Ex-Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez’s controversial appointment by Everton has got many heads spinning on either side of Stanley Park.
Passionate supporters of Blues and Reds alike have been trying to get to grips with the concept of the former Kop Idol now taking charge at Goodison and what it means to both fanbases.
Arguably the closest historic comparison in the game is Arsenal legend George Graham’s subsequent spell at Tottenham Hotspur.
In an attempt to learn from that episode, Chris Beesley spoke to a couple of prominent broadcasters who are also football fans from either side of the north London divide to gauge opinion in a two-part special.
Arsenal fan Tom Watt came to national attention playing Lofty Holloway in the early years of BBC soap opera EastEnders.
He later ghost-wrote David Beckham’s autobiography and still writes books as well as producing documentaries and working on the FIFA video game for EA Sports.
Tottenham fan Danny Kelly is former editor of the New Musical Express and Q magazine.
A sports presenter and internet publisher, he is a regular host on talkSPORT radio for whom he delivers the Trans Europe Express programme, a weekly round-up of football from across the continent.
Jurgen Klopp being totally dedicated to Liverpool but showing that same kind of devotion to another major footballing superpower in the future is the kind of emotional dilemma that fans on both sides of Stanley Park must face up to when digesting Rafa Benitez’s appointment by Everton, believes Danny Kelly.
Kelly, 64, told the ECHO: “Jurgen Klopp is absolutely immersed in Liverpool, its history, its fans, its players and one day he will manage Real Madrid and he will be as exactly as committed as he is now.
“It is that concept that we as fans sometimes deliberately blind ourselves to.
“Where we are here is that exact moment where football fans – and I’m one of them – deal with the game at an emotional level.
“Many of them deal with it in a way in which they would deal with relationships within their family or their marriage, it is that close and that important to them.
“We are occasionally forced to confront the reality that for the owners of the clubs and particularly for the breed of super-managers – and I’d include Rafa Benitez among those – it is not such a thing.
“It is a business. It is a job, a career in which you have to do what you have to do.
“Benitez still has connections on Merseyside which makes it even easier for him to do.
“For Everton fans I think it’s difficult because he was manager of a, at times fantastically successful, Liverpool team but I think for Liverpool fans it’s also a problem because what if he does, along with Farhad Moshiri and the millions, take Everton to a new level, is he in danger of tarnishing his own legacy at Anfield?”
Former Liverpool manager Benitez’s appointment by Everton has stirred passions with Blues and Reds alike and draws parallels with when Kelly first heard former Arsenal manager George Graham was coming to Tottenham Hotspur in 1998.
He said: “It wasn’t quite the shock as when Sol Campbell made the opposite journey, which was only the second time in my entire life I was lost for words.
“The other time was when a friend of mine declared they were getting married to someone else I also knew and I had no idea they’d even met!
“It was a really strange time because Spurs had been through a succession of managers and the one he was replacing was Christian Gross.
“It was surreal. We had this fella who had come out of nowhere and had done weird things like turning up at a press conference with his tube ticket to prove what a man of the people he was.
“He’d also taken the players away for pre-season training in Switzerland where he’d then produced a triangle of Toblerone chocolate to explain to them how steep the difficulty of the journey they were going on together would be.
“Gross would go on to have a good career back in his homeland with Basel but he was so weird that it was almost no surprise.”
Unlike predecessor Gross though who few Spurs fans had heard of before his arrival, they knew all about Graham – and he had long been considered the enemy.
Kelly said: “There’s no point in denying that George was always going to be on the back foot coming into Tottenham as a former Arsenal man, it’s true.
“Harry Redknapp subsequently came and he was an ex-West Ham manager. People think there’s a rivalry between West Ham and Spurs and that is not true. That’s entirely manufactured by West Ham fans for whatever are their own reasons.
“There is a genuine rivalry between Spurs and Arsenal. It dates back to when they came from south of the river. They are extremely close together geographically – not by Dundee and Dundee United standards – but they’re literally linked by the Seven Sisters Road.
“Graham’s success at Arsenal was only half the story. It was also that he was also an extremely defensive coach and Spurs’ tradition is to play decent, attacking football.
“George had no intention of doing that. His success at Arsenal was all about defensive strength and putting your arm up for offside when that sort of stuff worked.
“His career went downhill when they made major changes to the laws of the game. Level became onside, the tackle from behind was outlawed and they implemented the back-pass rule.
