the board for a while, well at least until Mr Hicks opens that big Texan Tunnel again.