Benitez's signings were not even that bad. People here tend to talk nonsense about him using his transfer record as proof to their misguided theories.
But when you look at who he purchased, Agger and Skrtel both came for about 6.5M GBP, two signings that we could only dream of making. The large sums of money put towards Torres, Mascherano, Johnson, and Kuyt were all very solid signings. The only ones you could question are Keane and Babel's signings, but they were supposedly not even his own doing. And even Crouch pulled through at times for them.
Then he signed some good free players in Aurelio and spent minimal bank on guys like Gonzalez who played well in other leagues.
So no, his transfer record isn't that bad, far BETTER than ours, and his record speaks for itself.