Some mistakes are worse than others, but in the history of Anfield none will be recalled more than the claim by Hicks and Gillett that 'we won't put any debt on the club'. Breaking this vow set the first alarm bells ringing; the embarrassing continual changing of the stadium plans was irritating too. It felt Stevie and I were being asked to endorse a new arena every month, looking at drawings and saying, 'Yes, it looks great.' I'm not an architect so I haven't got a clue which stadium should be built, only that it needs to happen, preferably before I retire.
The former chairman told us the reason he sold the club was to prevent it falling into too much debt when he paid for the Stanley Park project. It begged the obvious question: what had the new owners done that the old board couldn't?
It was an issue the fans rightly wanted to explore further. We'd spent heavily on Torres and Babel, but was this the club's money or the bank's? I'd read we'd won as much as £25 million from the Champions League in 2007, and the new TV deal was worth a fortune too, so why did we have to borrow so much? I couldn't understand it. Was it possible we were taking financial risks in the hope of immediate success on the pitch? If that was the case, the pressure for the manager to achieve annual progress in the Champions League and keep collecting the UEFA winnings was much greater than we'd imagined.
Not that Rafa or the players needed to be bothered by this. If I was a manager in Spain and I was told I could bid £21 million for a striker and £11 million for a winger, I'd take the cash and spend it without questioning where it came from. I don't believe many managers care where they're getting the financial backing as long as they're getting it. It's more understandable if fans, board members or journalists question the wisdom of such a spending policy because they're looking longer-term. As a local player who cares deeply about the future of Liverpool, I was interested in this information too. But managers have so little time to make an impact at a top club I'm amazed any would take a moral stance about their funds. Can you imagine it if I was a boss at a La Liga club?
'You can have as much as you like to buy what you believe to be the best striker in Europe, Carra.'
'Er, is it the club's money or have you got it from the bank?'
'We've taken a loan because we believe in your judgement.'
'No thanks, mate, I'd rather be skint.'
If breaking the promise about taking the club into debt and growing rumours of disagreements between Hicks and Gillett on the subject of the stadium and its funding caused only mild ripples of concern, what happened next led to chaos.
Another strange press conference on 22 November ended the uncomfortable ceasefire between Rafa and the board since Athens. Rafa sat for forty-five minutes answering questions with the same response: 'As always, I'm focusing only on training and coaching.' He broke off from this routine to declare himself interested in the vacant England job. He must have been really desperate to do that (although it still wouldn't have brought me out of international retirement). As usual, I was watching this on Sky television, shaking my head at the screen and texting friends to gather as much info as I could because I had no idea what was going on.
The reasons for this performance were explained later. Having sought assurances about his transfer plans in January, when he wanted to sign the centre-half Kakha Kaladze from AC Milan, he'd received a message from the board telling him to focus on coaching the side until a planned meeting in December. I believe Rafa suspected a plan was already in place to sack him and the owners were playing for time, holding back funds for his replacement. This prompted his bizarre but undoubtedly brave reaction. He must have felt if he didn't make his concerns public he'd lose his job anyway, so what did he have to lose?
As if to underline the point, he wore his tracksuit at St James's Park in Newcastle two days later for the only time I can recall in a Premier League fixture, and repeated criticisms of the hierarchy. He was effectively daring the Americans to arrange his funeral, especially when Hicks ended the dignified boardroom silence by telling Rafa to 'shut up' on the front page of the Liverpool Echo.
Within twenty-four hours, the News of the World back page was announcing Hicks's and Gillett's intention to sack Rafa because of his continual outbursts against their reign. Usually such a story would immediately be denied, but it wasn't. Instead, the club made a statement saying 'nothing had changed' despite the 'speculation'. This was more than rumour now, and Rafa must have known how close he was to the sack. There was an immediate change of tone from him after it was made public he was getting the bullet, no doubt sparked by the lack of support he was receiving from the owners.
I couldn't believe what I was reading from one day to the next. I picked up the Echo on Monday expecting to discover the club was dismissing the story about his imminent sacking, but there was nothing of the sort. Instead I saw quotes attributed to a 'source close to the manager' saying how grateful he was for the backing he'd had from the owners and wanted to talk to them. That made me more angry. I've grown up reading the Echo and it's always been the most reliable source of information regarding Liverpool FC. It's like the bible for the fans in the city. You read stories in other papers and you take them or leave them. If it's in the Echo, the first presumption is it's 100 per cent right. I expect to see 'sources close to' someone being quoted in the Sunday papers, not the Echo. It showed me how out of control the situation had become when people at Anfield weren't prepared to attach their name to such important words. Now, even the Echo – the closest paper to the club – was being used in the same way as one of the Sunday papers. What was going on here? Everyone was trying to be too clever, playing politics with little regard for how much damage it was doing. They were making it worse. The saying goes, 'Don't wash your dirty linen in public.' Anfield was starting to look like a launderette.
