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GUEST COLUMN : PAUL TOMKINSTOMKINS: PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS
Paul Tomkins 13 February 2008
According to Jamie Redknapp, Liverpool "have got no chance" of ever winning the league under Rafa Benítez. 
Presumably Redknapp would have said the same in 1990 about Alex Ferguson, who had taken a top four side at United for the previous four seasons under Ron Aktinson and turned them into ninth placed finishers (on average) over his first four seasons?
Benitez's league record outstrips Ferguson's in every possible way when comparing their respective first four years in charge, and while football has changed, and the past cannot be compared to the present with total accuracy, the fact is that no-one in the world thought Alex Ferguson could ever win a league title at United, and certainly not the United fans holding up banners asking for him to be sacked.
I'm sure Ferguson proved more insightful men than Redknapp wrong.
Just because Ferguson ended United's 26-year drought it doesn't therefore automatically follow that Benítez will do the same at Liverpool, but equally, you need to compare the managers to where they were in their respective tenures to get the context right.
The comparisons between United back then and Liverpool now are apt: England's two biggest clubs, with all the monumental pressure that comes with it, both trying to end a two-decade drought without the league title. Except Ferguson took four years to win his first trophy, and spent most of that time in the bottom half of the table.
If anyone should know how difficult it is to win the league at Liverpool it's Redknapp. He was part of teams in the '90s that finished sixth, eighth and seventh. More tellingly, this was also when the team were pretty pathetic in Europe too, and only the occasional visitors to a cup final.
Indeed, Benitez took the Reds to more finals in his first three years - and more important ones at that - than Souness, Evans and Houllier managed in the entire '90s. With that in mind, I'd like to see the ex-captain showing the current manager a little more respect.
Redknapp has now joined the list of those thinking that because Benitez has had more success in Europe with Liverpool, that is his priority. This is lazy stereotyping. Redknapp also talks about rotation (yawn) again, but misses the point that as with Wenger and Ferguson, Benitez rarely changes his core of key men except for the Carling Cup. When fit, Reina, Gerrard, Torres and Carragher play virtually every game.
I admit that I thought Liverpool could mount a title challenge this year, but it's been a campaign fraught with well-publicised difficulties. There's also been a pretty big injury list all season long, affecting several key players.
But I have also long been aware that it's going to be far harder for the Reds to end a two-decade wait for the title than it would be for the other three big teams to become Champions.
At Liverpool there's a much more complex scenario. Psychologically speaking, Liverpool are in the toughest position of any Premier League team.
First of all there's the unprecedented success that lingers in living memory of every adult, which makes any fine achievement a failure in the eyes of many. It causes the kind of insanity that makes some fans say they don't care about the Champions League.
The years of relative failure in the '90s, and in some years since, should lower expectations, but they don't. No-one expects Blackpool or Nottingham Forest to be English champions, but 'by rights' Liverpool should.
Why? Some fans say "Because we're Liverpool". But you can't win leagues by merely quoting history at your opponents. You can't dismiss Chelsea, with their expensive squad, and say "but we're Liverpool". On Sunday Chelsea brought on two subs (Malouda and Mikel) who each cost more than any single Liverpool player on the pitch.
You can't dismiss United, with their riches and their manager and players with league title success, and say "but we're Liverpool". And the same applies to Arsenal, whose current success owes much to Wenger's experience and scouting over the past decade, and from allowing a young side to blossom.
Manchester United and Arsenal, with the same managers as today, won league titles in the years immediately before Benitez arrived in England. Chelsea, with a squad twice as costly as anyone else's, and three times that of Liverpool's, won the league in Benitez's first season in England.
So by 2005, Benítez was seriously up against it, before he'd ever really had a chance to get going. If anything, the addition of Chelsea to the power-base and the ability of longstanding managers like Wenger and Ferguson makes it harder to be a Liverpool manager than ever before.
By 2005 these three rivals had that success in the bank. But with Liverpool, there's just a growing pressure with every year that passes. And the stereotyping doesn't help.
Liverpool, and Benitez, appeared to be put in a psychological straightjacket by the press after that first season: 'duffers' in the league but majestic on the continent. It was putting the club into a box and taping it up. This is a societal trend. Perhaps in the players’ minds it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. No matter who is the manager, how do you overcome that?
The first year was always going to be a tough league campaign for Benitez, and of course the manager had to learn about English football; that was only natural, and it was a harsh lesson at times. How could he know as much in those first months as rival managers who had been in their jobs for donkey's years?
