I was refering to his time from Liverpool onwards - I probably should have said "mostly" but you know, "always" sounds better... plus Valencia was what, 3 years out of a 20+ year career? I don't get how one job can hold you in such high regard for that long.
Moving past the arrogance of telling someone "You don't know what you're talking about" ... and then giving Benitez credit for things he literally never achieved... See post above.
Benetiz time at Liverpool hinges entirely on a Champions League trophy they pretty much fluked.They won a semi final thanks to a goal that never actually went in, and then we all know what happened in the final/ Other then that he one what? one trophy (which again, he got very very lucky in winning), and this with easily the best Liverpool side they'd had in over a decade by the time he left. You say he took over from toixc Liverpool... he took over from Houllier, who they all loved and one them a budget treble. Hell they won more trophies under Houlier then they did with Benitez, so to call it a time of toxcitiy is a massive stretch.
In his 6 years of Liverpool they finished in an average position of 4th in the league... which is such a vast improvement from Houllier, who in his 6 seasons finished in an average position of... 4th.
Honestly, if it wasn't thanks ot the famed Scouse over-embellishment, his time at Liverpool would be looked at way differently,
If you think it arrogant to say ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ to someone claiming a manager with 2 La Liga’s (with an underdog), 2 Europa League trophies, 1 CL trophy and 1 CL final apperance (plus two league league promotions with Tenerife and Estremadura) has been ‘always shit’ - well, fair enough, but then how do you rate your own post for arrogance?
I made one mistake of remembering the second Valencia CL final vs Bayern as being after Benitez took over from Cuper, which I thanked Georgipep for correcting me on. I don’t think it makes my claim much more inaccurate given Benitez list of achievements, and your original claim (‘always shit’).
You seem to confuse my claim that there was a phase of toxicity and skewed expectations around Liverpool as something like ‘it was a bad team’ or ‘Houllier was bad’. That’s entirely misunderstood. Gerard Houllier was to me a very good coach and manager, the toxicity was the amount of people around (both fans and media) speaking of Houllier as almost clueless towards the end, despite the very impressive poor man’s treble. They couldn’t accept the level Liverpool actually was at at the time (as you point out, more or leas the fourth best club in England, much like many can’t accept the level United has been under Glazers, pinning it on the heads of various managers. Making two CL finals under such circumstances is impressive for any manager in it’s own right, it’s the same CL tally Klopp has, it was the CL tally Ferguson had (fluked?) after more than 20 years at United. It doesn’t make Benitez one of the best managers of history, but it is endlessly removed from being ‘always shit’.
Fair enough, I see you retracted from him being ‘always shit’ in a later comment, to ‘mostly shit’ citing that you like the sound better. But I answered what you actually wrote, so I guess that’s the price of going for form over substance. I still think it sounds pretty arrogant to call a manager with Benitez palmares ‘mostly shit’, but what do I know about what you have done in life, you maybe deliver on a CL win level every year in your own job for all I know.
Disclaimer: If you find any of the content in this post abrasive or inexact, note that I didn’t mean any of it, I just wrote it in this way to make it effective as an art form and to sound funkadelic badass.
