Rafa’s rant after Heinze saga shows pressure’s on

A CRAGGY Scottish manager called Jimmy Sirrell said “football is about the result, the rest is just gossip”. Try telling that to Spurs boss Martin Jol.

Lord knows what Sirrell would make of mind-games, 24-hour sports channels and the internet.

He’d shake his head in bewilderment at the torrent of accusations Rafa unleashed.

We all of us have our off days but I hinted last week that there was a side of Benitez he’d do well to keep under wraps and the pressure of having to deliver success was starting to show.

Worries about the contempt ‘Authority’ has for Liverpool might have been alleviated by the swift, sadly temporary demotion of Styles. Not a bit of it: our man was just getting warmed up.

Heinze was always going to be a tough needle to thread and some weren’t sure he was even worth the hassle. We were trying to do business with a man who has the inordinate nerve to accuse anybody else of having a chip on his shoulder.

How many people aren’t you speaking to again? As weeks stretched into months the deal became more about ego and who had the greatest clout with the empowered few that lurk in shadow.

Benitez knows now. We could have told him so months ago and saved him the trouble.

We await the results of Philo Dunce’s ‘investigation’ with breath less than bated. He has assumed numerous guises in his day, most of them putrid, but “Lecturer In Transfer Etiquette”? That’s a good one. We Scousers do love to laugh.

Rafa complained bitterly about the difference in treatment between the Mascherano and Tevez deals. Was that wise given the amount of negative attention Tevez has attracted? Was it timely to moan about early starts with a tricky one on the horizon? It hardly mattered, he was on a roll and flattening everything in his path.

FANS INEVITABLY began to speculate on what this was in aid of. Was it to cower the powers-that-be into future subservience? To rally the troops and get a little of that siege-mentality action? Or did he just lose it for once?

Reading the immediate local press slant — that these minor irritants were in fact dastardly attempts to smother our campaign at birth — you sensed all hope of rational discourse evaporating and the Chauvins would be thumping their tubs with skull-splintering force.

Personally I think we’re better than that (and Rafa too) but the chilled-out minority were drowned out by whining. So it goes.

Defeat at Sunderland would have had a profoundly negative impact on our season. Thankfully they don’t possess the required weaponry.

They’ve always liked a bit of roughhouse up there ever since Quinny was a mere player and they appeal for absolutely everything. On this occasion it failed to disguise a chronic lack of flair and Halsey, perhaps with last week’s fiasco in mind, did not seem unduly browbeaten.

Despite too many long balls early on, Liverpool got to grips with the game and earned their reward from an unlikely source.

When the ball left Sissoko’s boot we all did a split-second calculation where it would eventually land. The Sea of Tranquility was my intemperate guess. Oh we of little faith.

The previous 30 minutes were also spent criticising Rafa for putting Momo further forward and leaving the more talented Alonso deeper. I’ll end up writing the cricket column at this rate.

As at Villa we played the second half almost to perfection. It remains to be seen whether Torres can add the clinical finish that could make him one of the game’s more beguiling talents.

Nerves jangled as we awaited another referee’s gift to undo all the good but inevitably incomplete work, but it never materialised.

Voronin already looks useful while Babel is still finding his feet, but it’s clear we now have the speed for an away game strategy that has paid off handsomely thus far.