F365 Features

Yes, Rafa Houdini has done it again. But according to one Fleet Street scribe, all Liverpool achieved against ManYoo was the right to jump up and down a lot. They still haven't moved forward...

F365 asked during the week whether Rafa Houdini could escape again. Sam Wallace of The Independent has the answer:

'It might just be the decision that saved Rafael Benitez's Liverpool career and he made it somewhere on Queens Drive, that innocuous ring road around the city that connects the training ground with Anfield. It was as the team coach drove to the ground that Benitez said he asked Fernando Torres if he was fit to play, and the rest is history.

'English football's great managerial escapologist once again picked the lock on the chains around him with a win that turned Liverpool's rapidly diminishing season upon its head. Benitez has mastered the art of the shock victory to the extent that even in the midst of this improbable Liverpool performance, there was something strangely familiar about it. This manager has made the remarkable predictable.'

No doubt The Daily Mail's Martin Samuel will be accused by a few Liverpool fans of being a Manchester United supporter (even though he used to be a West Ham regular) because he wasn't impressed with what he saw and observed no reason to believe that Liverpool are title challengers:

'The best team won, which is always nice. Yet something was missing at Anfield yesterday. Once the noise had subsided and the pulse rates returned to normal, neither side came out of it particularly well.

'Yet the fact remains they should be about more than this by now. After five years under Rafael Benitez they should aspire to more than the odd showpiece victory to erase the memory of another run of mediocrity.

'The point would have been lost on those who left Anfield glorying in a third consecutive win over the great enemy but Liverpool are not moving forward. They are still as likely to find their way blocked by an inconsistent Tottenham Hotspur team as they are to humble the champions. They may be among the most feared opponents in Europe but they can be among the most docile here on the afternoons when inspiration deserts them.'

There's a similar point made, at least about the visitors, by Steven Howard of The Sun:

'Yet they rose to both the occasion and Benitez's incessant demands from the touchline to record a victory that says so much about both teams.

'That Liverpool, while seemingly tottering round the rim of the volcano, still have the heart and character to pull back at the last minute.

'That United, despite their position tucked in behind Chelsea at the top of the Premier League, are not as good as the position suggests.'

An interesting side-note appears in the match report of The Daily Telegraph's Henry Winter as he brands Gary Neville a disgrace:

'Inevitably, Ferguson moaned about the referee but really there were two people attempting to run this game, Marriner and Neville. As he warmed up along the touchline, Neville kept lecturing the linesman in-between goading lippy Liverpool fans. Mike Phelan, Ferguson's No 2, eventually had to bring the club's stroppy No 2 back into the dug-out.

'Neville's behaviour was disgraceful. No one expected anything else. This is the fixture of sound and fury signifying everything. The intense rivalry that Ferguson had spoken about was present everywhere from the froideur between the managers, the hatred between the fans and the competitive zeal embodied by Carragher and Torres.'

Over at The Times, there's nothing particularly highlight-worthy in Oliver Kay's match report other than the conention that Liverpool wanted victory more. Which they clearly did though it only 'seemed' to be the case according to Kay.

'Lucas has personified Liverpool's problems, struggling to fill the void left by Xabi Alonso's departure to Real Madrid, but here he embodied their battle to overcome adversity.

'He is nobody's idea of a Brazilian footballer - and how novel a sight it was to see Lucas and Javier Mascherano, Brazil and Argentina internationals respectively, outclassed for a period in the first half by Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes, two Englishmen - but, significantly, he fought harder than anyone in that midfield.

'It seemed as if Liverpool wanted victory more. Too many of United's players failed to engage with the game - Carrick, Ryan Giggs, the infuriating Dimitar Berbatov, even Wayne Rooney to a far lesser extent - whereas Liverpool, with Jamie Carragher, Daniel Agger and Lucas scrapping for every ball, showed a desire to go the extra mile in search of the victory they craved. No, make that the victory they needed.'

There's a nice line to open up Kevin McCarra's piece in The Guardian:

'If every game were a life-or-death moment for Liverpool, they would probably turn out to be immortal. Although they had the task of avoiding a fifth consecutive defeat in all competitions, this was really an occasion in which the pride of a great club was at stake. These are the sort of fixtures that bring out indefatigability in Rafael Benítez's side, who have now beaten these opponents three times in a row.'

He then spoils it all by describing the dismissals of Mascherano and Vidic as the consequence of 'an excess of commitment'. If you rolled your eyes at that line then you weren't in a minority of one.