Liverpool manager, Rafael Benitez, has had a dig at the amount of money floating around in the modern game. Benitez believes that football has become tainted by its orientation to finances and says that players such as Gareth Barry should be ashamed of themselves for moving to a club because of cash.

Benitez had been linked with Barry for a very long time but he ultimately chose to go to Manchester City who were offering him a wage deal that Liverpool could not even get close to. Furthermore in a season where players are moving between clubs for world record amounts of cash, Benitez has praised the likes of Glen Johnson, who Liverpool themselves had to pay over the odds for.

Benitez said: “He [Johnson] was always thinking about Liverpool so for us to sign a player who wants to come, an England international with experience of being at a big club, is really good, because of his desire to be successful here. In this market, money is not the main thing because everyone at this level earns big money. If it’s just for money sometimes you make mistakes, like Barry.”

“I won’t say too much but that was clearly for the money, 100 per cent. It is not a bad thing to miss out on him. The most important thing is the passion of the player.”

Benitez does have a clear point in the respect that you would rather have a player at your club who seems genuinely grateful to be there as opposed to someone who is just there to go through the motions and then pick up his wage packet at the end of the day.

There are a lot of players in football who are just mercenaries and will go to the club that offers them the most money but this is now an accepted part of the game. Benitez is quite within his rights to come out and have a dig at Barry and the amount of cash floating around in football but it is something that Liverpool themselves have adopted, they did spend £30 million on Fernando Torres not too long ago.

What Benitez is probably more worried about is the ability of the biggest clubs in Europe to monopolise. The danger of this is that if only a few clubs can afford to buy the very best players in the world then the gap between them and everyone else will one day get so big that it cannot be overcome.

This is the real danger that Benitez probably has in mind but doesn’t want to talk about openly in the media. When a manager comes out and knocks certain players who are only in the game for cash, it is not really new news and we have all heard this sort of story before.

The point is that when you read between the lines of many transfers and players switching between clubs you begin to realise the massive dangers that you would otherwise have not paid any attention to. It is also important to consider that Liverpool are very much a club in transition. Benitez is trying to create something that will take his side closer to title winning form and give them a chance of lifting the European Cup they won not too long ago.

Therefore whenever something happens along the line that dents the larger vision of a manager or club it is quite natural for that person to come out and have a sly dig at the person responsible. If Barry had gone to Liverpool then it is unlikely that Benitez would be talking about another target that Liverpool have missed out on, maybe David Villa, who looks set to remain in Spain for bigger wages.

It is a well used cliché in life but there is no smoke without fire and it is an unfortunate set of circumstances when a lot of players choose to join clubs they may not necessarily want to go to because it means they can retire as soon as their playing careers are over.

The point is that now a lot of clubs and managers have to be very careful with the people they are trying to buy. In a world where football is dominated so much by money it means that a lot of players in sides may not be giving their all for that particular club.

Therefore if you can buy a player that actually wants to be at your club, although he may be of less quality, he could turn out to be more valuable than a better player elsewhere on better money. A determined player who loves his club can often raise his levels of performance enough to be able to cope with a much better opposition side or player.

This means that sometimes when you are buying a player it is more valuable to look at the things that you may not normally look at. This is the underlying thing that Benitez is talking about because he clearly knows that there are particular players that Liverpool would want to sign but they are players that would not give their all for the club.

It is actually quite refreshing to see a manager who would rather buy someone who is not as good just because he wants to put the Liverpool shirt on every week and tap the sign each time as he walks out at Anfield. There are players like this out there but because money is bigger in football than it has ever been a lot of players are becoming tainted to epic proportions.

Football is a game where you have to play the system sometimes and Liverpool will have to in future months. The point is that Benitez will only part with his cash if it is for the right player, a player that wants to play for Liverpool and a player that is not buying into a lucrative Liverpool contract. He will quite happily spend a lot of money but the point is that he will not throw it away in trying to create something special if players are there for all of the wrong reasons.