Goodness me, this isn’t the season that Liverpool fans envisaged in August. Twelve points off the pace in the Premier League, in the Champions League knockout stages by the skin of their teeth and an increasingly fractious relationship between Liverpool’s American owners and manager Rafael Benitez.
However, according to the Daily Mail, the Spaniard is set to stay on at Anfield, despite being badly undermined by Pool co-owner Tom Hicks’ revelation that the manager’s job had been offered tio Jurgen Klinsmann.
His agent, Manuel Garcia Quillon, underlined his defiant response by saying: “Rafa wants to stay at Liverpool. He is happy with the club, the fans and the city. He does not want to leave.”
However, the bookmakers make Benitez odds-on to leave Liverpool in the summer and, unless there was a change of ownership (as has been rumoured by some newspapers), surely his position will eventually become untenable.