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  • Rout of Manchester United has Rafael Benitez 'cracking up' w

    Rout of Manchester United has Rafael Benitez 'cracking up' with laughter

    The analysis of the denizens of the Old Trafford stands is a succinct one.



    By Jim White at Old Trafford
    Last Updated: 8:10PM GMT 14 Mar 2009

    Tormented: Fernando Torres (right) gave Nemanja Vidic an hellish afternoon Photo: GETTY IMAGES


    "Rafa's cracking up," they sing of Liverpool's manager. And after this the amateur psychologists might have a point. After watching his team score eight times in five days against football's two most storied opponents, even the notoriously controlled Señor Benitez will be cracking up, with joyous laughter.

    The manager's instruction to his Liverpool team would have been simple enough: play like you did on Tuesday and you can beat anyone. And so they did. After Real Madrid another seemingly impregnable European institution fell to Benitez's newly rampant team: Manchester United's Old Trafford record.

    Related ArticlesWith victory, reckoned the visiting captain, came the possibility that others might do Liverpool favours. "It's not very often you see Man United get beat 4-1 at home," said Steven Gerrard. "I hope this gives other teams that come to Old Trafford the belief that United can be beaten."

    United weren't just beaten here. They were outsmarted, outmuscled, outpaced, subjected to the kind of rout they routinely inflict on the rest of the Premier League. When Andrea Dossena chipped Edwin van der Sar to score the visitor's fourth in injury time, United's fortress echoed to the clack of emptying seats, a noise that almost drowned out the delirious cackle emanating from the Liverpool followers of "we want five".

    Benitez was in his element, standing on the edge of his technical area, yelling instruction at whoever came within earshot. He even permitted himself a brief moment to applaud Dossena's goal, before he pointed at Gerrard, then pointed at his temple. The message was simple: think, think and think again.

    But for all his cerebral input, frankly, in the shape his main striker is in, his team needs no more instruction than to waft the ball in Fernando Torres's direction. He will do the rest. That was precisely what happened when, with United leading from a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty, Fabio Aurelio sent a aimless punt out of the Liverpool defence.

    Who would have thought such a tactic would so discomfort Nemanja Vidic? But there was the solid Serbian resembling a 10-year-old cricketer under a steepled chance in the outfield. And as he dawdled, Torres, bearing down on him with the same pace and purpose he had unleashed on Madrid, pounced.

    With the single most muscular presence in the Premier League left floundering like a freshly-landed cod, Torres advanced to score. Never mind Rafa's complicated semaphore, this was route one at its most effective.

    Then it happened again. A defence unbreached for longer than a Peaches Geldof marriage faltered for a second time. Patrice Evra, doing his best not to make Vidic feel alone in his error-strewn work, idled on a through-ball.

    Gerrard, following Torres's lead, arrived on his heels at pace to nip the ball away. All the Frenchman could do was waft a leg in his direction and bring him down. It was a collector's item: a penalty conceded in the Premier League by Manchester United at Old Trafford, something that has not happened since Wayne Rooney was a teenager, doing his bit to help the Merseyside aged.

    But Gerrard was not phased by its rarity and was quickly expanding his usual badge-kissing celebration to take in a smacker on the television camera lens.

    That, though, was not the end of United misery. Even as Sir Alex Ferguson tried to sort things out by sending on Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Dimitar Berbatov, Vidic's afternoon reached its nadir.
    Gerrard whipped past him before being wrestled to the ground in a manner that would not look out of place at Twickenham this afternoon. Such was the level of his shame, the big defender dashed off the moment Alan Wiley showed him the red card. He ran for the dressing room at a pace which suggested he was worried Torres would get there first.

    The scale of his folly was exposed when, with United expecting Gerrard to strike, Aurelio curled in the resulting free-kick past a flat-footed Van der Sar.

    United might put this down simply as a bad day at the office. But you imagine as the season reaches its climactic rush they – and Vidic in particular – will be desperate that the Champions League draw spares them an early reacquaintance with Torres. Suddenly there appears to be a major Spanish obstruction in the way of that quintuple.

    Video:
    Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez gives his reaction to Sky Sports.
    http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1126121770/bctid16459000001

    Video:
    Post -match reaction from two Liverpool goalscorers - Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres.
    http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid958992159/bctid16531446001


    Video:
    Relive the fanzone highlights from when Manchester United took on Liverpool at Old Trafford.
    http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid958992159/bctid16538666001
    Last edited by Karl; March 15, 2009, 09:30 AM.
    THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!