“Those three things rendered George, with all due respect to him, a dinosaur overnight.”
Benitez, who delivered a Europa League for Chelsea during his interim spell in charge at Chelsea despite widespread hostility due to his Liverpool connections might have to end Everton’s trophy drought which will now enter a club record 27th year if he’s to win over large sections of the Goodison Park crowd.
Even that wasn’t enough for Graham at Tottenham though despite Allan Nielsen’s last-minute goal giving them victory against Leicester City in the 1999 League Cup final in his first season in charge.
Kelly said: “I was at the final and I was very, very pleased that Spurs won.
“It was a strange and wonderful victory because they went down to 10 men and still found a way to win.
“Of course George Graham deserves credit for that. He put that team together and they won the trophy.
“It was the nearest we ever got to singing his name. Nobody even sung George’s name at Spurs in the three years that he was there.
“At the time we were prone to singing ‘X-X and his blue and white army’ depending on who the manager was at any given time.
“As the trophy was being presented, George, as was his habit, was there with his rain mac on, and people chanted: ‘Bloke in a coat and his blue and white army.’
“That was as near as we ever got to giving George praise.”
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Given all the animosity towards him at Tottenham, it begs the question whether either Tottenham’s owners or Graham himself believed they had been vindicated in making the controversial appointment.
Kelly said: “What I thought at the time was that Alan Sugar who owned the club at the time was sticking up two fingers to the Spurs fans.
“He had been getting unending grief in the ground about his terrible team and terrible choice of managers and I think this was his way of saying: ‘Alright. You think you didn’t like the last manager, here comes George Graham and I really believe that.
“I know how George felt about it all because I’ve spoken to him about it at length.
“This might surprise Arsenal fans but he was delighted he got the chance to work at a club as big and as historic as Tottenham.
“His only regret was the way in which he departed the gig in which the new owner, Daniel Levy of ENIC (formerly English National Investment Company) came in and found what he considers to be an excuse to get rid of him because he was moaning about Spurs’ lack of transfer activity and Levy took umbrage to it.
“That was possibly an attempt from Levy to ‘get in’ with the Spurs fans and he subsequently appointed Glenn Hoddle so that argument holds some water.
“It turns out that the tough guy and all the rest of it is all a big act with George. He’s actually a terribly nice man and a really interesting human being. But he never allowed that to come out as a football manager.”
With Everton and Tottenham Hotspur both looking for a new manager this summer and former Wolverhampton Wanderers boss Nuno Espirito Santo looking like he was heading for Merseyside at one point only to end up in north London, did fan reaction at both clubs shape the respective owners’ final choices?
Kelly said: “There is a comparison with what happened with Tottenham and Gennaro Gattuso.
“His past tweets about race, gender and sexual orientation and the fact that he had 'assaulted' a former Spurs employee in Joe Jordan created such a fuss – and that deal was done – that Levy changed direction.
“None of that was threatening or crossing a line. I do think that bed sheets daubed with ‘We know where you live’ close to Benitez’s house is crossing a line.
“Let’s not beat around the bush here. It is threatening behaviour. The implied threat to him and his family is obvious.
“You can be as vociferous as you want about your views about your football club but once it steps into that personal realm then I think they’ve gone too far.
“Farhad Moshiri should have been more careful about that for the simple reason that you are kowtowing to the lowest common denominator and in that way leads trouble and madness.”
It’s not just 61-year-old Benitez’s former Liverpool connections that are the greatest concerns for some Evertonians though, rather the prolonged time period between his biggest successes and the present day and that’s a point that Kelly feels is pertinent.
He said: “Brendan Rodgers is a good example of someone whose curve is still seen as being upwards whereas with Benitez there’s always a suspicion that he came back because he loves Merseyside – and that’s a great thing, who doesn’t love Merseyside – and that it’s a convenient stop for him at the latter end of his career.
“I’ve no reason to believe that he isn’t still hugely ambitious and I’m sure the Everton board have questioned him about this very carefully but no fans like to think that their club is being used as a stopping off point or a stepping stone.
“That is a fear that I believe Everton fans can entertain with some justification.
“He gives no impression that is the case but he’s been out of the very top level of the game and the English game for a little while now and the comfort of returning to Merseyside does give some ammunition to fans who want to think negatively about it.”
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