RAFA NEEDS TO CHALLENGE

Heading into his fifth season on Merseyside, the lingering worry for Kopites is Rafa Benitez has never sounded less bullish about his team’s chances of catching Manchester United and Chelsea.

As with his predecessor Gerard Houllier, the giddy optimism of his first two seasons which were illuminated by extraordinary, brilliant cup triumphs, is in danger of being undermined by the failure to build a team capable of winning the league.

Crisis

Benitez emerged from a horrible 2007-08 campaign having courageously kept himself in a job, but it will take more than political cunning to extend his stay beyond this season.

The absurd, avoidable crisis created by Liverpool’s American owners offered an excuse for a mid-season slump which left the club unsatisfactorily scrambling for fourth again.

Providing Liverpool sort themselves out off the pitch, this will be a defining one for Benitez on it.

Anything less than a sustained challenge for the title will make even the most ferocious Rafa loyalists recognise the perils ahead. No one at Liverpool is demanding Benitez win the league this year.

What the club will no longer tolerate, however, is the failure to compete for it. That’s the crucial, but subtle, difference.

For too long Liverpool have fought to secure what they’ve termed the ‘minimum acceptable requirement’ of fourth, offering little prospect of taking the leap needed to finish top.

If Liverpool reach another spring having dusted down tired-old interviews regurgitating how finishing in a Champions League spot is their main target, claims of genuine progress since 2004 will carry less weight than a Tom Hicks mission statement.

Benitez is already playing down title talk, although this can be temporarily excused as a ploy to counter the usual summer hype.

That said, the positivity which led him to remark in the summer of 2004, having seen his Valencia side beat Real Madrid and Barcelona to the La Liga title, that ‘money isn’t everything’ has long gone.

It’s been replaced by regular observations of the spending differentials between Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United.

With the combined cost of Robbie Keane, Fernando Torres, Ryan Babel and Dirk Kuyt at £62m — regardless if much of that was courtesy of I-owe-you cheques — even on-going complaints about lack of team investment sound unfair.

Pursuit

His strikeforce is exceptional and central midfield and centre-half options as good as any in Europe.

Javier Mascherano, Steven Gerrard, Xabi Alonso and Lucas Leiva would be the envy of most Premier League bosses, but the pursuit of Gareth Barry proves Benitez still feels one of his most powerful areas needs strengthening.

Likewise, at centre-back there may be concerns his luxuries could cause selection headaches as Sami Hyypia, Jamie Carragher, Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel attempt to divide two by four, leaving at least a couple of world-class players with itchy feet.

An unavoidable sub-plot will develop if Liverpool’s Scouse heartbeat — Gerrard and Carragher — are again forced to sacrifice their favoured roles amid increasingly offensive and patronising lectures about ‘putting the team first’ to accommodate others who are never asked to be so adaptable.

Both have reached a point in their careers where they’re entitled to believe they’ve made their best positions their own, and will hope this summer’s signings prove Rafa sees it that way.

During the off-season he has recruited full-backs Andrea Dossena and Philipp Degen, as well as striker David Ngog.

There will be swift assessments on whether the recruits represent an improvement on the outgoing Peter Crouch and John Arne Riise, while there remains a craving for top-class wide men — a lingering Liverpool weakness.

Despite the boardroom shambles, Benitez has been backed in the transfer market in the same way as any previous Liverpool boss and is subject to the same expectations as Houllier, Evans and Souness before him — all of whom paid the consequences of allowing Manchester United to keep the club ‘off its perch’.

Rotation

Boardroom tribulations and fans’ protests against the Americans offered a diverting sideshow amid a season of disappointment last time. Ultimately Benitez will thrive or falter on his ability tomould a side which should fight for the Premier League.

Only success in this objective will ensure the scrutiny on the manager’s unwavering faith in his rotation policy is favourable. Only tangible evidence of progress will end the obsession in where Gerrard plays.

Only strong domestic results will put to bed the idea Liverpool are a European team stuck in an English league. And only a points tally around the 82 Liverpool earned in 2006 — when they finished a point behind United — will undermine the argument the peak of the Benitez era has already passed.

The phrase ‘make or break’ is possibly one of the most overused in modern football.

Heading into 2008-09, there can be no other conclusion. That’s precisely what this season represents for Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool.

KEY TRANSFERS

IN: Robbie Keane (Tottenham) £20.3m; Andrea Dossena (Udinese) £6m; Vincent Lucas Weijl (AZ Alkmaar) undisc; Diego Cavalieri (Palmeiras) undisc; David Ngog (PSG) undisc; Philipp Degen (Borussia Dortmund, right) free; Emmanuel Mendy (Murcia Deportivo) free.

OUT: Peter Crouch (Portsmouth) est. £11m; John Arne Riise (Roma) £4m; Scott Carson (West Brom) £3.25m; Harry Kewell (Galatasaray) udisc; Anthony Le Tallec (Le Mans) free; Adam Hammill (Blackpool) loan; Godwin Antwi (Tranmere) loan.

SCORE PREDICTION: 3rd

What do you think? Leave your comments below.