It must also be acknowledged that, although he'd been at the club for over three years, Rafa's education in the business of running a football club was exclusively Spanish. What seemed to many of us to be an unusual approach to getting what he wanted wasn't as much a departure for him. In La Liga, political battles have always been played out in public. It's the nature of their system because club presidents need the ongoing support of their fans when summer elections are held. This makes them as vulnerable to being shoved out as managers, so the coaches in Spain are cuter about exploiting situations to their advantage.
Rafa, like all Spanish managers, had experience of boardroom battles at his previous clubs so he was well equipped to handle himself at Anfield. His fall-out with a director at Valencia enabled Liverpool to recruit him in the first place. 'I wanted a sofa and they bought me a lampshade,' he was famously quoted as saying during a disagreement with the Valencia board about a signing he didn't want. We knew what a clever operator we were getting.
You have to admire his mental strength and courage, especially as he continued to focus on preparing the team for tough fixtures while coping with the prospect of dismissal. He also knew no matter what the owners were planning he had a powerful ally in the form of The Kop. The fans instantly rallied behind Rafa, demanding the owners publicly support him.
As the story developed, it became clearer why they'd refused to do so. In the same week as Rafa's 'training and coaching' press conference the board had met Jurgen Klinsmann in America to discuss him becoming our next manager. The daily morning papers claimed an offer was made to Klinsmann prior to the German taking the Bayern Munich job. Incredibly, Hicks then backed up the stories with an admission to the Echo's Liverpool FC correspondent Tony Barrett a couple of days later. With one sentence to the local paper, Hicks turned what most fans were happy to dismiss as an outrageous rumour into an astonishing fact. They went ballistic.
My Evertonian mate Seddo took great delight in the ongoing shambles.
'Go and buy the Echo, ha, ha, ha,' he texted me.
'Typical Blue,' I thought. If you want to know what's going on at Liverpool, ask an Evertonian. They're more interested in our club than their own.
&nb
sp; Hicks said he was being honest in his answer, replying truthfully in the hope it might earn him some credit. But, like many of the decisions around this time, it showed a lack of understanding of English football. There are times when such admissions are counter-productive, especially as the story appeared to be dying a death.
Supporters expected me to come out and immediately condemn what was happening at the top of the club, but I found myself in an incredibly awkward position. You have to remember, like Rafa, the players are employees of the football club. I've never shied away from saying what I believe, but I'm not stupid. If Rafa Benitez can be sacked for speaking out of turn, so can Jamie Carragher.
At this stage, I had more sympathy for both sides than people imagined. I should clarify that I completely disagreed with their decision to consider Rafa's position when they did. It made no sense to me at all, particularly given the timing. We were near the top of the table, and although we'd endured a difficult start to our Champions League group after defeats to Marseille and Besiktas, we knew we could still progress with a few wins. I didn't agree with Klinsmann as a replacement, either. He was too inexperienced at club level and his CV is no match for Rafa's, at least at this stage of his career. In fairness to Klinsmann, he's one of the few to emerge from the sorry episode with any credit. He's not said a word about the controversy, and I respect him for this. He must have been livid that details of his private meetings were leaked.
Where I disagreed with many supporters was in their outrage that a manager had been approached while another was still in charge. It was wrong to think about replacing Rafa a few weeks into a new season, but once a decision had been taken it was inevitable a plan had to be put into operation and other candidates explored. Let's not plead innocence about this. Anyone who thinks representatives on behalf of Liverpool FC never spoke to Rafa Benitez while Gérard Houllier was still the boss must be very naive about how the football world operates. It's a nice idea to think Liverpool sacked Gérard and then asked themselves, 'I wonder if Benitez will be interested in the job?' but somehow I doubt it was like that. I'd be greatly concerned if it was. If Rafa had left and Liverpool had had no one else lined up, the board would have been accused of incompetence for leaving us in the lurch at a key point of our season.
There were also claims Klinsmann had been approached in case Rafa decided to leave Liverpool in the near future. This might have washed the previous summer, but not in November 2007, although it did explain why Hicks and Gillett were eyeing other candidates. Rafa had been linked with Real Madrid on at least two occasions during his three and a half years at the club, and had never distanced himself from those stories.
The sense I got was of a series of factors colliding to create a mess of everyone's making. There should have been guilty consciences all over the club as the situation spiralled out of control.
I avoided answering questions on the subject because it's not in my nature to compromise. I was 100 per cent behind the manager, but I understood why the owners were unhappy with him too. They'd been undermined by Rafa and now they were undermining him. It was a political rather than football battle, and although the fans wanted to see it in black and white terms, with the owners the bad guys and Rafa their hero, I saw far more shades of grey.
