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Benítez was the victim of Liverpool’s financial problems but flawed signings made him partly responsible for his exit

Were it simply a football decision, a detached analysis of where Liverpool should be in the midst of a debt-ridden power vacuum, then Rafael Benítez, for the many faults, facts and suspect full-backs, would not be leaving Anfield with a lucrative pay-off. But it is not simply football that has done for Benítez.

It is the politicking that is as much a feature of the Spaniard’s managerial career as European expertise and the misfortune to fall into the employ of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. The leverage buy-out experts promised a spade in the ground for a new stadium within 60 days of their arrival in February 2007 but have only dug the hole into which Benítez has now fallen. He moved closer to the exit with every refinancing deal the Americans secured while his reputation inevitably suffered with every transfer window without additional funds. Not that Benítez walks away blameless.

In announcing the end of the manager’s six-year reign Martin Broughton, the chairman parachuted into Liverpool from British Airways to lend gravitas to the sale of the club, and who could not attend the final home game of last season due to his Chelsea allegiances, stresses that football was behind the departure. No one would dispute Broughton’s analysis of the “disappointing season” just gone but this was one dreadful campaign following five seasons of steady progress. The man who delivered Liverpool’s fifth European Cup in such miraculous style in 2005 and the FA Cup a year later had enough goodwill left on the Kop to be allowed a shot at redemption. Circumstances inside the club, many Benítez-created, however, ensured that could never happen.

It was only November 2007 when confirmation of an approach to Jürgen Klinsmann from Hicks and Gillett brought Liverpool supporters on to the streets in support of the former Valencia coach. On the back of two Champions League finals in three seasons, FA Cup success and the astute purchases of Fernando Torres, Javier Mascherano and José Reina, Benítez was untouchable in Anfield eyes. An Indian sign over José Mourinho’s Chelsea in Europe didn’t damage his cause either. His own discontent with the inner-workings of a club without the stadiums or resources of their main Premier League rivals was already surfacing, however.

The morning after defeat to Milan in the 2007 Champions League final brought the first evidence of Benítez the agitator in Liverpool colours. He left Valencia owing to boardroom interference and transfer restrictions, famously stating: “I asked for a table and they brought me a lampshade.” He had earlier fallen out with Jorge Valdano at Real Madrid over his input into the youth team. Now he was voicing frustrations inside Anfield. Prevarication on transfers, an underachieving commercial operation, lack of progress with a new stadium and being pressured to keep pace with clubs who could afford to make £20m mistakes on players; his protests were set to repeat until today’s exit.

Benítez’s motivations were to improve Liverpool but, having won the battle to oust Rick Parry as chief executive and also secured a lucrative five-year contract with no release clause that also ceded to him control of an unproductive youth academy, he consolidated his own authority in the process. That left him exposed should Liverpool falter, and the Americans’ financial problems combined with several expensive transfer mistakes made for a fatal concoction last season.

The now former Liverpool manager justifiably raged against having to sell players before he could buy in recent windows, particularly with his squad finally emerging as genuine title contenders in 2009. In that restricted climate, however, he erred badly in marginalising Xabi Alonso and compounded the problem by replacing him with Alberto Aquilani, a talented midfielder no doubt but not, as he recovered from ankle surgery, the player needed to enhance Liverpool’s title credentials.

Starved of funds but not, until now, the will to fight, Benítez refused to be silenced on the financial problems, and relationships with the boardroom continued to fracture until the point where he had little support above him. Liverpool could not start next season with the same dysfunctional power structure in place and, with no sign of Hicks and Gillett selling up, the manager became increasingly isolated.

The value of today’s Liverpool squad is vastly superior to the one Benítez inherited in 2004 and may be the commodity that has prevented the Royal Bank of Scotland taking more drastic action against Hicks and Gillett. Perversely, however, Benítez inherited a Champions League team from Gérard Houllier and a ticket to his finest hour, the victory that guarantees allegiance among many supporters to this day, in Istanbul the following May. His successor is bequeathed a pass to the Europa League and a team that could struggle to emulate last season’s seventh place finish should Steven Gerrard and Torres decide they have witnessed enough false promises and turn the Anfield exit into a revolving door.

Before Benítez bit the bullet there were reports the Liverpool board were forced to act by a threatened dressing-room revolt should the manager stay. Gerrard, Torres and others, so the line goes, have questioned Benítez’s management following the last, miserable season. Who hasn’t? What is more pertinent to the futures of Liverpool’s finest players – many of whom are aggrieved their names have been dragged into the argument – is the direction the club is taking and its ability to strengthen the squad to compete for the top honours once again.

These were the very same assurances that Benítez wanted to hear in his recent meetings with Broughton. Unable to grant them, due to the on-going uncertainty at the top of the club, the Liverpool chairman was left facing a manager disillusioned with financial constraints, in dispute with most of the Anfield hierarchy and accepting that something had to give. That it was him, and not the American co-owners who are the root cause of Liverpool’s implosion, will be a source of immense pain for Benítez.

Rafael BenítezLiverpoolAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

The chaotic situation at Anfield sums up the state of England’s elite league, where penury and prosperity go hand in hand

How proud Richard Scudamore must be when he looks at the certificate, the ink on its citation barely dry, telling him that the Premier League has just won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, granted to organisations which distinguish themselves in one or more of the fields of “international trade, innovation or sustainable development”. The plight of Portsmouth FC suggests that sustainable development was probably not the relevant category here.

Innovation? Such an award would require firmer evidence than a few fireworks and a hand-shaking ceremony before even the most humdrum match. So, not surprisingly, given the Premier League’s unashamedly mercenary imperatives, international trade turns out to be the heading under which the award was applied for and granted, specifically the generation of hundreds of millions of pounds a year in worldwide broadcasting rights.