    "Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.


    "It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

  • #2
    Not one Man U official , player , ball boy etc came to do the post match interview on television or radio.

    Disgracefull.It is Manure indeed.
    THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!

    "Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.


    "It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

    Comment


    • #3
      Selling MAN U a (nutmeg) salad for 20 million punds

      Attack on Nemanja Vidic breaks United's centre



      Jonathan Northcroft


      As dawn broke in Central America, a metaphorical Stetson was being tipped. Tom Hicks, the Texan who co-owns Liverpool, watched the game in Mexico where his son, Alex, got married yesterday. Kick-off was at 5.45am local time and Hicks followed events at Old Trafford on television blearily and gleefully. It felt like Rafael Benitez had come up with the perfect wedding present. After all, Alex, on a visit to Merseyside, had proposed to his bride-to-be out on the Anfield pitch.

      The latter detail is unlikely to melt the hearts of the many Koppites who dislike the Hicks family. But every Liverpool supporter on the planet could agree to celebrate a marriage. Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard only got together 19 months ago but theirs has been a whirlwind relationship. Romance, of a football sort, seems in the air whenever they take the pitch together and Gerrard, after putting Liverpool 2-1 ahead from the penalty spot, even planted a smacker on a TV camera lens.

      His partnership with Torres already looks as if it might one day be worthy of talking about in the same breath as those between Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush, and John Toshack and Kevin Keegan. El Nino and El Capitan plunged stilettos into a soft underbelly of Manchester United none knew existed, puncturing the reputation of one of the world’s top defenders in the process. As footballers of supreme strength and energy, fine technique and powerful spirit, and fearsome speed of foot and mind, playing against one of them must be bad enough, two a waking nightmare. There were no complaints when Gerrard handed Torres the champagne as man of the match but it could just as easily have been the other way around.

      Liverpool’s problem has been not getting their fearsome twosome on the field together often enough. Injuries have blighted Torres’ campaign in particular and yesterday was only the ninth time in this season’s Premier League that the pair have started a game together. Their side’s record in those matches reads won six, drawn three, lost none and the two have scored 12 goals — Torres eight, Gerrard four.
      Related Links
      Benitez might be in charge of a team leading the league rather than — for all yesterday’s efforts — one chasing a familiar foe had he been able to use the tandem more often.

      It was he who saw Gerrard and Torres as an attacking combination in the first place, moving Gerrard to a second-striker position at the start of the 2007-08 season and signing Torres for a club record £26m to play in front of him. It is he who should feel Liverpool being deprived of them most keenly, although he refused to make any grand statements about what might have been. “Clearly the two are key players and when they are on the pitch the rest of the team has more confidence. We know they can score goals and change games,” he said. “We have other good players in our team but if we don’t have either one of them it’s a big loss.”

      Torres, in particular, was responsible for the fall of Nemanja Vidic, something which for the multitude of strikers who have suffered against the Serbian must have felt like the Berlin Wall coming down. Torres toppled the previously impregnable centre-half and partied amid the wreckage. Initially it seemed Vidic, with Rio Ferdinand’s help, would repel the Spaniard. On an early break, Torres was dumped on the ground and left to cry in vain for a penalty when he tried to run through a gap between the defenders. After another attack he was left on his haunches, wincing from a Vidic challenge.

      Then came a moment that changed perceptions of Liverpool’s capabilities. Against Real Madrid Torres demonstrated his ability to make the most expert opponent look a novice when he forced the great Fabio Cannavaro to suffer a series of humiliations. Now it was Ferdinand’s turn to be embarrassed. Torres, with a blink-and-miss-it turn, whirled past Ferdinand inside the United box. Torres could not capitalise and United scored a minute later but soon the Spaniard was back shaming Vidic, beating the Serb for pace, power and wit to score Liverpool’s first goal.

      What happened next confirmed Torres is a warrior. Vidic was on the warpath and many would shrink from such a prospect but the next time Torres got the ball he actively sought the defender out and had the further temerity to sell him a nutmeg in the penalty area. Shortly afterwards, Torres beat Vidic to a header and was barged to the ground, with United lucky not to concede a penalty. By this time Vidic’s shirt had come untucked, he was blowing heavily and blood welled from a scar on his face: he was wobbling.

      Torres came deep to receive possession, Vidic was too fearful to track him, Torres played in Gerrard to win Liverpool’s penalty. Torres, who has been playing with the help of injections, “felt painful” as the match progressed, according to Benitez, so Gerrard took over and finished Vidic off, his surge past the Serbian met with a professional foul and followed by an inevitable red card for the United man.

