More mind games but Rafa still in title race

TWO managers under fire go head to head”. That’s how Saturday’s game was described in the big build-up.

How on earth has it come to this? How can someone who’s dragged a team into a springtime title race for the first time since 2002 be remotely comparable to a hapless failure like Adams? Thanks to perpetual quibblers like yours truly? Perhaps. There is always a need to step back, survey the landscape and make calm, rational judgements.

Then you think about Robbie Keane’s treatment and the wave of gratuitously nasty apologist tripe from our supporters and the blood starts boiling again, “I supported him as much as I could,” were the words that eked from the manager’s remarkably straight face, while Keane, Parry, the Yanks, the recession and presumably Lee Harvey Oswald himself took the rap for this mind-game madness.

He also said we had sufficient cover for Torres, including N’gog and Babel. Again, not one tic or blink. Not even a smirk. Don’t play poker with this guy.

Once again we’re discussing Gareth Barry and Rafa’s old table/lamp analogy that he used to escape from Valencia. Alonso’s qualiteeee performances and the team’s league position might give the lie to how ill treated the manager has been, but the sycophants merely celebrate Rafa’s unimpeachable genius for riding roughshod over such terrible ‘handicaps’.

My age-old cure for derby defeat is alcohol consumption and a convenient amnesia attack. The two may be connected in some way. Any time I see Lucas and Dossena in the same team I assume we weren’t really that desperate to win.

A one-eyed referee who managed to give Lucas two cards and gave Fellaini several paternal lectures didn’t help. We won’t hold our breath for Moyes to pass dignified comment. He’d probably just stomp off anyway.

No team achieves what we have with just two good players, but with Gerrard injured and Torres not fancying the physical battle it was alarming to see how turgid we can be.

The atmosphere was malevolent, the ‘murderers’ chant sung regularly by their so-called minority of slime. That our lot thought fit to throw socks as some kind of private Scouse joke added to the bewilderment, and Lucas’s unjust, albeit brainless, departure only increased the overwhelming desire to escape this wooden hellhole.

They couldn’t even do that properly, putting us through another 30 pointless minutes and making our bigging up of penalty king Reina seem especially foolish.

The manager couldn’t resist yet more one-upmanship over Gerrard’s breakdown. “Everyone said he had to play every minute of every game”. Not so; ‘everyone’ knows that without him we struggle and that means he can’t be rested as much as the others. Not the same thing at all.

And since tiredness was now the issue of the day, that meant the visit to Portsmouth had to labour the point. He did this at Fratton Park last season, when he was piqued by internationals and TV interference. After all, why overcome adversity when you can encase it in neon lighting and have a big firework display to capture everyone’s attention? Throw in a major tactical adjustment, three full-backs in midfield, use two forwards who cannot hit a barn door lately, then sit back and watch the ensuing train wreck through your fingers.

And we still won! You can grumble, tear out hair, gnash teeth and all the other accoutrements of the grumpy old man all you want.

But two things cannot be denied: We are in this title race for the duration, and though some may use the word ‘reckless’, Rafa Benitez has balls the size of boulders.

The new formation did not turn out to be as restrictive as expected. It certainly baffled Pompey far more than our own players, but without the finish all the good work floundered.

It’s not as if the home side needed special treatment in any case, they are clearly in freefall. That’s Ince and Adams we’ve seen off now.

Mark Hughes would be too much to hope for, but you never know with City. Southgate will have to do.

The two late goals were magnificent pacifiers because had it remained 1-2 the howl of derision and anguish could even have put a twitch or two into that sanguine Spanish countenance. When West Ham can’t put a crack in the United dam you wonder if it actually matters what we do from now on.

But a Liverpool team with six defenders just scored three goals and conceded two, so I guess this is the year of bewilderment. There’s nothing left to do but embrace the insanity of it all.