His Liverpool team are unbeaten in the Premier League. Their chances of reaching the knock-out stages of the Champions League have greatly improved after two massive home wins, 8-0 over Besiktas and 4-1 over Porto.

The fans marched through Liverpool with a banner that read, in Spanish: 'Rafa Confiamos' - In Rafa We Trust.

He has said that if he could stay at Liverpool for 21 years, like Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, that would be perfect.

Yet Benitez lacks peace of mind. He lacks security, lacks what he needs most at this time, an unequivocal word from his American bosses that they also trust in him.

Till yesterday, there was no word from Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, the two entrepreneurs from the US.

They were garrulous enough when Benitez took them to the Champions League final in their first months of ownership, and quick enough to spend £40 million (S$120 million) in one summer on the players he asked for.

Fernando Torres cost over half that sum, and most people who know football know that Torres is one of the few strikers in the world who is worth that kind of money. And it is, remember, £40 million plus superstar salaries.

Torres made a significant pay back on Wednesday, when he scored the first two goals that broke Porto's resistance.

Still, it was Benitez's name the Kop choir sang to their anthem 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.

Liverpudlians are bemused by Rafa, baffled at times by his rotation policy that spares no one.

The crowd love big Peter Crouch, even when the manager drops him to the bench after he scores in consecutive games for club and country.

The newspapers have concluded that Crouch will move on in the January transfer window.

Peter C said yesterday that he wants to stay, to fight for his place, to represent Liverpool and Rafa and battle through all the frustrations.

Trust between the players and management is one half of the relationship that is essential to making Liverpool what they were 20 years ago - a club their English rivals, as well as Europeans, feared.

The other half is trust between the board and the manager.

Yet, from the US, silence.

The two Yanks are not due in Liverpool until Dec 16. By then it will be clear whether the team have beaten Marseille to keep alive the hope of reaching a third Champions League final in four seasons under Rafa.

Gillett's son Foster, meant to be the permanent presence of the owners, has been in his office at the Liverpool training ground at Melwood since Wednesday. But his father's partner Hicks sent a coded message via the local evening Echo newspaper.

It was that Rafa should 'quit talking about new players and coach those he already has'.

The owners and the coach talking to one another through the media is not a sign of harmony.

Nobody can deny that Hicks and Gillett have given Liverpool a vision of a bigger and better future.

Or that their initial outlay has given the squad more players for Rafa to rotate.

Or indeed that the spiralling costs of the proposed new stadium are forcing them to take loans.

So it was not the best or most judicious time for Benitez to say on TV last Saturday night that the owners 'don't understand what the transfer window means in Europe, it's not like the American draft system'.

In essence, we have the Anglo-American dichotomy articulated by a Spaniard. England and the US are divided by a common language.

We speak almost the same words, but they have different connotations, sometimes very different in terms of the way sport and society are run.

What the Americans are concentrating on is a 60,000-seater super stadium that, they understand, will still have to sing with the Kop.

They have taken on board the uniqueness of Liverpool's passion, but they have not taken kindly to the manager having a second go at them in half a year.

In Athens last summer, depressed after losing the Champions League final to AC Milan, Benitez held forth on the players he required to take the team up a stage.

Gillett and Hicks bowed to him. They promised to place Foster permanently at Anfield and presumed their generosity in affording four new additions - Torres, Ryan Babel, Andriy Voronin and Yossi Benayoun - to the player pool would satisfy Benitez for this season.

Benitez has climbed down from his Saturday stance by saying that he is not seeking expensive new targets, but free signings.

One of those is Kakha Kaladze, the Georgian defender at Milan, who would improve a defence in which Sami Hyypia looks slower by the month.

But 'free' transfers add millions to the wage bill.

Benitez also desperately wants to secure Javier Mascherano as a full signing and he wants the board to renew the contract of Harry Kewell, whose injuries eat into his cost-effectiveness.

You suspect that the silent treatment will only end if Benitez stops complaining in public, and keeps winning.

Victory against Bolton today thus becomes a notch more meaningful than it might otherwise have been.

stsports@sph.com.sg

Liverpool v Bolton
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