He was great a at Valencia many moons ago with an attacking style and a great young team. They actually won La Liga pretty comfortably in 2002 and he would win the UEFA cup as well. On the strength of that Benitez got the Liverpool job and did pretty well at first and won Champions.

Since then, it has been a decline including a disastrous performance at Madrid in 2015 where he alienated nearly every player in the locker room; including a famous training session where he stopped practice to chastise Luca Modric for using his outside foot on passes. If I had to guess it will be back to China for Mr. Rafa.

A) Pep has raised the standards so much in England it is incredible. You really need to be one heck of tactician to coach in that league in my view. Smaller clubs like Brighton even have savvy tacticians at the helm.

The extent at which things have changed can even be witnessed in lower leagues. City were playing a League 2 side a week ago and they were trying to play from the back against City. Pretty much everybody is trying to play from the back now largely becomes of Pep.

B) You touched on this is your second paragraph. Supposedly, there is a lot of infighting at the club. Benitez appears to be some kind of strange politician type who turns people against each other. He of course also got the Director of Football fired.

C) I also think he is a bit like Mourniho in that the game has kinda passed him by.

Jose, Arsene, Rafa...these guys did not/have not adapted to how the game has changed over the years. It's weird in Arsene's case because he was the game changer early in his career, but he seemed to get stuck in his ways as time went on.

Pep, OTOH, embodies adaptation and evolution.

Everton board now pushing to sack Rafa Benitez immediately. Next steps before final decision is to find the right replacement and agree on compensation. 🔵 #EFC

Nothing official yet - but the plan is to fire the Spanish manager, as first reported by @David_Ornstein today. https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1482476292536680449/photo/1

Liverpool angle. I don’t their owner really thought that through.