Time for Benitez to start focusing on the local lads?
WHEN Liverpool launched their new home kit over the summer, advertisement boards across the city proclaimed that the Liver Bird emblem across the heart was not a badge but a 'family crest.'
As a city, Liverpool has always maintained a feel of being a big village with a strong sense of collective identity amongst its inhabitants and that's obviously something that the club's kit manufacturers were keen to tap into.
A metropolis that has welcomed constant streams of migrants over the years, one of Liverpool's great uniting aspects has always been the unique Scouse accent, a tongue so strong it sucked former Anfield playmaker Dane Jan Molby in seemingly within a matter of weeks.
Linguistic experts keep telling us that the Scouse accent is getting stronger all the time and it might even be creeping into the Benitez household in leafy Caldy.
A couple of days before this game with Middlesbrough, Benitez and his wife Montse gave an in-depth radio interview about their home lives on Merseyside and the Spanish manager revealed how one of his daughters has picked up some of the local dialect.
Obviously peckish, Miss Benitez asked her father for a buttie but her confused father did not understand a sandwich was being requested and instead set off looking for a small woolly sock (bootie).
Playing with Merseyside youngsters, Benitez's children can't help but pick up Scouse slang - but her dad, with his multinational playing squad and backroom staff the manager, deals with far fewer locals on a daily basis.
But for all his foreign legion at Melwood, the former Valencia coach still relies on the Scouse heartbeat of his Liverpool team - Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard.
The previous weekend it had been the club record buy from Benitez's homeland - Fernando Torres - who had secured Liverpool the three points but on this occasion it was the two local lads that didn't cost the club a penny in transfer fees who came to the rescue.
For all the cosmopolitan make-up of their squad, when Liverpool have to dig deep, they still often rely on the heart and passion of their boys from the Mersey.
Forget what the London scribes say about Carragher's supposed desertion of duty with the England squad after he called time on his international career, the Bootle-born centre-back's priorities remain with the 'Scouse nation' and Liverpool are benefiting from his displays now that he is no longer going away to a regime that never fully respected his talents.
With four international centre-backs at the club Benitez might even decide to play Carragher at right-back again on occasions this season or event rest the 30-year-old but imagine trying to tell him that - it would be like telling Carragher that he didn't core Liverpool's equaliser in this game because it took a big deflection off Emanuel Pogatetz.
With Benitez realising that he has to turn some of the many draws from last season into wins if he side are to challenge for the title, Carragher had actually pushed up from the flank for his goal - you won't hear that it was an 'oggy' here - after full-back Alvaro Arbeloa had been sacrificed for Nabil El Zhar.
While his world class talents have ensured that Gerrard remains very much part of the England team, you can't help but think that the Anfield skipper is also not full appreciated by the national side.
Why did Gerrard suddenly seem to drop from the running when it came to Fabio Capello choosing the man to wear the armband for England? Surely Gerrard should have been a serious contender to rival John Terry and Rio Ferdinand as someone who leads by example.
If Liverpool are to end what would be a 19-year wait for the title then the character possessed by their two Mersey stalwarts, both looking to add that elusive missing medal to their respective trophy cabinets, will be crucial.
But it all begs the question - where the next generation are going to come from?
Gary Ablett's reserve side won their league last season but the squad is packed with overseas youngsters. For all the great service Carragher and Gerrard won't be around for another decade.
Stephen Darby and Jay Spearing have shown that there's still some promise from Mersey youngsters coming through the Kirkby Academy system and a seven-man bench for Premier League matches this season might help their progress.
But for the time being Benitez and Liverpool's supporters will be hoping the Scouse heartbeat of Carragher and Gerrard is able to set pulses raising by keeping their side on top of the Premier League.
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It's one of those best articles I've ever red. it's always interesting to support a club with local lads. that's why i can't support Arsenal.