Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version or go back to LFC Live.net

They just didn't understand."

Determined to prove himself, Benayoun trained with Hapoel Be’er Sheva and got himself into the first team at still only 16, making his mark by scoring 15 goals in 25 appearances to be fourth leading goalscorer in the division and it won him a transfer to one of Israel’s biggest clubs, Maccabi Haifa.

His first season there saw a run to the European Cup Winners Cup quarter-finals with Benayoun scoring against French giants Paris Saint Germain and, after the arrival of future Chelsea manager Avram Grant as manager, Haifa won successive league titles in 2001 and 2002, Benayoun’s increasing profile and abilities prompting Racing Santander to bring him to Europe and La Liga.

His three seasons in Spain saw a respectable tally of 21 goals in 101 games for one of the division’s lesser lights who, aware of reported interest from Premier League clubs such as Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United as well as Real Sociedad and Deportivo La Coruna at home, sold Benayoun to agents Pini Zahavi and Ronen Katsav.

After turning down a move to CSKA Moscow, he made his bow in the Premier League with West Ham United after joining the London club in summer of 2005 for a reported fee of £2.5m, and Liverpool supporters soon got a glimpse of his mercurial talents when he was part of Alan Pardew’s side which came desperately close to beating the Reds in the 2006 FA Cup final in Cardiff.

His second season at Upton Park was more of a struggle with the Hammers only preserving their Premier League status with an unlikely win at champions Man United on the final day of the season and soon afterwards Benayoun was on his way to Anfield in a £5m deal having taken advice from the first Israeli to ever play for Liverpool.

The late Avi Cohen had carved out a special place for himself in Liverpool folklore during his short spell at Anfield by managing to score at both ends of the pitch during the 1980 league title clinching game against Aston Villa and revealed in an open letter to his compatriot in Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper what an opportunity lay in wait.

“Dear Yossi,” he wrote.“Only a few weeks ago, at Tal Ben-Haim's wedding, you asked me if you should move to Liverpool.

Remember, big players from different clubs who come to play in clubs with bigger players will become better players with more quality.

“I wish you all the best at your new club, and remember that we always support you.

“Avi Cohen.”

Benayoun arrived at Anfield during one of the biggest summer transfer influxes of modern times.

With Liverpool having been taken over by new American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett earlier in the year, manager Rafa Benitez’s pleas in the wake of the Reds’ Champions League final defeat to AC Milan in Athens had been heeded with the club record £20.2m deal to bring in hotshot Spanish striker Fernando Torres from Real Madrid along with £11.5m Dutch forward Ryan Babel, £5m Brazilian midfielder Lucas Leiva and attacking midfielder Andriy Voronin on a free transfer from Bayer Leverkusen as well as youngsters Krisztian Nemeth, Dani Pacheco, Sebastian Leto and Emiliano Insua.

After the high profile arrival of Torres, Benayoun was unveiled along with Babel a few weeks later with Benitez full of optimism and predicting a bright future for his new arrivals.

"Both Babel and Benayoun have lots of quality.

Ryan may need a little time to settle down in the Premiership but Yossi already has experience from his time at West Ham."

Despite that experience, Benayoun’s first Liverpool starts were against French side Toulouse in the Champions League qualifiers and it was a month before he was handed a starting shirt away to Portsmouth in a goalless draw at Fratton Park.

A first Liverpool goal followed soon afterwards at Reading in a League Cup tie before four days after that the Israeli showed the kind of ability to turn a tight game that enticed Benitez to bring him to Anfield by opening his Premier League account with a crucial late winner at Wigan Athletic.

Back on the bench after his midweek winner as part of the manager’s infamous rotation policy, Benayoun was introduced from the bench ten minutes after half time with the Liverpool struggling to break down an obdurate Latics’ defence and, with frustration growing and the game still goalless with only 15 minutes remaining, showed great composure after making a darting run onto Jermaine Pennant’s pass to turn back inside his marker Titus Bramble with a clever flick to slot past former Reds keeper Chris Kirkland to the delight of the travelling Kop behind the goal.

“If you can't find a solution then you need creativity and quality and that's what Yossi gave us’,” said Benitez afterwards.

“We needed him here this afternoon.

Yossi has the intelligence for this kind of game.”

It earned the Israeli a start in Liverpool’s next match at home to Marseille in the Champions League but the inconsistency, particularly in Europe, which plagued the first half of that campaign was evident as the French side scored a shock 1-0 win at Anfield and Benayoun was among those seemingly yet to convince the manager, continuing to be in and out of the side until early November when he was handed seven straight starts.

The second of those saw him score at hat-trick against Besiktas as the Reds, staring down the barrel of group stage elimination having only taken one point from the first nine available, racked up the biggest win in Champions League history, annihilating the Turks 8-0, with Benayoun keeping his place for the wins against Porto and Marseille which took the Benitez’s men through to the knock-out stages.

A second hat-trick of the season followed in January in a 5-2 win over non-league Havant & Waterlooville in the FA Cup but, after defeat in the following game at his old West Ham, Benayoun was dropped again and would only start consecutive games once more before the end of the season, the second of which was a Champions League semi-final second leg at Chelsea which saw him show great invention and real big game temperament to set up an equaliser for Fernando Torres out of nothing when Liverpool looked to be floundering.

