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Rafa Benitez has never been seen as an arm-around-the-shoulder sort of manager. It has been more than 10 years since Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard revealed a "distant and emotionless" relationship with the man who helped orchestrate the greatest night of both of their careers.
As Gerrard himself noted in his autobiography, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a far cry from what was to come later at Anfield with the charismatic Jurgen Klopp, but the former captain has admitted that he felt motivated to try and improve in order to get rare Benitez praise.
There is, after all, more than one way to crack a nut, and Benitez brought out the best in many of his players (Gerrard included) during his time at Liverpool. Even so, stories about his single-minded approach never fail to surprise.
One player who was on the end of Benitez's distinctly sentiment-free approach to the game was John Arne Riise. He was bombed out of Liverpool two games short of a landmark 350th appearance.
Riise was a pragmatist too, and acknowledges that there is no intrinsic value to this milestone. Nevertheless, he was disappointed to be left just short of it.
"To be honest, it’s just a number, but when they told me I was going to be leaving the club, I was disappointed," Riise told FootItalia recently. "To have got there, even with a couple of substitute appearances, it would have been an awesome number.
"It was disappointing, but at the same time, it shows just how brutal and ruthless life is in the Premier League. You don’t get things for free, they always have to be earned and you have to work for it.
"Rafa Benitez made that decision and he stood his ground. He did what he thought was right for the club, and I respect him for that, but yeah, I was definitely disappointed."
Riise still played enough games to crack the all-time top 50 for the club, arguably a more meaningful milestone (although Virgil van Dijk is just eight matches away from displacing him). But regardless of appearance landmarks, Riise still feels he was somewhat mistreated in a practical sense.
"He [Benitez] made a mistake, and the reason I think that is because I had one year left of my contract," Riise said of his departure in 2008. "He could have just told me he was signing Andrea Dossena and that I needed to step up because there would now be more competition.
"I’m sure I could have outperformed Dossena for my last season. So I think he made a mistake."
Dossena was not much of a hit at Liverpool, and it's hard to dispute that even a post-prime Riise would not have been able to at least fight for his place. There are shades of the current situation at left-back, with Andy Robertson competing for minutes with new signing Milos Kerkez.
It's a reminder that there is a very fine line between ruthlessness and self-sabotage. Finding the right moment to move on from a successful player is notoriously difficult, and a pertinent question in light of the rumbling Mohamed Salah drama.
In hindsight, perhaps Benitez would concede that he pulled the trigger on Riise a year too soon. But ultimately, it was that same willingness to make the big calls that made the pair of them Champions League winners in 2005: you win some and you lose some, and the manager would say that he won more than he lost by dealing strictly in "facts".
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