      Among the many extraordinary statistics generated yesterday was one stating that Gerrard’s goals were the first all season scored against United by an Englishman. “I’ve been lucky enough to win at Old Trafford before and that’s a fantastic feeling. To score goals as well, after all the stick I’ve had from United fans over the last 10 years — it’s nice to rub it in,” Gerrard said.

      Torres added, a little menacingly: “It’s hard to play like this every week but we are confident now.”
      Last edited by Karl; March 15, 2009, 09:34 AM.
      THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!

      "Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.


      "It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

      Comment


      • #4
        Rout of Manchester United has Rafael Benitez ‘cracking up’ with laughter (Sunday Telegraph)
        Liverpool stun Manchester United (Sunday Times)
        Watch and learn, Gerrard tells Premier League as Ferguson claims best team lost (Observer)
        Gerrard torments United to breathe life into title chase (Independent on Sunday)
        What a beautiful, beautiful day it was.

        So who says the title, and a clean sweep of all the honours, is a shoo-in for Manchester United now? After humiliating Real Madrid in midweek, Liverpool scored four again at Old Trafford yesterday and, to borrow Sir Alex Ferguson’s memorable phrase, it really is “squeaky bum time” for United now.
        Joe Lovejoy, Sunday Times

        It could easily have been five or even six, and if the comprehensiveness of the rout escaped Ferguson, the home fans who left the stadium barely half full by the end seemed to have got the message loud and clear. Those that remained attempted to taunt Liverpool with chants that they would finish the season empty-handed, though that can no longer be taken for granted. While the league remains a big ask, Liverpool will feed off this famous win should the sides’ paths cross again in Europe.
        Paul Wilson, Observer

        “Rafa’s cracking up,” they sing of Liverpool’s manager. And after this the amateur psychologists might have a point. After watching his team score eight times in five days against football’s two most storied opponents, even the notoriously controlled Señor Benitez will be cracking up, with joyous laughter.
        Jim White, Sunday Telegraph

        It may take even more than this to stop the Manchester United juggernaut, but Rafa Benitez’s Merseyside scallies yesterday inflicted a nasty enough dent to require remedial work by Sir Alex Ferguson. His team are still four points clear of Liverpool, with an away game at Wigan in hand, and should the champions go on, as must still be expected, to retain their title, United’s manager may look back on this as a useful corrective to the sort of complacency he has never tolerated.
        Steve Tongue, Independent on Sunday
        THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!

        "Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.


        "It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

        Comment


        • #5
          Watch and learn, Gerrard tells Premier League as...

          ...Ferguson claims best team lost

          Poor fellow!
          ...still punch drunk, I believe
          "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

          Comment


          • #6
            Man United 1 Liverpool 4: Torres and Gerrard turn tide to keep championship dream alive

            By Rob Draper Last updated at 12:17 AM on 15th March 2009
            When referee Alan Wiley finally called time on this extraordinary rout, the small knot of Liverpool fans in the far corner of Old Trafford looked like a tiny band of rebels that had just defeated an imperial power.

            Not since Queens Park Rangers demolished Manchester United on New Year's Day in 1992 had Old Trafford witnessed something like this.

            Scroll down for more


            Cristiano Ronaldo breaks the deadlock from the penalty spot


            More...




            And that was in the days before the Premier League and before Sir Alex Ferguson had established his supremacy over English football and, in his own memorable words 'knocked Liverpool off their perch'.

            The ecstatic cheers of the visitors echoed around a near-empty Old Trafford, for so early in the game had they secured the win that the stadium had a good 15 minutes to clear before the final whistle, and only obsessively loyal United fans remained.
            In the centre circle, Liverpool players were relatively restrained given the emphatic nature of their victory.

            Eventually, one by one, they came across in their grey shirts and saluted their followers.

            Their muted reaction was due, perhaps, to the tension of the game. It was possibly because they were still a little stunned by the manner of their victory.

