By PHIL THOMAS
Published: Today
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RAFA BENITEZ has made a career of hauling himself - and Liverpool - back from the brink.
There have been epic moments in his Anfield reign when he pulled off masterstrokes that had the Kop believing they were in the presence of greatness.
They stood in awe of Rafa the Legend.
That faith and trust looked mis-placed in Lyon on Wednesday when Liverpool failed to clinch the win they so badly needed in the Champions League.
But it is not all about that single failure.
A closer glance at the facts exposes a few home truths which are painful to contemplate.
The harsh reality suggests the Kop may have been idolising someone who does not quite merit legendary status. Someone more like Rafa the Myth, than Rafa the Legend.
All his touches of genius have to be tempered by 13 BAFFLING DECISIONS which led to more head-scratching than a visit from the nit-nurse.
We all know Spaniard Benitez has a notoriously stubborn streak.
A single-minded approach from which there is rarely any swaying.
But there are times when anyone has to listen to a voice of reason - and that brings us to one of Rafa's most calamitous blunders.
When Paco Ayesteran was working alongside Benitez, he had someone whose opinion was not simply down to blind faith, but what he himself believed in.
Ayesteran - a man who helped establish them as the Spanish Brian Clough and Peter Taylor - left Anfield a little over two years ago.
The reason: A petty disagreement which could so easily have been rectified rather than be an irreparable rift.
Many Reds believe the day Paco headed back to his homeland was the day the cracks began to appear.
A lack of trophies since does little to shatter the suggestion.
Then comes Rafa's bewildering treatment of key players.
Like, for example, the handling of Peter Crouch and Robbie Keane.
And Xabi Alonso, possibly more than anyone else.
Crouch, should anyone forget, hit 22 Premier League goals in his time at Liverpool. In the Euro campaign of three years ago his seven goals did as much as anyone to book another Champions League final.
His reward? A place on the bench for all but the final 12 minutes of a game when Liverpool desperately needed another outlet, a man to unsettle a Milan backline lapping up all thrown at them.
Alongside Crouch on the bench was Craig Bellamy, a man terrorising defences again, now at Manchester City. Both have now gone but Crouch's sale must go down as a monumental error.
Yet if Crouch felt hard done-by, that is nothing compared to the treatment fellow striker Keane received.
A man who would have crawled over broken glass to play for his boyhood heroes, yet would have only used it to slash his wrists by the time he left.
One glaring example of that came at Wigan, at the end of last January, when he sat on the bench as Liverpool toiled. Keane was thrown on only for the last six minutes after the Latics equalised.
Too little, too late.
And talking of hitmen left kicking their heels, even superstar Fernando Torres has not escaped.
Like at Stoke, two weeks earlier, when he was thrown on only for 30 minutes of a deadlocked game.
By then, Stoke's belief grew in equal measure to Liverpool's panic and two more points were eventually dropped.
A game which, incidentally, came 24 hours after the memorable 'Raf rant' - another of his blunders.
Even if you accept Rafa was right to question Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson's influence on the game, the timing could not have been worse - heaping immediate pressure on his men to get a win at Stoke.
Had the Wigan and Stoke games ended in victories, the four extra points would have brought an end to a two-decade title drought.
Then there's the second striker issue. Ryan Babel, David Ngog, Andriy Voronin. Men capable in flashes, yet nowhere near consistent enough.
We saw all that is frustrating about Voronin in Wednesday night's draw in Lyon. OK, Babel scored a cracker that night, but how often have we been able to say that?
Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard both went public in their desire to see Michael Owen brought back - for nothing - in the summer.
Yet Benitez, 49, still harbours simmering anger at the way he believes Owen left Liverpool in the lurch when he joined Real Madrid.
End of interest. Even though he is not the player he once was, does anyone genuinely believe he would not have given the Liverpool side a more potent alternative to those now available? And what of Rafa's suffocatingly cautious approach to the game?
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So many defensive line-ups, substitutions, one-player-up-front moments make Rafa's mantra crystal clear: It's far more important not to lose a game, than it is to win it.
Bringing Yossi Benayoun off when his team were level with Lyon only to lose the Champions League home tie, was met by boos from the fans.
Yes, there have been plenty of success stories.
Martin Skrtel, for one, was a man largely unknown on these shores, but a tough, rugged centre-back entirely at home in the Premier League.
So why, at Middlesbrough last term, was he used as a right-back, spending the afternoon being run ragged as Liverpool crashed.
Beyond all of these aberrations, there is one dark shadow that looms larger than any other at Anfield right now.
Xabi Alonso.
Selling Alonso, following his most impressive season at the club, was not in itself the crime, however.
That came the minute the midfielder found himself as a pawn to try and tempt Gareth Barry to Merseyside.
From then on, no counsellor could repair the relationship between the two Spaniards. That was not down to ill fortune, but pure and simple rank bad man-management by Benitez.
Only this week Gerrard admitted he remains "devastated" by the loss of Alonso. And when your best player is saying that, then things really are bad, Rafa.
Thirteen is unlucky for most. For Benitez, it may be the number that exposes the myth behind the legend.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2716812/13-baffling-Beni-blunders.html#ixzz0W3sFOs3y
