The following letter was written in response to Clyde Best's column published in Saturday's Royal Gazette:

Hello Clyde,

I remember you well from your West Ham days in the '70s.

As a Liverpool fan I was intrigued to read your comments in the November 7 edition of The Royal Gazette.

There are a couple of points I would like to take issue with:

Firstly, whilst Rafa Benitez could, with some validity, have been accused of "tinkering" unnecessarily with his team selection in previous seasons, I would suggest that since the turn of this calendar year he has not done so.

Certainly this season the vast majority of changes in personnel have resulted from injuries. He definitely hasn't "chopped and changed his team all the time" as you suggest, and hasn't rested Jamie Carragher at all this season – check your facts my friend, don't rely on the likes of Andy Gray at Sky for accurate info!!

Secondly, I don't believe the Alonso sale could be called a "mistake". The player wanted to leave and, therefore, the mistake would have been to let a disenchanted player stay and run his contract down. We may have a similar issue with Mascherano next summer.

Rafa's actual mistake with Alonso was the way he treated him in the summer of last year when he tried to buy Gareth Barry. Had he conducted matters with more decorum Alonso may well still be with us.

I can understand your comments about Babel if, as I suspect, you haven't seen too much of him.

If you have seen as much of him as I have, then you may have a different opinion. He is, without a shadow of doubt, the laziest player I have ever seen in the red of Liverpool (I saw my first game in 1971!).

There is no doubt he has massive potential but he so rarely shows it, he is a tremendous disappointment to most Liverpool fans.

Anyway, it was good to read your article and I hope that you are keeping well. As I said earlier, I do remember you from your WHU days and enjoyed the brand of football the Hammers played then and, to be fair, still try to these days.

With regards

ALLAN MATHER