Benitez smiles again – for now, at least

NO errant beachballs to concern Rafael Benitez this time, just the spectre of Alex Ferguson attempting to kick more sand in his face.

Hapless referees and impertinent journalists tend to be the main targets for the all-too regular bullying tactics employed by the Manchester United manager.

However, the Scot has not been averse to using an array of methods to test the mettle of the Spaniard in his cold war with Benitez, the fifth Liverpool manager he has locked horns with during a reign just a month shy of 23 years.

As with all bullies, the best form of resistance is to stand up to them, and Benitez inspired every player in a red shirt to do just that to seal a third consecutive victory over the Scot. The Liverpool manager has famously come a cropper with Ferguson over some of his ‘facts’, but that is a stat neither man can deny.

After the most chastening run of his five-year Anfield reign, Benitez’s 200th league game in charge was supposed to be all about damage limitation. Such had been their wretched run of form in the build-up, where even inanimate objects like a harmless beachball conspired against them, it wasn’t so much about what Liverpool could achieve as what they could prevent United from doing.

It was about making sure United did not stretch their seven-point advantage, keeping their bitter rivals from reclaiming top spot in the table, while avoiding a fifth consecutive defeat that would have sealed the club’s worst run of results for 56 years.

It turned into something so much more for the Madrileno, who sported a look of quiet satisfaction at the end, his critics and Ferguson having been firmly put in their place. After a harrowing start to the season, Benitez was due a few breaks, and he perhaps sensed it would be his day after waking up to a glowing vote of confidence from Christian Purslow, Liverpool’s managing director.

It still required those kind words to be backed with deeds by his previously-fragile looking side, who duly kept their side of the bargain as a strangely out of sorts United Kopped it twice in front of the most famous end in football.

The first, scored by a Fernando Torres who was no more that 75 per cent fit, highlighted the loyalty Benitez enjoys from his players in their willingness to go the extra yard for their manager while the second, plundered deep into stoppage time by the still unconvincing David N’gog, pointed to a Liverpool squad which, even in securing victory without the injured Steven Gerrard, looks painfully threadbare in its ability to mount a sustained title challenge without significant addition.

Indeed, last night amidst the celebration, introspection was also required. The bully had been handed a bloody nose, but unless Benitez hones his hit-and-miss transfer policy, those blows will remain sporadic, rather than sustained.

At the risk of sounding like a party-pooper, this one victory while to be savoured will not alone bring an end to the two decade wait for the title.

Otherwise, like last season when Liverpool completed the league double over their bitter foes, the highs of beating United will be lost among the lows of defeats at Sunderland and Tottenham.

Yet for one sweet Sunday night on Merseyside, those concerns were pushed aside to savour a victory which underlined the central role Benitez continues to enjoy at Anfield.

Each time when he has needed a result to appease the cynics, his team has delivered. This was perhaps the most needy of occasions to lay down a marker for the beleaguered boss.

As ever, the supporters played their part, rather more constructively this time than the young urchin whose inflatable idiocy helped scupper his heroes at the Stadium of Light.

It was supposedly United’s fans who were set to extricate the mirth from the situation, but even there, the visitors were usurped. In fact, it was the Kop that propelled the vast majority of beachballs onto the field before kick-off, much to the annoyance of Pepe Reina, clearly a goalkeeper of a superstitious nature.

Perhaps the Spaniard missed the joke, because they do a nice line in self-deprecating humour in these parts.

Fitting, then, that when it came to standing up to the bully, Benitez had the last laugh.