HE just couldn’t help himself, could he?

Despite being told by all and sundry that grumpy outbursts only make things worse, the voices in Rafael Benitez’s head eventually got the better of him and he reached for the Roy Evans Big Book of Excuses.

And according to the random page he opened it on, only one team tried to win Sunday’s FA Cup tie, and it wasn’t the one that actually led in the tie; the one that was on course to go through into the next round were it not for a goalkeeping mistake.

No, it was the home team.

The one with pretensions around winning the league title but who created only a couple of clear-cut chances in over 180 minutes of football against their injury-ravaged neighbours.

They were the ones who, according to Benitez, came out of last week’s games with credit.

Now the managers of all the top sides have a tendency to heap praise on opponents they’ve just battered, while pouring scorn on those they can’t break down – it’s pretty much par for the course.

However, it’s one thing coming from Arsene Wenger, a manager who only builds teams that attack and try to play great football – possibly to their own detriment at times – and another hearing Benitez, the game’s arch-pragmatist, moan about a side putting men behind the ball.

After all, one of the Spaniard’s most admirable achievements at Anfield is the way he has turned them from soft touches into arguably the most dreaded cup opponents in Europe.

And when they came to Goodison in September, everyone at Everton more or less acknowledged that their greater desire and workrate put us to shame.