COMMENT: Javier Mascherano must take responsibility for his actions

Mar 24 2008

RAFAEL BENITEZ needn’t have worried about comparisons to Roy Keane going to Javier Mascherano’s head.

But it was when they went to his mouth that the problems deepened for the Liverpool manager yesterday.

What disappointed Benitez most is that it wasn’t exactly a Keane-style rant that led to the demise of his midfield enforcer.

This wasn’t the vein-bulging, eye- popping intimidation that Andy D’Urso had thrust in his face at this ground eight years ago – an incident even serial referee sympathiser Sir Alex Ferguson admitted he was ashamed of in the build-up to yesterday’s game.

Mascherano might share many traits with Keane but no-one can do ‘angry’ quite as well as the former Old Trafford skipper.

Yet the Argentinian does have to take responsibility for his own actions.

If a referee is dishing out a yellow card for back-chat to one of your team-mates, you don’t run half the width of the pitch to join in the dissent when you’re already on a booking yourself. But it won’t be lost on Benitez that Mascherano was yesterday something of a fashion victim. The first to be made an example of by officials keen to set a trend.

All seemingly because – breaking news – Ashley Cole showed someone some disrespect. So Cole is allowed a potentially leg-snapping lunge, followed by the equivalent of a two- fingered salute to Mike Riley’s authority, then a PR stunt disguised as grovelling apology.

The Chelsea left-back comes out of it all with a yellow card and Mascherano is left to pick up the pieces of that mess with two of them.

So the sum of his crimes – the first being a badly timed but in no way malicious scything of Paul Scholes ­– is deemed twice as bad as those of Cole only four days earlier.

However, in the context of ‘disrespect’ being the buzzword of the week, Mascherano is the fall guy of those morally lop-sided circumstances.

Maybe he should have been wiser to it and kept his mouth shut. But surely Bennett should have been wise to the fact that you can’t impose gagging orders when emotions are running high in the biggest club fixture of the Premier League season.

Still. Mascherano mouthed off and, just like Keane used to, he single-handedly and comprehensively turned the game in United’s favour.

Not that they weren’t well on top before Mascherano departed just before half-time, but halting United’s relentless surge with a full side is difficult enough. With a man down, it’s like trying to stop Sky’s horrible week-long hype ahead of ‘Grand Slam Sunday’. Impossible.

Liverpool actually made a better fist of it for periods in the second half as the home side’s complacency threatened to cost them an equaliser.

But the absence of Mascherano was always more likely to lead to what happened late on, with Pepe Reina more exposed than Paul Jewell as things gradually unravelled in front of him.

The controversial sending-off aside, however, events only once again underlined Liverpool’s limitations in keeping pace with the genuine title challengers.

Cristiano Ronaldo had a subdued afternoon yet still scored his 34th of the season, while Wes Brown and Nani were able to come up with decisive contributions when then big guns weren’t firing on all cylinders.

Liverpool don’t have those luxuries. Benitez at least got one thing right ahead of the fixture that always goes wrong for him when he predicted United would be just as worried about Fernando Torres as they were about Ronaldo.

And he was spot on – they were worried to the point of obsession.

If Torres saw off Vidic, Ferdinand was all over him. If he eluded them both to get into a shooting position, Carrick was covering.

It was almost as if United knew that they could afford to plough all their resources into stopping Torres.

That if they gave Ryan Babel room, his final ball would let him down every time and that Dirk Kuyt wouldn’t have the guile and invention to make any useful contribution with whatever space or possession he was afforded.

And there was the difference. United can haul match-winners out from the back of the sofa, Liverpool’s are on display for all visitors to see. If they can’t produce it in the big games – and Steven Gerrard stood no chance once the gap where Mascherano once was beckoned him back in – nobody is there to pick up the baton.

So United benefited from having one extra man. And it’s looking increasingly like Liverpool will have just that one extra league title in the record books come May.