A crossroads for Liverpool

Rafael Benitez seems to be in the final hours of his tenure as manager of Liverpool, with a severance payment believed to be in the process of being thrashed out. Reports suggest player power, as well as a breakdown in his relationship with the club’s board, led to his downfall. The departure will allow the Reds to plan for the future and the Times’ Tony Barrett claims Liverpool are approaching a crossroads in their history.

The beginning of what appears to be the end for Rafael Benítez also marks the start of a summer that threatens to be one of the most painful — and will undoubtedly be the most pivotal — in the modern history of Britain’s most successful football club.

All that stands between an avalanche of obituaries on Benítez’s Liverpool career is the outcome of negotiations that will determine whether the club can muster the necessary financial muscle to convince the Spaniard to walk out of the Shankly Gates for one last time.

For once, their monetary weakness may prove their strength. Having had his purse strings tightened in the past three transfer windows, Benítez knows better than most just how scarce ready cash is at Anfield and he will have to pitch his expectations accordingly.

He also knows that support within the boardroom for his regime has evaporated and that there are those in the dressing room who have been so underwhelmed by his performance over the past year that they would not shed any tears if he departed.

All that remains is for agreement to be reached on the terms of his departure and he will be free to take up a post at another club, with Inter Milan seeming the most likely destination.

It says everything about Liverpool’s present predicament, though, that even a change of manager will prompt more questions about a club who have lost direction and are in danger of losing their self-respect under the ownership regime of Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr.

The first conundrum is: who in their right mind would take the Liverpool job? It used to be one of the greatest positions in English football, but now a manager would have to be prepared to take on the running of a club riddled with debt, that are for sale, that have no significant transfer budget, a squad in need of an overhaul, and where the only certainty is endemic uncertainty.

Then there is the playing staff. It has long been mooted that the only way to guarantee that the likes of Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard will remain at the club would be if Benítez goes. The coming weeks and months will prove or disprove such theories. But one thing is certain — should Benítez’s replacement not live up to the kind of exacting standards laid down by the world’s best players, they will find a club that does boast such a manager. And, with José Mourinho’s Real Madrid pursuing Gerrard and Carlo Ancelotti’s Chelsea keen on Torres, Liverpool will have a big job on their hands convincing their crown jewels to stick around regardless of who is eventually appointed.

The ideal scenario would be for a benevolent billionaire who grew up with pictures of Kevin Keegan and Kenny Dalglish adorning the walls of his Middle Eastern home to pop up and take the club off the hands of Hicks and Gillett, before paying off their £351 million debt and starting work on the new stadium in Stanley Park.

Unfortunately, it has been some time since Liverpool last inhabited an ideal world, so all their fans can do is limp on with anything but hope in their hearts. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that this is a nadir for a club who have been involved in two of the worst disasters in the history of the game, but, equally, it would be underplaying the situation if it is not described as one of the most painfully testing periods Liverpool have endured.

Finn is the real deal
Steve Finn did his chances of securing a seat on the plane to Australia for the Ashes no harm with a five for at Lord’s and the Guardian’s Mike Selvey claims the giant seamer is the real deal.

All too often the reality doesn't match the hype. Anticipation is followed by disappointment. But then occasionally the opposite occurs, when expectation is exceeded. Instances, at random, for me include a first sight of the Taj Mahal, watching Jimi Hendrix for the one and only time, and, as a moderately enthusiastic but fairly pedestrian runner, witnessing the incredible pace at which Steve Jones ran a marathon.

In cricket, I recall the strange noise at Queen's Park Oval as a young Ian Bishop, of whom I had heard but never seen, delivered his first ball of a one-day series to, I think, Wayne Larkins, which I realised was the crowd en masse hissing disbelievingly the word "shit". That recalled Graham Gooch's party-piece snatch of a Tony Cozier commentary: "Patterson in to Gooch, bouncer, Gooch hooks … through to Dujon, no run …"

This summer I have seen how James Taylor moves silkily into the ball, and witnessed the remarkable, much-heralded hitting power of Craig Kieswetter. Now I'm looking forward to watching Ben Stokes, Alex Hales and Jos Buttler, whom I saw briefly on the television on Tuesday evening. None of these, though, has, or will, stir me quite as much as seeing Steven Finn in the first Test. It's probably a bowler thing. Once Andrew Strauss came to his senses and had him striding in from the Pavilion End at Lord's, I was watching something special in its raw formative state.

England bowlers come, promise and, all too regularly, they are gone. Actions are flawed, bodies not up to it, injuries prove terminal. But for five days, in which he took nine wickets, Finn looked the absolute business. If there are sceptics saying that it was "only Bangladesh", then have a look at how the other seamers fared when the pitch flattened out under the sun.

Us former bowlers, we pick up on actions easily. We can spot flaws and idiosyncrasies, see what works and what doesn't. We understand that not every paceman has an action like Fred Trueman (although Bob Willis was convinced he did until he saw footage of himself), but that often it is the quirks that elevate a bowler to the top echelon. Without it we might never have seen Jeff Thomson, or Mike Procter, Shoaib Akhtar or Lasith Malinga.

But Finn is pure