Article: Benitez the boss but is Mourinho?

An article written by Sir Bobby Robson this week - interesting read

Whether you think Rafa Benitez was right or wrong to leave his captain, Steven Gerrard, on the bench for the Champions League game at PSV Eindhoven, he did at least prove he is firmly in charge at Liverpool.

His men take on Chelsea today - in what is being billed, alongside Manchester United v Arsenal, as Super Sunday - and whatever side Benitez chooses, he knows he will stand or fall this season on his own decisions.

With Chelsea having an owner as rich and powerful as Roman Abramovich, you couldn't say the same with certainty about Jose Mourinho.

The manager used to be the most powerful person at a football club and I must admit I liked being in that position.

It meant you had the authority to push forward your ideas; the chairman and board let you manage and the players accepted what you were doing as being for the good of the club.

It is no longer as true as it was, and Benitez might be the exception rather than the rule in that he is in full command of transfer policy and team selection.

It's a huge decision to leave out players like Craig Bellamy, Peter Crouch or Gerrard, but Benitez has won the Champions League and FA Cup in his two seasons at Liverpool, so he can pick whoever he sees fit for a particular game.

At Chelsea, one quality you would associate with Mourinho is decisiveness. Yet last week he backed Frank Lampard to take the next penalty, then told him to give it to Michael Ballack and then said Lampard could take one again - if it wasn't too important!

I am not privy to the inside workings of the club, but it's certainly a new one on me for Mourinho to portray mixed messages like that.

He has a problem, albeit a nice one, in that he has Claude Makelele, Michael Essien, Ballack and Lampard. They are his best midfielders and big names.

I would not say he was forced to play them against Werder Bremen and they did win 2-0, but the shape of his midfield wasn't spot on because they didn't have enough width. It was not a fluent performance.

Will he be allowed to leave any of them out too often?

And up front, any manager would welcome having a striker like Andriy Shevchenko, but he is so respected by Abramovich, it is possible that Mourinho would have to factor that into his thinking.

In contrast, Benitez is confident enough in his own authority that he does not really have to explain his decisions.

His policy at Valencia was for the team to be bigger than individual stars and he has stuck to it at Liverpool. He will rotate the team and won't select on the basis of reputation.

His record means you have to give him the benefit of the doubt even if he occasionally comes unstuck, as he did at Everton last Saturday.

The secret is that if you get a good manager, for goodness sake let him manage. It is not easy to keep everyone happy - you are only allowed to pick 11, not 24.

I took a deep breath when Sir Alex Ferguson left out David Beckham at times, but since Beckham went to Real Madrid, he has not won anything.

Nobody is a bigger fan of Gerrard than me. I think he is the most complete midfield player England have had since Bryan Robson. And of course he will start the vast majority of matches for Liverpool and England this season.

But the manager has the right to leave him out on the odd occasion to preserve him for the nine-month season. I did the same once with the biggest player at Newcastle, Alan Shearer.

We had a UEFA Cup game in Norway and I named him as substitute to keep him fresh for crucial matches later in the campaign.

Alan was very unhappy, but I told him he will be in the same position one day if he becomes a manager and he would understand better then.

Players naturally think about themselves, managers have to look at the big picture.

When I started management at Ipswich, I ran everything from big-money transfers to the wages for the ladies in the laundry room. My only brief from the chairman was "win more matches than you lose and keep us in the black".

My peers like Bill Nicholson, Don Revie and Brian Clough would have been asked to do the same. Now it's a different story; chairmen and board members want to know what is going on, and players have to be treated with kid gloves at times.

It's a different type of job now, which is why Sir Alex has been so fantastic in being able to adapt. At the end of the day, though, one thing hasn't changed.

Players like someone to have authority, to have a masterplan. If a manager is being undermined by the directors, they will know.

It is clear Benitez is a powerful enough figure at Liverpool, so the players will have to either accept it or move on. At Chelsea, things seem more complicated.

You can have sympathy for Gerrard having to watch most of his side's Champions League game from the dugout. But if he puts in a man-of-the-match performance at Stamford Bridge today against Mourinho's all-star midfield, Benitez will have added to his reputation as an unconventional genius.

Like to see Mourinho with hardly any funds