How vintage Red became vin ordinaire

ON THE face of it, to lose by the odd goal in three at the home of the champions is no disgrace but, for Liverpool, yesterday’s defeat at Old Trafford can’t be interpreted as anything other than another nail in the coffin of the Rafa Benitez era.

It wasn’t that Liverpool were especially bad, more that they were just so very ordinary. And for a club with such a glorious tradition, that’s perhaps the harshest criticism of all.

To make matters worse, the afternoon could hardly have started any better for them. But the manner of Torres’s goal also betrayed, yet again, Liverpool’s alarming reliance on their two most iconic men. When El Nino and Gerrard play, Liverpool play. But when they don’t – and for most of the rest of this game they were reduced to bit-parts – Liverpool suffer.