His second season was a relative success in the league, with 82 points and an outstanding win-percentage: 25 out of 38 won. Add cup games against Premier League opposition, including four ties against Chelsea and Manchester United, and it looked even better. This told me that Rafa could succeed in England. But getting that first league title was always going to be the toughest task of all.
Whereas Arsenal unexpectedly won the league under Wenger after 18 months, Liverpool had a surprise European title at the start of Benítez's reign. And anyone who doesn't believe me when I talk about how teams can be stereotyped, just look at Arsenal's 'Invincibles'.
This very 'European' team, whatever its personnel over that time, has thus far failed to win a single European trophy in the 12 years under Wenger.
Why is this? Possibly because in those first two or three campaigns, Arsenal failed more so than was expected. While some of that should have been foreseen - it was after all a learning curve in those initial campaigns - it set the same kind of psychological barrier in place that the Liverpool team suffer from in the league. Once you're labelled, it’s hard to escape it.
It seemed the better Arsenal got domestically the worse they fared on the continent. Perhaps you could look at Wenger's tactics, etc, but this was a team who, between 2002 and 2004, should have been able to beat anyone. The only time they have reached the last four was when they were beaten finalists in 2006, in the season when everyone felt they were a poorer side and stood far less chance of doing well.
This stereotyping, and an overburdening, overpowering expectation, is probably the same for the England national team, and in domestic football, for Newcastle United. The difference, of course, is that Liverpool have been winning things of real note during one particular kind of drought.
While I desperately want the league title to return to Anfield, I've been thrilled by the team winning the European Cup, FA Cup, and making it to another Champions League final. I'm incredibly proud that the team has made the last 16 of the Champions League every year under Rafa, not to mention those two finals, because before he arrived that seemed as impossible as it now does to win the league.
Liverpool's psychological situation is almost the reverse of Manchester United's. What United would do for another Champions League success, almost a decade after their only final in 15 consecutive years competing in it under Ferguson. You know how much Ferguson desperately wants to win it, yet he hasn't even come close in the last nine years, and didn't even make it past the group stage two years ago.
Anyone who's been single and on the dating scene at some point in their life knows that the more you want something, the harder it becomes; you reek of desperation in the search for a partner. You try too hard.
Going back to Wenger, the difference between Arsenal and Liverpool is that the Reds' early success came in Europe, and of course that's made subsequent good runs in Champions League easier to achieve.
The confidence, the true gut-level belief, was put in place by the run to Istanbul and the final itself. Liverpool have that in the bag now, and under Benitez, always will. That's why the club were able to reach a second final in three years, including victory in the Nou Camp, and also why, when this year's campaign got off to such a bad start (as can happen in football), the team could pull off three remarkable and emphatic victories when every single point was essential.
The examples of psychological barriers are everywhere. Why do Liverpool do so much better against Chelsea in the cups than in the league? - and in high-pressure semi-finals to boot. Why have Liverpool yet to beat Manchester United in the league under Benitez, but in the one cup encounter the Reds deservedly won?
For me, it speaks of psychological factors, and in sport, they are crucially important but also incredibly difficult to change. Chelsea and United wanted to win those encounters with Liverpool at least as much as they did those league games. But without the oppressive weight of the word 'Premier League' bearing down on them, the Reds had more freedom.
But things can change quickly in football. Who thought Arsenal, who finished below the Reds for two seasons, would suddenly click into gear this year? After all, this is the season when Spurs were supposed to finish above the Gunners. Players like Hleb and Adebayor turned into top-class propositions after two unspectacular seasons in England, and what’s to say young players as gifted and promising as Ryan Babel and Lucas can't make similar improvements?
No-one can doubt that the league has become an albatross, a millstone, for Liverpool, and had done so long before Benitez arrived. Quite how any manager can lift that burden is anyone's guess. It won't be easy, that's for sure.
Perhaps Benitez's best hope lies with the outstanding youngsters he is procuring, and how, as at Arsenal, they improve the side once they've matured. Should the next generation come through at Anfield and show their undoubted class in the next few years, players like Torres, Agger, Reina, Mascherano, Alonso, Skrtel, Babel, Lucas and Gerrard should still be around to make the squad stronger than ever. And even Carragher and Finnan have a few years left ahead of them.
But for the time being the Reds remain a revered and feared Champions League team and, after the European failures and humiliations of the '90s, and the across-the-board mediocrity, I for one am happy for the team to be considered top-class in such an important context.
Paul Tomkins' new book An Anfield Anthology is now available. For details about the book and how to buy click here>>
These views are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by Liverpool FC or its official website.
