Rafa Benitez returns to a very different Liverpool

Now seems like a good moment to assess Brendan Rodgers’ first season in charge of Liverpool.

It’s his 50th game as manager tomorrow as the club hosts Chelsea - whose interim manager is Rafael Benitez, the Spaniard adored by Liverpool fans for a six-year spell that brought the Champions League in 2005 and second place in the Premier League in 2008-09. His family still live near Liverpool.

Since many Chelsea fans detest Benitez, he can expect a much better reception from opposition supporters than from his own club’s traveling fans at Anfield. Benitez brought Xabi Alonso and a then-useful Fernando Torres to Liverpool and finishing as runner-up to Manchester United was a credible achievement for a club that has not won the English league title since 1989-90. Their impressive total of 86 points might have brought the championship trophy in another, less competitive season.

After four successive top-four finishes under Benitez between 2006 and 2009, Liverpool are about to miss out on the Champions League for the fourth year in a row. They ended up eighth in the Premier League standings under Kenny Dalglish’s management last year and are currently seventh under Rodgers, ten points adrift of Arsenal, in fourth.

Rodgers has been forced to slash the wage bill by the club’s American owners after heavy transfer spending on the likes of Andy Carroll failed to pay off. The former Swansea manager says the club are a work in progress.

“I am very hopeful we can meet the challenge going forward and we can try to be a consistent team to get into those top four places,” he told reporters.

But it is a big ask and you only have to look at Chelsea themselves. They finished sixth in the league last season and they had a net spend of over [$108m] in the summer in order to try to get back into that top four... It is an ongoing process. I’ve signed here for three years and I would hope from the first day I came in until the final day I leave we will be in a better position. But I don’t think you can put a timeline on it. Without that lightning bolt of investment you have to build and coach your way towards it and mould the team. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen overnight but I’m not crying for time, it is just the reality of the club.”

Two points behind last year’s tally of 52 points with five fixtures remaining, Rodgers is likely to surpass the mediocre total that contributed to Dalglish’s exit. But Liverpool trail low-budget neighbors Everton: never a good look in the red sector of the city. And Rodgers has spent money on transfers. Some $70-0dd million, much of it on former Swansea players Joe Allen and Fabio Borini, whose impact is debatable. Without Steven Gerrard’s class and Luis Suarez’s goals, Liverpool would probably be closer to the relegation zone than the European qualification places.

It’s rare these days that a manager of a high-profile club gets to write off an entire season as a transition period. Owners and fans want quick results, even during a comprehensive roster overhaul. Rodgers may argue the rebuild will take every minute of those three years, and he may be right. But he’ll have to mount a more sustained and serious challenge for the top four next season.