Damn and Blast You Rafa

How dare you? How dare you? How dare you treat Robbie Keane like that you Spanish prick? Now he thinks they are going to be as strong in the run as they were before Christmas, "we've got Kuyt, Babel, N'gog and some other reserve fella no one has ever heard of". He says Yossi can play off the main striker which might be true if he still played for West Ham but Yossi isn't going to win you a Premier League title. The fact is that Liverpool have an extra eight points this season than they did at the same stage last year. Torres has been injured for much of the season and as far as I could see Robbie was playing his part. It wasn't all down to Albert Reira, that's for sure.

The little bearded one did not give Robbie a fair crack at the whip. By way of contrast look at how Alex Ferguson has nurtured and tolerated the form of Dimitar Berbatov. He has scored fewer league goals than Robbie Keane and at times has looked lazy to the point of sloth. In one game for Bulgaria earlier this year he only ran 1.5 Km over the 90 minutes. Ferguson has been patient with Berbatov putting him in the team ahead of players like Tevez who might have showed better form at times.

He also kept him in the team during games where he didn't even look like he was trying let alone have any interest. Ferguson has stuck with Berbatov and there has been no suggestion over him leaving the club. Signs on Ferguson is getting his reward and United are two clear at the top of the table with a game in hand.

Berbatov's finest moment in a United shirt to my mind was the goal against Bolton at the Reebok. With the game completely passing him by and United looking like dropping another two points, he popped up in the 87th minute to score the winner for United and take all the plaudits.

Had Liverpool been in that situation (and they have been situation some 9 times already this season) Robbie Keane wouldn't even have been on the pitch to have scored such a late winner. Benetiz consistently and pointlessly replaced Keane after an hour every time he started. I've seen a lot of those games, Robbie looked no worse than the other Liverpool players; Babel, Benayoun and Kuyt certainly haven't looked any better. In most Premier League games all the action happens in the last half hour. That's when the big players step up to win the crunch games (like FT last Sunday) and Robbie Keane is a big player.

He scored a brilliant goal against Arsenal but was again taken off after an hour in a game Liverpool had to win with Arsenal down to 10 men and looking second best to Liverpool in every department.

Benetiz said that Robbie didn't settle and that sometimes good players find it difficult to settle at a big club but he was never given a chance. The writing was on the wall for Robbie as soon the early substitutions became a regular occurrence. Strikers thrive on confidence and Benetiz drained Robbie of his in every game by bringing him off before the game entered the influential closing stages i.e. the time you want your big players on the pitch. The message was loud and clear.

Then there were the humiliations at Ewood Park and the Stoke games, when he didn't even get a run with Liverpool desperate for a goal. Benetiz would instead bring on the charlatan Lucas Leiva to shore up midfield when a goal was needed. Most recently against Wigan, Keane was brought on after 83 minutes with Stephen Gerrard going off, again when Liverpool needed a goal. It is unfair to ask a player to win you a game in seven minutes and it's insane to substitute a player like Gerrard with 7 minutes to go when you need a goal.

The worst of all to my mind is after Keane scored three times in games over Christmas, Benetiz then dropped him from the squad to play Newcastle at St. James' Park in Liverpool's easiest victory of the season. Keane did play the following week against Preston in the Cup (badly), but the damage had already been done. All three goals were scored under the hour mark.

As it happens I think Keane did a good job at Liverpool in so far as he was allowed to work at all. Robbie is an intelligent player who doesn't give the ball away very much. This takes pressure off the defence in that they know that when they clear the ball out of defence, it won't be coming straight back to them. He gave Liverpool a different attacking option in that he was more mobile than Crouch and just better than Bellamy. I think Keane's general play made Liverpool better and more cohesive as a unit but I don't think Rafa saw it that way.

There is no doubt that Keane returning to Spurs is a step backwards. He has swapped a title challenge (what's left of it) for a relegation battle and make no mistake, Spurs are in trouble. Whether he is bothered either way, I'm not so sure. He pockets a couple of million, still gets well paid and will play every week in front of 36,000 adoring fans. The only difference is the colour of the shirt.

Is it true that Keane is the victim of a power struggle at Anfield and that he was never Benetiz's signing. If that is the case then he should never have made the move to Liverpool. It does seem strange however that Rick Parry would spend £20 million on a player Benetiz didn't want and stranger still that Benetiz would have accepted it. I guess we'll never or at least not until the autobiographies come during the summer anyway.