Red mist descends as Spaniard treads a familiar fractious path

The switch had flicked towards the end of Rafael Benitez’s second post-match television interview on the touchline at the Riverside late on Wednesday. The Spaniard had been asked a relatively innocuous question by Al-Jazeera about reports of negativity within the Chelsea dressingroom, the kind of query he has batted away for weeks, but, having apparently misconstrued the interviewer’s intention, the red mist descended.

Cue the monologue lambasting a fan “agenda” and, more bafflingly, the hierarchy’s “mistake” in labelling him merely as an interim, a diatribe prolonged from television to radio interviews to his press conference with written journalists as he dug himself further and further into a hole.

If the club do not yet deem his position untenable, despite what could easily have been construed as a direct criticism of Roman Abramovich over Benitez’s job title, then the poison that will greet him in the dugout against West Bromwich Albion at Stamford Bridge tomorrow may prove the breaking point.

Allowing him to take to the touchline is tantamount to throwing him to the wolves, not the Baggies.

While the timing of his riposte after 99 days of abuse might have seemed surprising given Middlesbrough had just been beaten, his willingness to take on authority is not.

Benitez has always been a political animal, a manager prone to misjudging just how much clout he possesses even at clubs where he has excelled. He may not have mentioned Abramovich by name at any point on Teesside but the implication was all too obvious in his criticisms and he cannot beat the oligarch.

In the same way he could not defeat those who have employed him before. At Valencia he had briefly infuriated his players by banning normal ice cream from the training ground – he preferred a variety made from skimmed milk and rice – even if success on the pitch won them over.

Beyond repair

Yet his issues with the sporting director, Jesus Garcia Pitarch, ran deeper and could not be repaired by two La Liga titles and a Uefa Cup, Valencia having shattered the dominance of Real Madrid and Barcelona.

The pair fell out over transfer policy. “I asked for a table and they bought me a lamp,” said Benitez and, with that challenge, the hierarchy were alienated. Liverpool were an attractive escape route.

On Merseyside there was a Champions League and an FA Cup to savour, yet life still became a slog of a power struggle behind the scenes.

He had attacked the ownership following defeat in the European Cup final by Milan in 2007; his press conference the next day in Athens was a demand for investment and reinvention at the club. There were fall-outs with the chief executive, Rick Parry, and later the managing director, Christian Purslow, and the new owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

His departure did not seem surprising at the time nor did it at Internazionale when, having claimed the Club World Cup in Japan with victory over TP Mazembe, he publicly challenged the club president, Massimo Moratti, to invest in the squad.

A startled president claimed the time was not right to reinforce and, within days, had sacked his manager of four months.

Lessons not learned

These are battles Benitez cannot win, even if there is invariably a logic behind his complaints, yet he rarely seems reluctant to provoke.

Lessons are not being learned and the criticisms of the “interim” tag merely made him look irrational, given he had appeared content to operate under that title up until Wednesday. When his representative was negotiating the terms of his employment in November Chelsea had proposed a deal that would automatically renew for a further 12 months if certain targets had been met.

It was Benitez’s agent who opted for the shorter-term arrangement, presumably in the hope that, should those objectives be met, a more attractive deal might be forthcoming.

The irony is that, with Chelsea claiming “business as usual” for now, Benitez could still technically walk away from his seven-month spell with the Europa League claimed, the FA Cup retained and a place in the Champions League restored.

Yet tomorrow afternoon, when the arena is transformed into a bear pit, such a notion will seem utterly ludicrous.

The fans feel Benitez is wounded. They can smell blood.