PREMIER LEAGUE:The importance of 'mind games' in title races has always smacked of being a touch over-egged, writes Andrew Fifield
ONLY RAFAEL Benitez could rant from a script. The Spaniard comes from the school of football management which insists there is no conundrum which cannot be cracked without the aid of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and is the sort of character who would laminate his shopping list given half the chance.
So, when the chance presented itself to train both barrels at Alex Ferguson at his weekly press briefing last Friday, there was never much chance of Benitez allowing red rage to reduce him to 16 stone of quivering Iberian jelly.
No rolling eyes or foaming mouth for him: in fact, his so-called "rant" was nothing of the sort. Benitez merely recited Ferguson's list of alleged misdemeanours with all the emotion of someone placing an order for a 12" American Hot with extra jalapeno peppers.
It was enjoyable, nonetheless. Today's Premier League is such a sanitised, sterile environment that any moment of outspokenness - however premeditated - is to be welcomed and especially when it involves two of the top-flight's A-list. It hardly needs to be said that the furore would have lost some of its piquancy had the protagonists been, say, Gary Megson and Tony Mowbray: far more entertaining to watch two big cats tear into each other than a pair of fluffy kittens.
Yet, beyond the immediate rash of juicy headlines and jammed phone-in lines, it's hard to see the spat having any lasting significance.
The importance of "mind games" in title races has always smacked of being a touch over-egged. Even Kevin Keegan's infamous televised melt-down in 1996 - now that's a real rant, Rafa - was little more than an amusing postscript to a championship battle that was already as good as dead.
The real damage to Newcastle's hopes had been inflicted by Manchester United's relentlessly high standards in the second half of that season and the rebirth of Eric Cantona, not the odd waspish comment from Fergie. It's why Keegan would have "loved it" had the tables been turned on the final weekend: he already knew the game was up.
Similarly, those who are attributing Liverpool's lame performance against Stoke on Saturday to disquiet over their manager's public ramblings are surely clutching at the flimsiest of straws.
Liverpool have laboured against the lesser lights all season - as, indeed, have all the elite clubs in this peculiarly topsy-turvy year. And while deciding to name one of Europe's best strikers on the substitutes' bench for a game that could have established a six-point lead at the league summit might, for some managers, be a sign of cracking up, for Benitez it was simply par for the course. His team selections are perhaps the only part of his managerial methodology which cannot be labelled predictable.
When all the hype and hysteria is stripped away, both managers can feel justified. Benitez's suggestion that Ferguson can ride rough-shod over football convention has been privately voiced by figures in football's governing bodies for years, and the only regret was that he did not go further. But maybe the allegations of brazen tapping-up, systematic bullying and snide assessments of any of his fellow managers who refuse to kow-tow to his authority are for another day.
Equally, Ferguson surely had a point when he suggested Liverpool will start to feel nervous if they are still in contention when bums start to produce some spring-time squeaks.
Winning used to be stamped into the Merseysiders' DNA but they have now been fermenting self-doubt for over 18 years. It would be frankly bizarre if the Kop was not assailed by the odd nervous twinge as the season rolls on, just as Ferguson's side crumbled under the weight of more than 20 years of failure when contesting the 1991-92 league title with Leeds United.
United only ended their own barren streak the following year by romping into a position of such impregnable strength by April that there was never any chance of a late collapse.
It is always the way in sport: the home straight of any race is always the most draining, the final few overs of any run-chase always the most taxing. It is down to Benitez, as a grizzled veteran of successful La Liga campaigns with Valencia, where he refused to be brow-beaten by the combined might and influence of Real Madrid and Barcelona, to keep Liverpool focused as the season reaches its frenetic endgame.
It will be his performance and that of his team which will determine whether the league title will return to Anfield. All the rest - the mind games, the jibes and the insults - are simply sound and fury, signifying nothing.