            Scroll down for more


            Level best: Fernando Torres makes it 1-1 at old Trafford

            Referee Alan Wiley decided otherwise, with Torres continuing his protests long after the incidents.
            Lucas weaved his way to United's penalty area, only for O'Shea to make a half-challenge that allowed Ferdinand to whip the ball away from Riera.
            Martin Skrtel then embarked on a 40-yard run, remaining unchallenged until Ferdinand stepped in. Steven Gerrard's forward burst caused momentary panic in the United box before Nemanja Vidic and Edwin van der Sar combined to scramble a clearance.
            Liverpool had got up a head of steam, with Patrice Evra lashing over as United countered.
            Torres skipped past Ferdinand brilliantly and was just about to shoot when Vidic came across to make a vital tackle, then Gerrard's delicate free-kick bounced through to Van der Sar after floating over a packed penalty area.
            It proved a pivotal intervention as, within a minute, United were in front. Tevez was the orchestrator, threading a pass through for Park.
            The South Korean just got to the ball ahead of Jose Reina, whose momentum took Park down. Wiley pointed to the spot and up stepped Ronaldo to provide the confident finish.

            Foul play: Steven Gerrard is brought down for Liverpool's penalty

            Or perhaps they were reflecting on defeats at Middlesbrough and draws against Stoke, Fulham, and West Ham and the prize which might have been.
            Yesterday could be characterised as the game which opened up the Premier League title race and, yet, with 10 games to go, United are still four points clear and have a game in hand.

            This aberration of a performance may give Liverpool confidence and other teams, not least Chelsea, hope, but in reality it is likely to remain an irrelevance at the end of the season.

            Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez reflected as much when asked if a 4-0 win over Real Madrid and a 4-1 victory at Manchester United represented the most satisfying week of his football career.

            'No,' he said. 'The best is when you win titles. You can win battles but you have to win the wars.'

            Scroll down for more


            Pen pal: Steven Gerrard's spot-kick puts Liverpool ahead

            No-one had personalised this fixture more in recent times than Benitez, with his attack on Sir Alex Ferguson and United at the end of last year.

            Yesterday must have been a personal vindication, even though Benitez denied it.

            'No, it wasn't more satisfying. I simply stated facts. I had to defend my club,' he insisted, not once allowing the hint of a smirk.

            United boss Sir Alex Ferguson paid tribute to Liverpool but added: 'I felt we were the better team.'

            Benitez would surely have allowed himself a smile at that.

            The measure of his victory was that United's fans had given up trying to abuse him by the end.

            For United had imploded in extraordinary fashion, none more so than Nemanja Vidic.
            The Serbian defender might have been sizing up the trophies for player of the season, but if this defeat precipitates an unexpected collapse in United's season, his interventions will be pinpointed as the cause.
            Feeling fab: Liverpool's Fabio Aurelio celebrates after scoring

            A game which had belied the quality of the players on the pitch looked to be United's for the taking when Jose Reina rushed needlessly off his line on 22 minutes to fell Ji-sung Park.

            Until then, Liverpool had edged a nervous and unimpressive opening phase, but when Cristiano Ronaldo confidently stroked home the penalty, it seemed that minor rebellion had been quashed. Enter Vidic.

            Martin Skrtel hoofed the ball out of defence six minutes later and, inexplicably, the centrehalf failed to head it back down the pitch.

            Even then he had recovery time, but Fernando Torres bustled and muscled his way in front of his opponent and then dispatched the ball past Edwin van der Sar.
            Once breached, United's supposedly impregnable defence simply collapsed.

            Patrice Evra, another defender who suddenly looks unsure of his bearings, dived in on Steven Gerrard and conceded the penalty on 43 minutes which allowed the England midfielder to give Liverpool the lead.

            'After all the stick I've had from Manchester United fans over the last 10 years, it was nice to rub it in,' said Gerrard after scoring his first goal at Old Trafford.

            Indeed, nowhere is the idiocy of football's tribalism more apparent than at this game.
            One Liverpudlian from Croxteth, Wayne Rooney, went to take a corner and was idolised; another, Gerrard, from Huyton, a mile or two down the road, did the same and was abused horrendously.

            Vidic confirmed his status as principal culprit when he allowed Gerrard to get the better of him on 75 minutes.
            He then exacerbated his mistake by hauling him down and earning himself a red card as the Liverpool midfielder was racing through on goal.

            Scroll down for more



            Sealed with a kiss: Steven Gerrard poses for a cameraman after his goal

            In reality, the ball was running away towards the touchline, so Vidic's misjudgment was even more pronounced.

            If the game was slipping away in that moment, it was gone in the next when Fabio Aurelio lifted the ball over the defensive wall and nestled it in the corner of the net like a latterday Ronald Koeman.