Paul Tomkins 13 February 2008
According to Jamie Redknapp, Liverpool "have got no chance" of ever winning the league under Rafa Benítez. Presumably Redknapp would have said the same in 1990 about Alex Ferguson, who had taken a top four side at United for the previous four seasons under Ron Aktinson and turned them into ninth placed finishers (on average) over his first four seasons?
Benitez's league record outstrips Ferguson's in every possible way when comparing their respective first four years in charge, and while football has changed, and the past cannot be compared to the present with total accuracy, the fact is that no-one in the world thought Alex Ferguson could ever win a league title at United, and certainly not the United fans holding up banners asking for him to be sacked.
I'm sure Ferguson proved more insightful men than Redknapp wrong.
Just because Ferguson ended United's 26-year drought it doesn't therefore automatically follow that Benítez will do the same at Liverpool, but equally, you need to compare the managers to where they were in their respective tenures to get the context right.
The comparisons between United back then and Liverpool now are apt: England's two biggest clubs, with all the monumental pressure that comes with it, both trying to end a two-decade drought without the league title. Except Ferguson took four years to win his first trophy, and spent most of that time in the bottom half of the table.
If anyone should know how difficult it is to win the league at Liverpool it's Redknapp. He was part of teams in the '90s that finished sixth, eighth and seventh. More tellingly, this was also when the team were pretty pathetic in Europe too, and only the occasional visitors to a cup final.
Indeed, Benitez took the Reds to more finals in his first three years - and more important ones at that - than Souness, Evans and Houllier managed in the entire '90s. With that in mind, I'd like to see the ex-captain showing the current manager a little more respect.
Redknapp has now joined the list of those thinking that because Benitez has had more success in Europe with Liverpool, that is his priority. This is lazy stereotyping. Redknapp also talks about rotation (yawn) again, but misses the point that as with Wenger and Ferguson, Benitez rarely changes his core of key men except for the Carling Cup. When fit, Reina, Gerrard, Torres and Carragher play virtually every game.
I admit that I thought Liverpool could mount a title challenge this year, but it's been a campaign fraught with well-publicised difficulties. There's also been a pretty big injury list all season long, affecting several key players.
But I have also long been aware that it's going to be far harder for the Reds to end a two-decade wait for the title than it would be for the other three big teams to become Champions.
At Liverpool there's a much more complex scenario. Psychologically speaking, Liverpool are in the toughest position of any Premier League team.
First of all there's the unprecedented success that lingers in living memory of every adult, which makes any fine achievement a failure in the eyes of many. It causes the kind of insanity that makes some fans say they don't care about the Champions League.
The years of relative failure in the '90s, and in some years since, should lower expectations, but they don't. No-one expects Blackpool or Nottingham Forest to be English champions, but 'by rights' Liverpool should.
Why? Some fans say "Because we're Liverpool". But you can't win leagues by merely quoting history at your opponents. You can't dismiss Chelsea, with their expensive squad, and say "but we're Liverpool". On Sunday Chelsea brought on two subs (Malouda and Mikel) who each cost more than any single Liverpool player on the pitch.
You can't dismiss United, with their riches and their manager and players with league title success, and say "but we're Liverpool". And the same applies to Arsenal, whose current success owes much to Wenger's experience and scouting over the past decade, and from allowing a young side to blossom.
Manchester United and Arsenal, with the same managers as today, won league titles in the years immediately before Benitez arrived in England. Chelsea, with a squad twice as costly as anyone else's, and three times that of Liverpool's, won the league in Benitez's first season in England.
So by 2005, Benítez was seriously up against it, before he'd ever really had a chance to get going. If anything, the addition of Chelsea to the power-base and the ability of longstanding managers like Wenger and Ferguson makes it harder to be a Liverpool manager than ever before.
By 2005 these three rivals had that success in the bank. But with Liverpool, there's just a growing pressure with every year that passes. And the stereotyping doesn't help.
Liverpool, and Benitez, appeared to be put in a psychological straightjacket by the press after that first season: 'duffers' in the league but majestic on the continent. It was putting the club into a box and taping it up. This is a societal trend. Perhaps in the players’ minds it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. No matter who is the manager, how do you overcome that?
The first year was always going to be a tough league campaign for Benitez, and of course the manager had to learn about English football; that was only natural, and it was a harsh lesson at times. How could he know as much in those first months as rival managers who had been in their jobs for donkey's years?
