Ouch... Rafa Benitez's 'small club' comment gets brought up in first Everton presser 😬

There was no chance they were going to let that slide

Rafael Benitez’s first press conference as Everton manager was guaranteed to be a somewhat juicy affair.

Indeed, the first handful of questions flung the former Real Madrid boss’ way directly addressed his relationship with both Liverpool and Blues fans and one ill-advised (with the benefit of hindsight) comment made during his tenure at Anfield.

“It was highlighted that after a Merseyside derby you referred to Everton as a ‘small club’,” Sky Sports journalist Vinny O’Connor spoke to the former Reds coach.

It was bound to come up; if anything, we’re surprised it didn’t turn up even sooner than the third question!

If the fact of the 61-year-old’s history as a Liverpool manager wasn’t difficult enough to swallow for a number of Toffees, there’s no doubt in our minds that a frustrated, off-the-cuff comment about our city rivals following a goalless stalemate at L4 in 2007 would not assuage such feelings.

“I said before that it depends on the context,” the Everton coach responded.

“It was a long time ago, you are fighting for your club, and then it is [about] what I will do now.

“If you are the manager, you have to defend your club in any context; in this case, I will fight for Everton, I will try to do my best every single game and I will try to compete against anyone.”

To Rafa’s credit, he can’t be accused of changing his tune to fit his current circumstances, after clarifying his comments four years after the fact during a year-long sabbatical between his jobs at Inter Milan and Chelsea.

“I didn't want to be disrespectful to the club,” Benitez told the Independent in 2011. “I was talking about the way they were playing, not the club.”

On a footballing level, we’ve already been hurt near to the point of numbing by the Spaniard’s prior decision to take the reins at Chelsea, one of our more serious league rivals.

A move to Everton feels sore, though it would probably hurt far more if we didn’t have a manager like Jurgen Klopp calling the shots at Anfield.

On a human level, Benitez has been more than a true friend to Merseyside and doesn’t really deserve all the goodwill he has amassed in the city to be stripped away courtesy of one managerial appointment.

To that end, to describe some of the banner messages ominously left near the manager’s home as being abhorrent would be putting things mildly.

Even should the Madrid-born coach make a positive impression in his first season, he’ll be sure to come across more than his fair share of critics, justified or not.

Nonetheless, we personally at EOTK Insider hope his stay on the blue half of Merseyside will remain free of any further unpleasantries.

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