Such apparent prosperity, however, flies in the face of the known facts. In Portsmouth, local butchers, bakers and candlestick makers are being forced to queue up behind the super-agents to get their money. Yesterday Hull City faced the prospect of administration after two years at the top. And Burnley’s chairman seems to have begun budgeting for relegation even before his team had kicked a ball in the top flight, a move which is both laudably prudent and a terrible indictment of the system.

Yet somehow it is Liverpool, living in fear neither of administration nor relegation, who most starkly express the strange paradoxes of the Premier League. Here is a giant of English football, the proud winner of 18 league championships, seven FA Cups and five European Cups, flashing its knickers by the kerbside in the hope of persuading someone to meet the imminent repayments on an injudiciously incurred £270m debt.

To make it worse, the club’s shirt is being worn by a disintegrating team holding out for a sniff of glory only in a competition for Europe’s also-rans, and threatened by the loss of the manager and star players this summer. If Rafael Benítez departs, either to Juventus or Real Madrid, then he may be followed out of the door by Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano, and perhaps even by Steven Gerrard, who would surely exchange the cherished status of a one-club man for a last shot at a league title in the colours of a genuine contender.

The arrival of a certain Portuguese manager would change that situation, and much else besides. But why would José Mourinho want to join Liverpool at this stage in their history? Wherever he goes after Internazionale, he will be looking not for a glorious tradition and a huge fan-base but for the resources to enable him to continue to win trophies at his customary rate.

Short of a miracle, that will not be on offer at Anfield. Having failed to improve the club in any respect since their arrival three years ago, Tom Hicks and George Gillett recently appointed Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, to spend one day a week in the same role at Liverpool, with the sole task of finding a buyer for the club, something that they and their chief executive, Christian Purslow, have failed to achieve.

In this environment, to put up a For Sale sign outside the house is to admit that no realistic buyers have emerged and that there are none on the horizon. And why should there be? It would take the owners of a bottomless purse to meet the sort of terms demanded by Hicks and Gillett, and there is only one of those, currently at the disposal of Manchester City. How clever of the rulers of Abu Dhabi to spot that they could buy a club whose new stadium has already been paid for by the people of its home city rather than having to fork out for such an expensive necessity themselves.

For all the Premier League’s international success, these are the matters that should be uppermost in Scudamore’s thoughts. A league in which shame, humiliation and penury are as prominent as glory, popularity and prosperity is nothing of which to be so proud.

Vinokourov faces long road to regain respect

Sport took a couple of backwards steps at the weekend, when Alexandre Vinokourov won the Liège-Bastogne-Liège one-day classic with a final surge up the last climb to take him clear of his only remaining pursuer. As the 36-year-old Kazakh crossed the line, he was greeted with boos and whistles – a rare sound in cycling, where the effort of a winner is usually respected.

Two summers ago Vinokourov was thrown off the Tour de France and had two stage wins taken from him after a test showed that he had been blood doping. Last August, a few days after the expiry of his statutory two-year ban, he returned to action, declaring: “I didn’t want my career to end in this way. I feel as if I can once again win the big races.” Yesterday he proved it.

It is his right to race again, of course, but the public also have a right to show their distrust. A third place for Alejandro Valverde of Spain, suspended from racing in Italy over allegations linking him to the Operación Puerto investigation, did not help.

Dark overcoats corner attention of Capello

The last time I wrote about the possible significance of Fabio Capello’s fondness for arte povera – an Italian post-war movement in which artists make use of humble or unlikely materials – I ended up in Pseuds Corner. Last week Capello attended the private view at the Ambika P3 gallery in London of a show by his friend Jannis Kounellis, a leader of the movement, some of whose pieces are in the England manager’s collection. One of the new works is a white-walled space, about the size of the average football club dressing room, containing a dozen dark overcoats hanging from pegs.

According to the Observer’s art critic, it evokes “some distant age of dignified men going to their deaths”. I say no more.

IPL was a mess just waiting to happen

Is there any surprise that something as garish, tawdry and financially motivated as the Indian Premier League should become the focal point of the allegations of corruption that emerged at the weekend? Twenty20 cricket offers great entertainment, but now the rest of the world has been given a glimpse of what can happen when it gets out of hand.

Premier LeagueLiverpoolRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk

• Indian billionaires seeking 51% stake in Anfield club
• Ambani owns IPL cricket team the Mumbai Indians

Two Indian business tycoons were reported last night to be lining up attempts to take control of Liverpool. Mukesh Ambani and Subrata Roy were said to be willing to pay off the club’s £237m debt in return for a 51% stake in the club.

Ambani is India’s wealthiest person with a fortune valued at about $20bn. He is the chairman of India’s Reliance Industries and owns the Mumbai Indians cricket team. Roy, chairman of the Sahara Group, which sponsors the India cricket team, is also a billionaire.

Liverpool’s co-owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, have been searching for fresh investment for some time but they are not thought to want to sell more than 50% of the club’s shares.

They have been seeking investment of £100m for a minority stake in the club. The Americans have been ordered by the Royal Bank of Scotland to reduce Anfield’s debt by £100m before July.

The Times, which reported the interest from the two Indian businessmen, said that Roy’s interest appeared to be the more serious. It reported that Liverpool’s chief executive, Christian Purslow, had denied knowledge of a bid but the paper said the pair had made approaches in November and that discussions had been held.

There is also said to be interest from the United States and from a Saudi Arabian consortium.

Hicks and Gillett are under pressure from supporters to sell. They took over in February 2007 but have not so far delivered on a project designed to deliver a new stadium and have provided the manager, Rafael Benítez, with little in the way of transfer funds for this season. Maxi Rodríguez was the only January signing.

LiverpoolPremier LeagueJon Brodkinguardian.co.uk