His second season was a relative success in the league, with 82 points and an outstanding win-percentage: 25 out of 38 won. Add cup games against Premier League opposition, including four ties against Chelsea and Manchester United, and it looked even better. This told me that Rafa could succeed in England. But getting that first league title was always going to be the toughest task of all.
Whereas Arsenal unexpectedly won the league under Wenger after 18 months, Liverpool had a surprise European title at the start of Benítez's reign. And anyone who doesn't believe me when I talk about how teams can be stereotyped, just look at Arsenal's 'Invincibles'.
This very 'European' team, whatever its personnel over that time, has thus far failed to win a single European trophy in the 12 years under Wenger.
Why is this? Possibly because in those first two or three campaigns, Arsenal failed more so than was expected. While some of that should have been foreseen - it was after all a learning curve in those initial campaigns - it set the same kind of psychological barrier in place that the Liverpool team suffer from in the league. Once you're labelled, it’s hard to escape it.
It seemed the better Arsenal got domestically the worse they fared on the continent. Perhaps you could look at Wenger's tactics, etc, but this was a team who, between 2002 and 2004, should have been able to beat anyone. The only time they have reached the last four was when they were beaten finalists in 2006, in the season when everyone felt they were a poorer side and stood far less chance of doing well.
This stereotyping, and an overburdening, overpowering expectation, is probably the same for the England national team, and in domestic football, for Newcastle United. The difference, of course, is that Liverpool have been winning things of real note during one particular kind of drought.
While I desperately want the league title to return to Anfield, I've been thrilled by the team winning the European Cup, FA Cup, and making it to another Champions League final. I'm incredibly proud that the team has made the last 16 of the Champions League every year under Rafa, not to mention those two finals, because before he arrived that seemed as impossible as it now does to win the league.
Liverpool's psychological situation is almost the reverse of Manchester United's. What United would do for another Champions League success, almost a decade after their only final in 15 consecutive years competing in it under Ferguson. You know how much Ferguson desperately wants to win it, yet he hasn't even come close in the last nine years, and didn't even make it past the group stage two years ago.
Anyone who's been single and on the dating scene at some point in their life knows that the more you want something, the harder it becomes; you reek of desperation in the search for a partner. You try too hard.
Going back to Wenger, the difference between Arsenal and Liverpool is that the Reds' early success came in Europe, and of course that's made subsequent good runs in Champions League easier to achieve.
The confidence, the true gut-level belief, was put in place by the run to Istanbul and the final itself. Liverpool have that in the bag now, and under Benitez, always will. That's why the club were able to reach a second final in three years, including victory in the Nou Camp, and also why, when this year's campaign got off to such a bad start (as can happen in football), the team could pull off three remarkable and emphatic victories when every single point was essential.
The examples of psychological barriers are everywhere. Why do Liverpool do so much better against Chelsea in the cups than in the league? - and in high-pressure semi-finals to boot. Why have Liverpool yet to beat Manchester United in the league under Benitez, but in the one cup encounter the Reds deservedly won?
For me, it speaks of psychological factors, and in sport, they are crucially important but also incredibly difficult to change. Chelsea and United wanted to win those encounters with Liverpool at least as much as they did those league games. But without the oppressive weight of the word 'Premier League' bearing down on them, the Reds had more freedom.
But things can change quickly in football. Who thought Arsenal, who finished below the Reds for two seasons, would suddenly click into gear this year? After all, this is the season when Spurs were supposed to finish above the Gunners. Players like Hleb and Adebayor turned into top-class propositions after two unspectacular seasons in England, and what’s to say young players as gifted and promising as Ryan Babel and Lucas can't make similar improvements?
No-one can doubt that the league has become an albatross, a millstone, for Liverpool, and had done so long before Benitez arrived. Quite how any manager can lift that burden is anyone's guess. It won't be easy, that's for sure.
Perhaps Benitez's best hope lies with the outstanding youngsters he is procuring, and how, as at Arsenal, they improve the side once they've matured. Should the next generation come through at Anfield and show their undoubted class in the next few years, players like Torres, Agger, Reina, Mascherano, Alonso, Skrtel, Babel, Lucas and Gerrard should still be around to make the squad stronger than ever. And even Carragher and Finnan have a few years left ahead of them.
But for the time being the Reds remain a revered and feared Champions League team and, after the European failures and humiliations of the '90s, and the across-the-board mediocrity, I for one am happy for the team to be considered top-class in such an important context.
Paul Tomkins' new book An Anfield Anthology is now available. For details about the book and how to buy click here>>
These views are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by Liverpool FC or its official website.
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