It wasn’t enough to reach the Moscow final but Benayoun could be satisfied with a reasonably successful first season at Anfield which he seen him feature in 47 of Liverpool's 59 competitive matches, scoring 11 times, although the fact that 21 of those appearances had been as a substitute indicated he had yet to truly nail down a place for himself.

It inevitably led to speculation of a move but Benayoun scotched such rumours and told Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz of the good chemistry between himself and the manager who he claimed ‘loved’ him.

"It seems the media in Israel and England are in a contest to see who's more bored during the slow summer months,” Benayoun said.

"The media in England published a story that Rafa Benitez told me finally that I'm staying at Liverpool.

He only thinks of the next challenge, and that is how it should be."

Although Liverpool would suffer only their second (and final) Premier League defeat of the season at Middlesbrough the weekend after the win in Madrid, progress in Europe breathed new life into their domestic ambitions and, days after Madrid had been hammered 4-0 in the Anfield second leg, Benitez’s men travelled to Old Trafford knowing victory was their last chance of still potentially being able to catch Man United.

Benayoun was missing through injury as Liverpool recorded a stunning 4-1 victory to cut the gap to four points with the Red Devils having played a game less and, when the following weekend they were beaten 2-0 at Fulham and Liverpool beat Aston Villa 5-0 at Anfield, the title race was well and truly back on.

Remarkably the next set of fixtures a fortnight later after the March international break were reversed for the championship contenders with Man United set to host Villa at Old Trafford the day after Liverpool travelled to Fulham.

Benayoun was back on the bench having recovered from injury as Benitez’s men eyed the three points which would take them back to the top of the table for the first time since early February and early on it seemed their mission would be completed without any undue fuss as the Londoners were carved open by Gerrard, Torres and Co almost at will.

Chance and chance went begging with the woodwork being rattled on four separate occasions and, after Babel had been introduced from the bench in favour of Andrea Dossena on 65 minutes, Benayoun entered the fray ten minutes later in place of Kuyt with Liverpool growing increasing desperate in search of the elusive goal they needed to the agitation of the thousands of travelling Kopites packed into Craven Cottage’s River End.

The referee’s watch had ticked into the second minute of stoppage time when Babel fed Gerrard on the edge of the penalty area and, when the ball broke from Brede Hangeland’s challenge on the Liverpool skipper to Benayoun in the inside right channel, the Israeli controlled the ball instantly before rifling a precise finish into the far corner to spark pandemonium on the pitch, in the stands and all over the world where Reds fans suddenly believed again that this would be their year.

“We’re gonna win the league” was still booming out of the away end nearly half an hour after the final whistle with some the travelling Kopites unable to tear themselves away from the site where they had witnessed what they hoped would be a significant moment in Liverpool’s season and modern history, with Benayoun afterwards admitting he knew how high stakes were when he was sent on in search of the winner.

“We knew that we had to win against Fulham because it keeps the pressure up on Man United,” Benayoun said.

“You could see what it meant to the fans and it was such a great feeling to win it like that because it was the final minute

“We knew Fulham would be a difficult place to play and it was important after the international break.

There is still a lot of football to be played between now and the end of the season so hopefully we can keep going and they will drop some points."

The following day that hope of the Devils dropping more points seemed set to be playing out before Liverpudlians’ disbelieving and increasingly jubilant eyes with Ferguson’s side 2-1 at home to Martin O’Neill’s Aston Villa with only 10 minutes remaining and facing a third straight league defeat.

But Cristiano Ronaldo drew them level and a stoppage-time winner from barely heard-of Italian striker Federico Macheda put Man United back on top of the league by a point, still with a game in hand, and perhaps most crucially resorted their momentum and belief.

They won their next six league matches meaning the point they got at home to Arsenal in their penultimate match was enough to clinch a third title in a row and their 18th overall to draw level with Liverpool, Benitez’s men themselves only dropping two more points in a dramatic 4-4 draw against the Gunners in which Benayoun scored twice including a brave diving header which saw him take a boot in the face, but the Reds’ record Premier League tally of 86 was still not enough and it proved to be the pivotal point of the Benitez reign.

An inadequate summer of recruitment in which Xabi Alonso was replaced with Alberto Aquilani precipitated a poor start to the season with two defeats in the first three Premier League games - as many as there had been in their entire previous campaign - which Benitez’s men never really recovered from.

Benayoun had signed a two-year contract extension in the summer of 2009 and soon afterwards made history when scoring a hat-trick against Burnley to become the first man to achieve trebles in the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup.

The Israeli’s form held up better than many of his team-mates, scoring nine times in 45 appearances in all competitions but the fact he was substituted in 22 of the 29 starts he made was an indicator in the Benitez’s continued lack of real faith in him.

After a harrowing campaign in which Liverpool - having reached at least the Champions League quarter-finals in four out of the last five seasons - were eliminated in the group stages and failed to qualify for the following season’s competition after a seventh place league finish, Benitez was sacked and, after signing for Chelsea in a £5.5m deal, Benayoun issued a scathing verdict on his former manager, accusing him of deliberately trying to destroy his confidence and showing him a lack of respect.

"There is only one reason I left Liverpool - Rafa Benitez,” he said.
For more news relating to Spurs, visit our sister site Spurs Latest Live.