does Rafa deserve a second chance?

Does Rafa deserve a second chance?

Rafa Benitez has certainly had a rough couple of months.

Facing insurrection from both sets of fans each game must get tiresome and as his ‘rant’ a few weeks ago proved, the pressure had become too much for the beleaguered Chelsea boss.

Why do we as an audience believe we have a right to abuse players and managers we don’t like?

All I know of Benitez is what I’ve read in papers or seen in interviews with former players etc, I don’t know him personally and I’ve never spoken with him.

I think we can safely assume most of the ‘fans’ that have a big problem with Rafa are in the same boat, they have had no personal interactions with the man, yet dislike him with a passion.

I can understand why to an extent, I mean, I’ve never met David Cameron, but I have a perception of him based from what I’ve seen in the media and don’t like him because of it.

(The idea of 50,000 plus people screaming ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’ in the House of Commons brings a smile to my face though).

I have no personal vendetta against Rafa, I would prefer that he did well. I saw his (job) interview in the Independent in which he said he could get Torres firing again and a part of me wanted to believe him.

From his time at Liverpool he was known to be tactically astute and he had no control over the firing of RDM, so maybe we were all a little quick to judge Rafa and throw him on the proverbial scrapheap.

We’ve crashed out of a few cups and surrendered the league to the Manchester clubs more than a month ago, but this season hasn’t been a complete failure in the grand scheme of things.

Successfully navigating through to the Europa league quarter finals as well as masterminding a legendary comeback from 2-0 down at United to still be in the FA cup shouldn’t be seen as a failure on Rafa’s part, we should get behind the team as this is the business end of the season and it must affect the players’ morale.

Even though the ‘interim’ status is confirmed, with Rafa himself confirming that he’ll leave at the end of the season, the fans shouldn’t give him a hard time for the rest of his tenure.

I mean, they did get what they wanted, with Rafa effectively hounded out without completing a full season. To be fair to the fans, actions speak louder than words and he could have probably won over more of the crowd with a good run of results, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

We can’t blame Rafa for RDM, we can’t blame him for Torres misfiring, or for comments he made about Chelsea nigh on 6 years ago, he honestly deserves a true first chance, never mind a second.

Benitez is simply a figurehead for the team and we as fans could do well to remember that. Abusing him is abusing the team, so we should support him for the small amount of time he has left, not just for the good of the team, but because he is still a human being.