RAFAEL BENITEZ ended months of speculation by signing a new deal with Liverpool to keep him at Anfield until 2014.
The former Valencia boss, who led the Reds to Champions League glory in 2005, has been in talks with the club for much of the season.
Benitez said last night: "My heart is with Liverpool, so I’m delighted to sign this new deal.
"I love the club, the fans and the city and with a club like this and supporters like this, I could never say no to staying.
"I always made clear I wanted to be here for a long time and when I complete my new contract it will mean I have spent over a decade in Liverpool."
It is believed that there had been eight different drafts of the contract on offer, with Benitez sticking out for the near absolute control of the club he wanted. And he has finally put pen to paper within weeks of chief executive Rick Parry’s announcement he would be leaving the club in the summer. Parry and Benitez had clashed previously.
Benitez said: "I would like to thank the owners for their hard work in finalising the deal. All of us at the club want the same thing, to be successful winning major trophies."
The completion of contract talks with Benitez is the third major boost for Liverpool in recent days, after wins against Real Madrid and Manchester United. The 4-1 win at Old Trafford saw Benitez achieve 100 league wins in the third fastest period of time for a Liverpool manager, surpassing Bill Shankly.
Liverpool Co-Chairman Tom Hicks said: "It is wonderful news that Rafa has made a long-term commitment to the club. He has been responsible for the great progress we have made. I know he will continue to build on his achievements as he has a tremendous hunger and desire."
Co-Chairman George Gillett added: "With Rafa continuing, we can look forward to more great football and success on the pitch. He has special abilities and qualities. Coming after our excellent wins over Real Madrid and Manchester United, this gives us great momentum going into the final stages of the season."
Under Benitez, Liverpool won the Champions League in Istanbul in 2005, the FA Cup in 2006 and reached another Champions League final in Athens in 2007.
some reactions:-
Liverpool legend Alan Hansen reacted positively to the news: "It’s badly needed that we’ve got some sort of stability from the manager. That’s all in place now."
Former Liverpool left-back Alan Kennedy said he hoped it would bring stability to the club. "The problem with Liverpool in the last few years has been the internal problems... but finally now we’ve got Rafa to sign and it’s great news."
interesting insights and recounting wat happened before tis:-
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For once, a contract announcement with impeccable timing. Liverpool were in the thick of their Premier League title race and preparing for the first of what were to be three encounters with Everton in January when Rafael Benitez announced, in no uncertain terms, that he was dissatisfied with the control he was being afforded within the terms of the proposed new deal which had just hit his desk. Last night's announcement of a new five-year contract comes ahead of Liverpool's renewed, if belated, assault on the title.
Though it also arrives against the backdrop of two of the most famous wins in the club's history – eight goals within the space of 100 hours against Real Madrid and Manchester United – the £4m-a-year deal cannot be seen as a direct reward for that. Benitez has been lobbying for weeks behind the scenes for an overriding aim: greater control over whom Liverpool pursue in the transfer market, with his agent Manuel Garcia Quilon rejecting half a dozen contract drafts. The word from both Liverpool's owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, was that the "checks and balances" of a corporate structure in which a chief executive operates between them and the manager must be in place at Liverpool, just like Manchester United. But Benitez, determined to avoid a repeat of the situation in July, when his protracted pursuit of Gareth Barry, the Aston Villa midfield player, ended in humiliation with the board vetoing an £18m deal, has gradually moved towards a position in which he feels comfortable.
The tortuous road towards this resolution stretches back to last April when Tom Hicks, seemingly trying to improve his own credibility in a particularly rancorous phase of his relationship with co-owner George Gillett, announced a one-year extension to a contract which expires next summer. It was hardly a ringing endorsement and on 7 November the Americans, aware that the prospect of Benitez's departure would damage their attempts to sell Liverpool, came up with a more positive announcement that contract discussions were starting in earnest. That public declaration created immediate time pressure and Benitez fanned the flames, declaring immediately that he wanted the whole business resolved by the end of that month.
Hicks and Gillett are all too familiar with Benitez's demands to deal directly with them. When they told the Spaniard in October 2007 to stop demanding more money and work through chief executive Rick Parry it presaged one of the longest sulks in Premier League history. Benitez waged the same kind of battle with the owners of the Extremadura club he managed in Spain in the late 1990s, insisting their facilities were inadequate, and the way he ridiculed the players Valencia bought him during a battle for transfer policy autonomy mirrors the recent one at Anfield. That spat brought us his now legendary line: "I asked for a table and they brought me a lampshade."
Parry has represented the prime obstacle to Benitez's ambitions. The Spaniard has taken issue with the way Liverpool's outgoing chief executive operates and with the lack of urgency, as he sees it, with which players are pursued. But Benitez has often been a source of supreme frustration. A favoured strategy has been to insist his board sign a player or lose them to Manchester United. Only last week, Benitez described dragging Parry to a fax machine to secure Lucas Leiva's services, before United might pounce. He made precisely the same warning about Italian defender Andrea Dossena, though to suggest United were interested seems far fetched.
As the Americans gradually ceded greater control towards the manager in the various drafts of the contract, Parry told Hicks and Gillett, a few days before Liverpool travelled to play Real Madrid in the Bernabeu last month, that he would be leaving at the end of the season. That appears to have been a critical staging post in the journey towards persuading Benitez that he will be operating in a different realm in the future.
So is this the end of the interminable power struggles at Anfield? Unlikely, where Benitez is concerned. Hicks and Gillett remain convinced that control of the manager's autonomy is necessary and in the words of one senior executive at Anfield, there is no way they will say to Benitez at the end of a season: "Here's £20m, we'll see you in September." The assiduous search for a replacement for Parry – commercial director Ian Ayres is a contender and former FA chief executive Brian Barwick was at the Liverpool/Real Madrid game – suggests the Americans are not looking for patsy. A strong chief executive means Benitez would have as much of a battle on his hands as ever.
But for now at least, the manager's future is secured and Liverpool have even more potential to achieve the near impossible and topple Manchester United, the champions elect.
dunno if he was given more power in the transfer market ? More likely he was given ..... now that usual transfer decider R.Parry is going out of Liverpool FC .