Rafa Benitez: Liverpool can win the Premier League title
RAFA BENITEZ believes that he can end Liverpool's 18-year quest for a league title next season.
And the Reds boss admits that lifting the Premier League crown would be "the biggest achievement of my career."
Benitez has already guided Liverpool to Champions League glory, while in Spain he ended Valencia's 31-year wait for a La Liga crown, then added a league and UEFA Cup double two years later.
But he admits that trying to repeat those feats at Anfield would be much tougher.
He said: "Winning the title would be the biggest achievement of my career. It's more difficult than in Spain because teams here spend big money.
"But we will do our best. The key for me is not to talk about winning the title but to talk about doing a good job so we can be close, so we can be contenders.
"If we are close I think that we can win the title."
Despite the summer break, Benitez's work-rate has not dipped, and he explained: "You must do your job with your players after the season has ended and in the summertime you need to do your job with your staff.
"The key, though, is to sign the right players with the right mentality - a winning mentality - competitive players, players who are desperate to come here to win something.
"That is the key for me.
"We have been analysing a lot of things this summer. For example, we were conceding a lot of goals last season from set pieces.
"We need to know why because the previous season we only conceded six, but this year it has been 16. We need to know why so we can improve in these areas, but keep the team scoring goals in open play.
"We have been really good in defence for three or four years but we need to improve a little bit if we want to be in contention."
Older/Newer
« Euro 2008 triumph would make Fernando Torres even better - Roger Hunt | Tranmere Rovers secure Mersey Masters glory »
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Rafa Benitez: Liverpool can win the Premier League title. TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.liverpoolbanter.co.uk/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-tb.cgi/12014
yes, rafa always says like this at the beginning of the season. But as a liverpool fan i want rafa to be more realistic. do you have excellent players in your squad enough? unlike man united and chealsea, you keep signing only mediocre players. i support liverpool for more than ten years and will keep doing so. as a long fan, i want rafa, hicks and gillets to be more REALISTIC. nowadays money buys the tile. if you don't spend big on world class players, you will end up in failure again. Don't make overstatement. I know that pschycology could encourage players, but not for winning the premier title!
Why do we always do this? Start off talking about winning the league, alls it does is builds up our hopes and then makes us laughing stock when is doesnt happen. If Rafa wants to win the league, then he needs to stop looking at players like STEWART DOWNING! we need- David Silva 20 million and David Villa 25 Million, and i think we need to keep hold of Alonso.