BRILLIANT, isn’t it? Just last week I used this column to make a plea that the obvious constraints placed on Rafa Benitez during the transfer window should not be used as the stimulus for another session of chest-beating about our absentee owners and their financial mismanagement of the club.

Not because they are not guilty of such a charge; just that it would provide another excuse for our under-performing manager and players to duck the blame for this season’s debacle and provide further ammunition to the media to paint us as a crisis club, paving the way for the apparently inevitable exit of Gerrard, Torres and anybody else a bit miffed we may not be playing Champions league football next season.

So what do we get? Another blundering intervention by a member of our favourite American family: this time Bart stealing the initiative from dad Homer, sending a foul-mouthed email to a customer that would have got him the sack in almost any company you can think of.

And before you could say ‘Doh!’, sure enough the inevitable happened and a swift apology was accompanied by a resignation from the board.

Next thing we’re back on the BBC Six O’Clock News, complete with ‘vox pops’ with disaffected fans and archive footage of anti-American banners on the Kop. Just what we needed, another PR disaster.

Predictably, the media made a beeline for a Spirit of Shankly representative, only too willing to provide them with the strong rhetoric. Job done.

Now I confess to being conflicted about the Spirit of Shankly. On the one hand I don’t doubt their intentions are well-meaning, on the other I’m nervous of groups who unilaterally assume the cloak and implied approval of our great icon and profess to speak for all fans. Some of their tactics also concern me. But my chief objection is to the uncompromising, single message of ‘YANKS OUT’, which to me seems naive and potentially damaging to our longer-term interest.