Lord God Jose Mourinho wrote:
An expensive gesture? He's just been paid off with £6m FFS. He's probably earning something like £8m for his 2 year deal with Inter.
How much money he has relative to the donation is irrelevant, £96k is still a lot of money for a gesture that wasn't needed.
I agree that he will be remembered for all that. But the immediate response from some scousers was that it was further proof what a great guy he was and how maybe he shouldn't have been sacked after all.
The people saying that would have been saying he shouldn't have been sacked had he done it or not, the ones that agreed with him going did so for footballing reasons, a donation like this would not change that view point at all.
You just listed how Benitez will be remembered. You didn't list the fact he finished 7th in his final season. You didn't list the fact that the season before that he should have won the league but screwed up and ended up blowing it. Seeing as these were the most recent seasons, how come these don't get remembered at all?
Because those seasons will come under the 'wasn't backed by the board' memories I discussed, it's pretty simple really.
Choosing to donate the figure of £96,000. Doesn't that come across at all to you as something that's tailor-made for a press release? The timing. There's no mention at all of Benitez ever donating money to the campaign in the 6 years he's been LFC manager, he just suddenly decided that right after he's been fired by Liverpool that now he suddenly has to make a donation?
The timing of a few weeks of him leaving and getting a pay off? When would he have been better doing it? In a year? 6 months? Never?
Just because there is no mention of him donating anything doesn't mean he didn't do it. Perhaps he donated time instead of money and because he won't be able to do that any more gave money instead? Of course had that been reported at the time, no doubt you'd have been whinging about 'self pity city' and how he was doing it to ingratiate himself with the fans.