Steven Gerrard and I were constantly asked questions about the situation, and when we swerved the issue fans began to approach me and say they'd heard 'Rafa has lost the dressing room'. This is a phrase you often hear when a manager is under pressure, and it's one of the biggest myths in football. I've never known a manager to 'have the dressing room', never mind lose it. Whether it was Steve Heighway, Roy Evans, Gérard Houllier or Rafa Benitez, I've always played foremost for Liverpool Football Club and my own sense of pride, and never given less than 100 per cent in all circumstances. We're one of the biggest clubs in the world and the manager is under pressure from day one. Any player who doesn't give his all, whether we're going through a good or bad spell, shouldn't be here. My relationships with all those managers have been professional. It's the badge that comes first. Rafa has defined that professional relationship more than any boss I've known, and he knows as much as anyone where loyalties lie in a dressing room.
Look at the results we achieved in the biggest games after it became public Rafa's job was under threat. They speak out much more than any hard-hitting interview. On 24 November, when it was believed he was forty-eight hours from losing his job, we beat Newcastle away, 3–0. Just four days later we trounced Porto at Anfield in the Champions League. Our 4–0 away win in Marseille in mid-December to reach the knockout stage of the Champions League also arrived amid speculation a defeat would have brought the axe. Victory over Inter Milan in the last sixteen was achieved in similar circumstances. If you want to know how the dressing room felt, look at those results. The damaging headlines had no effect on how we played. Stevie and I talked about it every day. It was increasingly annoying seeing Liverpool's image being dragged through the mud, but it didn't stop us performing when it mattered. No circumstances exist where I wouldn't give my all for Liverpool.
We got sick of everyone around us fighting and wanted an immediate resolution rather than to get dragged into it. Some hope. No sooner had one issue died down as the results improved and Rafa remained in his job than the attention shifted elsewhere. Now Gillett and Hicks were arguing with each other. Foster Gillett, who'd been based at Melwood for a couple of months, returned home. It was a sign of how serious the situation had become. Until then, Foster was the one we had most dealings with. He made every effort to understand the club, joining the players in the canteen to discuss tactics or games he'd watched. I could see he wanted to be well informed about English football. When statements were made in the papers which inflamed the situation, it wasn't his father who was quoted, but Tom Hicks. As the only new member of the board actually based in the city, though, he must have felt more vulnerable to the fans' anger.
Liverpool should have known better after the joint-manager debacle at the end of the 1990s. You can only have one boss at a football club.
With DIC talking to Gillett about buying his share in the club just a year after he'd bought it, it became obvious he recognized the damage that had been done and was ready to sell. Hicks saw things differently. Once Hicks and Gillett began to air their grievances with each other publicly, the situation worsened.
Every idea I had of what 'The Liverpool Way' meant was contradicted by one particular interview conducted by Hicks on Sky Sports News on 17 April, 2008. If this phrase wasn't in danger of receiving the last rites, it was certainly in need of urgent medical attention afterwards. I thought of my cousin Jamie's John Smith quote again as I watched. 'We're a very, very modest club . . . we don't boast . . . we're very professional.' The interview began with a boast: 'Everton won't like that,' he commented after we beat Blackburn to secure an unspectacular fourth place in the League. The owners had arrived pledging funds to take on Manchester United and Chelsea; now we were rubbing Everton's nose in it simply because we'd finished fourth.
Then, after earlier telling Rafa to shut up and admitting a plan to sack him, Hicks announced the manager would get a one-year contract extension. It was clearly intended to be a vote of confidence, but any seasoned football observer will tell you a oneyear deal isn't seen in such positive terms.
Hicks continued with a series of contentious statements, deflecting blame for our problems elsewhere, and accusing Gillett of the approach to Klinsmann. Hicks said he hadn't heard of Klinsmann. How could he have considered a man he didn't know becoming Liverpool's manager?
After the takeover was complete, I'd argued to friends there needed to be a greater Anfield connection on the board to balance out what Hicks and Gillett openly accepted was their limited understanding of our game and Liverpool in general. I'd have loved them to appoint a figurehead such as Kenny Dalglish to offer advice on key issues. The fans would have trusted Kenny to make the right judgements on such matters. He'd certainly have ur
ged Hicks and Gillett to think twice about replacing Rafa mid-season, and would have been able to fill them in on the credentials of future managerial candidates. Looking to the future, I firmly believe a man of Kenny's stature should be on our board – and I'm not just saying this because he agreed to write the foreword to this book! It makes perfect sense. Manchester United have successfully operated with Bobby Charlton as a director throughout the Ferguson era.
What worries me about Hicks saying he'd never heard of Klinsmann is this: what happens when we do need to appoint another manager? Liverpool fans will shudder at the idea of names being checked on the internet. If Kenny was on the board, the owners would be able to ask his advice in the knowledge he has a grasp of what the supporters here expect. There's been a lot of talk about placing a fans' representative on the board too, but for me, appointing someone such as Kenny – a fan with experience of the ins and outs of football on and off the pitch – would be more appropriate.
Carra: My Autobiography Page 36