            Van der Sar hardly moved and looked stunned. You don't concede a goal for 1,311 minutes and then three come along at once.
            The fourth was directly from the Sunday League football handbook of how not to defend.

            Scroll down for more


            Off day: Nemanja Vidic (left) is shown a red card by Alan Wiley as Jamie Carragher watches on
            Reina's goalkick was met by neither John O'Shea nor Rio Ferdinand and, as the ball bounced between the two, substitute Andrea Dossena hooked it hopefully over Van der Sar.

            The humiliation was complete. Moments before, Gerrard had spurned a better chance, driving high into the Stretford End when presented with time and space to shoot from six yards.

            He smiled, Dirk Kuyt playfully slapped his face and Old Trafford barely mustered the malice to jeer. For there was no point and that, in itself, was the greatest tribute they could afford this Liverpool team.
            THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!

            "Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.


            "It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

            Comment


            • #7
              Video : ROCKMAN

              http://www.megavideo.com/?v=CVEIMHGA
              THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!

              "Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.


              "It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

              Comment


              • #8
                Come clean Sir Alex: It was cowardice, not anger, that made you dodge the Sky TV cameras


                Last updated at 9:57 AM on 16th March 2009
                Did anyone else notice that Sir Alex Ferguson failed to give a post-match interview on Saturday?

                No? You mean you weren’t sitting at home saying 'My day has been spoiled because I couldn’t hear the wise words of the Manchester United manager'?

                After the fantastic spectacle of Liverpool thrashing the Premier League’s best team in their own backyard it might have been nice to see Ferguson bristle and bat away the embarrassment, but it was hardly essential.

                Scroll down for more

                I can't get to the Press room - I'm boxed in: Sir Alex seeks sanctuary with United fans
                The interest in Liverpool-United games is on the pitch and ducking a post-match television commitment after losing just made Ferguson look like he had bottled it.
                Apparently the reason was more anger than cowardice, the United manager showing how childish he can still be by lumping the blame on Sky for his team having to play at Saturday lunchtime.
                Never mind the fact that police input apparently held sway in deciding the timing, or that the broadcaster has just taken the lion’s share of another £1.7billion rights deal to show Premier League action.


                Ferguson thought someone had been given an advantage and because, for once, it wasn’t United he threw his toys out.
                We should probably be grateful we didn’t have to witness it.

                'We knew Torres had the beating of Vidic'

                </EM>
                Manchester United 1 Liverpool 4: Benitez identifies United 'weaknesses' in defence and Spanish striker exposes them
                By Ian Herbert

                Monday, 16 March 2009 The power of the unconscious mind. That is what Sir Alex Ferguson will learn about if, as he has suggested, he consults Sigmund Freud to help him understand Rafael Benitez. Someone needs to tell him he will be reading the wrong books. Benitez already knows his Freud, of course – from "when I was in school and university", as he said on Saturday evening – but there was nothing unconscious about the way he accomplished Liverpool's most overwhelming win at Old Trafford in 73 years and his calm explanation of it will offer Ferguson another reason to fear the Spaniard – as he certainly does – this morning.

