We progressed well in Rafa's early years here, he was given money to spend and everything looked good, but by the beginning of the season before this, some on here were beginning to see the money had dried up, Rafa then has has to generate his own wealth by selling good players, and this was to try and improve the team. It would have been useless to try and sell Voronin or one or two others, not much return.
So Rafa was put in a position that to improve the team he had to sell good players like Bellamy and Crouch, that was the only way he could generate money. I couldn't see our competitors doing anything like that, their boards would hand over the money for players to add to the squad, not strip it down to the bare bones. When we have injuries now we have to play players who are not ready like N'Gog or else play players like Babel who blows hot and cold, he shows glipses of what he could do, and then undoes all his work from the week before by playing awful football, not Rafa's fault if the clubs to big for Babel, I think he tries to hard.
It's obvious to me the problem is not Benitez because anyone coming in would have the same problems, and here I think Rafa did us proud, he got us to No. 1 in the Euro tree, that takes some doing and for that alone his job should be safe. If we do lose Rafa I see nothing but troubled times ahead, we must keep our nerve at boardroom level, it's been bad enough having these people here, but if they go for the easy problem because the fans want him out(or some do)they will be making a wrong move, and it will take years to recover.
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