Will Rafa's Merry Go Round Come To A Screeching Halt?

It's the inevitability that hurts the most. After splashing out £40 million in the summer and landing one of the most illustrious and expensive players to ever come to the Premier League in Fernando Torres, Liverpool were expected to mount a serious challenge for the domestic title that has eluded them for 18 long years.

Surely, this season, England's most successful club would still be in the mix when spring makes way for summer and push comes to shove?

Well, no, actually. By the time Reading put three past them on December 8, there was already a feeling that the Reds were out of the race once again. A week later those suspicions were confirmed. Manchester United went to Anfield and left having executed a classic smash-and-grab victory.

Once again Rafa Benítez's side had fallen short against one of the big three.

The arrival of the new year saw the Anfield club 12 points adrift of Arsenal in the title race back in fifth place. With the failure of the clubs' American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett to refinance the £220 million they borrowed to takeover the club and their reluctance to throw yet more money in the transfer pot, many observers now believe that the relationship between the owners and the manager has reached the point of no return.

Something is going to give and that something will be Rafa Benítez. It might be sooner. It might be later. But at some point in the next few months the increasingly tetchy Spaniard will be out of a job.

The question of whether he deserves to be sacked is currently one of the biggest issues dividing the city of Liverpool. Some call for patience and point to the club's fifth European Cup sitting in the trophy cabinet. Others talk about the amount of money he has spent on players and the fact that he never seems to play any of them on a consistent basis. There are pros and cons but surely it is now time that patience was given the elbow.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that Benítez hasn't been given the sort of cash that has funds Manchester United's and Chelsea's forays into the transfer market. He has spent £127 million on players in under four years and has arguably wasted more of it than any other manager in Europe.

Do the names of Craig Bellamy, Peter Crouch, Mark González, Fernando Morientes, Gabriel Paletta and Mohammed Sissoko ring any bells?

And then there is Benítez's much talked about rotation system. Nobody rotates with quite the same disregard for logic as the Liverpool boss. Why, for example, does he feel the need to rest 23-year-old Torres so often? Just as the Spanish striker looks poised to take the Premier League by storm, Benítez puts the brake on by leaving him out of the side and so loses the momentum that he had built up.

Strikers, more than anyone, feed off confidence and the continuity of hitting the back of the net again and again and again. Sometimes his players must get the urge to grab him by the lapels and shout 'look, do you want to win this title or not'.

In addition to this, there are those who think Benítez's approach, especially in the Premier League, is too defensive, too much safety first. Benítez values conceding less over scoring goals and it shows. Liverpool are painfully pedestrian at times and often look like a team on a leash, lacking in confidence, overly careful. They are capable, of course, of going out and destroying teams by a handful of goals, but it doesn't happen too often and somehow it just doesn't seem to fit 'the Liverpool way'.

No-one is doubting that Benítez is anything other than a painstaking tactical planner who leaves nothing to chance. He once famously described himself as 'a loner with a laptop' because of the amount of time he spends trawling through his tactical options. This, though, does not make him a tactical genius. Perhaps he thinks too much and doesn't feel enough.

The reason he has hung onto his job for so long is, without doubt, Liverpool's dramatic Champions League victory over AC Milan in 2005. And he is often credited for the seemingly impossible turn-around in the second half, bringing on Dietmar Hamann to stop Kaká running the game.

But far from being a moment of tactical inspiration, this move was actually more about rectifying a mistake in team selection. And you have to ask, who in their right mind would afford Kaká the sort of space that Benítez allowed him in the first 45 minutes?

The fact is that Benítez's actions at half-time only had a minor influence on the game, apart from those six crazy minutes, Milan continued to dominate in every area of the field and just couldn't find the back of the net. There were two far more important factors in play that night in Istanbul. The first was Dida, who was at fault for all three Liverpool goals. And the second was luck.

In Spainm Benítez has a reputation of being a lucky manager who cashed in at a time when Barcelona and Real Madrid were zoned out. There are even those who claim that his was it was his number two, Paco Ayesteran, who really masterminded the title triumphs of 2002 and 2003. Ayesteran walked out On Friday, August 31, last year, just about the same time that Benítez started losing his temper in press conferences, funnily enough.

With rumours circulating about José Mourinho's frustration in not finding gainful employment, Benitez has admitted, privately at least, that he will no longer be the coach of Liverpool come the summer. There are only two things that can save him; one is the Champions League and the other is the Premier League title. Now that really would be pulling something out of the hat.