                Related articlesWillpower? Decades of enmity? A Freudian appreciation of the unconscious power of dreams? None of them. Liverpool won simply because Manchester United "have weaknesses" in defence which go undetected because teams do not take enough possession of the ball to test their back four, he said. "They have quality, a lot of quality in attack. That is the main thing that they have," Benitez declared. "They're strong in defence because they have plenty of possession. But when they don't have the ball and you move the ball quickly and play behind the defenders, you know you can beat them." Benitez would not "talk about players" where United were concerned, though he said Liverpool had identified that Fernando Torres could beat Nemanja Vidic, whose afternoon was excruciating. "That was one of the ideas. We knew that maybe with [Torres'] movement we could create problems for the defenders."
                It was an extraordinary assertion, which spared Ferguson questions about why he persists in playing Anderson against Steven Gerrard based on one good display 15 months ago, and statistically, there is a case to be made. Chelsea did not force a single tackle from Vidic in their feckless 3-0 defeat at Old Trafford in January while Jonny Evans, deputising for Rio Ferdinand, made four, three of them unsuccessful.
                In Benitez's vast library of DVDs at Melwood will be last March's visit to Old Trafford, including the appalling hash Rio Ferdinand made of a Steven Gerrard free-kick which so surprised Torres that he stabbed wide the ball which reached him, with the goal at his mercy. United, 1-0 up at the time, extended their lead minutes later. No defence is inviolable; no side untouchable. Just ask Fabio Cannavaro and Vidic, tortured and embarrassed by the same 24-year-old Spaniard in the space of 100 hours.
                For those inclined to believe that the challenging list of sides United must face before the season runs its course – Aston Villa, Everton, Manchester City and Arsenal among them – should take heed, stop going into games like quivering wrecks and build some welcome suspense into this interminable season, the sobering facts are that none of them has a Gerrard and Torres combination and that even Liverpool, a pearl-and-swine side with a threadbare squad, will not always be able to call on the two as they journey on in Europe. Javier Mascherano provided the necessary reality check on a league table which United will lead by seven points if they win their game in hand, against Wigan. "It would be wrong of us to start talking about being in the title race again," he said. "United still have a good lead over us. If [they] don't lose then it will be really difficult to catch them. The problem is we have dropped a lot of very important points at home."
                But history may assign a significance far greater than the settings of a solitary season to Saturday 14 March 2009. It was the day when Benitez, the "fat Spanish waiter" as Mancunians like to call him, ensured that Ferguson will be checking in his soup as well as under his pasta until the day he packs in. Eight goals in four days against two of Europe's mightiest names affirm his future at Anfield and create the negotiating power to build the kind of power base Benitez wants there. Future resources are an uncertainty. "I think today in modern football the money makes a massive difference, you could see that in their substitutes. Tell me the value of these players," said Benitez, whose turnover of players is the most serious question mark against him. But Liverpool are improving and the way Benitez dismantled the hegemony of Real Madrid and Barcelona while at Valencia provides a symmetry as dreadful to Ferguson as his two league defeats against Liverpool this season. "Hopefully, he [Ferguson] will see Liverpool as a new contender. It will be good," Benitez said.
                The contrasting football philosophies – Ferguson's fire and Benitez's DVD collection; United's lustrous attacking principles and Benitez's notions that precisely that style can create space to exploit – add more colour to the tableau, even though Benitez insisted that the clubs' philosophies were the same.
                "The mentality of our club is to win, to win everything and I think United have the same mentality," he added. United certainly looked the more spiritually impoverished on Saturday, Ferguson claiming the win was fortuitous, with Rio Ferdinand suggesting that Vidic's dismissal was dubious – "I could have got over there to cover" – and that United began to "turn the screw in the second half" when 2-1 down. Neither point held water.
                United's fearlessness has led Wayne Rooney to admit that a clean sweep of five trophies is now a subject of dressing-room conversation but that challenge seems an albatross and Carrington will be a quiet place this Friday if Liverpool and United are drawn together from the Champions League quarter-final hat in Nyon. "We have confidence in Europe always," Benitez said, offering more evidence of the power of the calm and conscious mind.
                Goals: Ronaldo pen (23) 1-0; Torres (28) 1-1; Gerrard pen (44) 1-2, Aurelio (77) 1-3, Dossena (90) 1-4
                Manchester United (4-4-2) Van der Sar; O'Shea, Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra; Ronaldo, Anderson (Scholes, 73), Carrick (Giggs, 74), Park (Berbatov, 74); Tevez, Rooney. Substitutes not used: Foster (gk) Nani, Evans, Fletcher.
                Liverpool (4-2-3-1) Reina; Carragher, Skrtel, Hyypia, Aurelio; Mascherano, Lucas; Kuyt, Gerrard (El Zhar, 90), Riera (Dossena, 67); Torres (Babel, 81). Substitutes not used: Cavalieri (gk), Insua, Ngog.
                Referee: A Wiley (Staffordshire).
                Booked: Manchester United Ferdinand, Van der Sar; Liverpool Carragher, Mascherano, Skrtel.
                Sent off: Manchester United Vidic (76).
                Man of the match: Mascherano.
                Attendance: 75,569.

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                Last edited by Sir X; March 16, 2009, 07:08 AM.
                THERE IS ONLY ONE ONANDI LOWE!

                "Good things come out of the garrisons" after his daughter won the 100m Gold For Jamaica.


                "It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

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                • #9
                  We will most likely not win the premiership this year, but this sure takes away some of that disappointment. To see the great Edwin van der Sar stand motionless, watching the ball stretch the onion bag - priceless! And not just on one occasion.

                  You know, in Jamaica, Torres would have been adjudged as fouling Vidic when he ran onto the ball and scored. Our referees don't watch the game closely enuff to call the right thing.

                  How did the ManU players really want to argue against the 2nd yellow card? Clear as day!


                  BLACK LIVES MATTER

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