Rafa's Rant

"Jose said he wouldn't be talking about Liverpool this season - maybe his memory is not so good".

This is the kind of comment we're used to hearing from Rafa Benitez, and it's as close as he normally comes to controversy. Barbed, but understated - he gets his point across without coming off as a rabid madman infuriated by (usually) Mourinho's comments. It has appeared, for four years, that Benitez is a quiet, laid-back student of the game, a hard man to rile. It's hard to imagine him throwing tea cups around a dressing room, or giving any player the Alex Ferguson hairdryer treatment. This, lets not forget, is the man who sat cross-legged, Buddha like, whilst watching penalties in the Champions League semi-final against his greatest managerial rival. Cucumbers envy his cool.

This week however, Rafa has well and truly "chucked a mental". Totally and utterly lost it. Maybe it's his new beard, and he's totally f**ked off with being called "Max" every day in training. Maybe Mrs Benitez isn't putting out this season, because of his newly spiky face. Maybe his fantasy football team is as s**t as mine, cos Dean Ashton can't get a f**king game. Whatever the reasons, Rafa has clearly had some steam building, and the Heinze ruling this week has been the catalyst for one almighty venting.

In what will surely come as a shock to all of you reading, I have to say I agree with pretty much everything he said, although I'm certainly surprised at the extent to which it's upset him. I'll deal with his points one by one, because as funny as it was hearing him go off on one, he raised some pretty valid questions.

Firstly, the Heinze ruling itself. I'm certain there's only a fraction of the information on this one that has made it into the public domain, nobody knows what the f**k has been going on there. I don't believe for one minute that Liverpool FC and it's numerous lawyers took the matter this far purely on the basis of a bit of paper nowhere near as legally binding as Heinze's actual contract. This has indeed been a murky matter, hence the need for an arbitration panel rather than a statement of "don't be so bloody stupid, he's Man United's player". European contract law comes into things, as do certain quotes (which haven't been made public) attributed to Man Utd's Chief Exec, in conversation with Heinze's agent. What we do know though (and even Alex Ferguson pointed this much out) is that Liverpool thought they had a watertight case, or the whole thing wouldn't have happened. Benitez is clearly frustrated with what he feels is an unjust decision.

What REALLY p**sed Benitez off though, was the implications coming out of Old Trafford that Liverpool were involved in tapping up Heinze. From a club that is well known for sending out replica shirts to transfer targets with their name on the back, (Paul Ince, Mexes, Hargreaves) accusations of transfer irregularities seem rich. These accusations were apparently levelled again at the tribunal, presumably with the aim of bringing Liverpool to book for the supposed infringements. Reading back over the quotes Benitez made about the affair prior to the tribunal, it's hard to back these claims up.

If that was all Benitez had got angry about, not many would have been surprised. However, he's clearly decided the men in charge of English football are a complete bunch of f**kwits, and decided to let loose on a range of issues. Between now and the end of the season, Liverpool are already scheduled to play FOUR early Saturday kickoffs following International fixtures. By anyone's reckoning that seems excessive, and Benitez has rightly pointed out that Liverpool were the Premiership side most involved in early morning kickoffs last season, following both International and European fixtures. When your key players (or whole squad) have just travelled half the length of Europe, the last thing you want is to have to play at noon on a saturday, especially when all your rivals have convenient 4pm Sunday kickoffs. Now I'm not suggesting there's a hidden fixture agenda at the Premier League, and neither is Benitez. All he's saying (and rightly) is that someone should have probably noticed and amended this discrepancy. For it to happen over a whole season is an oversight. For it to happen over two is downright incompetent.

Next he turned his attention to the Rob Styles debate, still raging from Sunday. In the bearded one's opinion, (that's Rafa, not me) it's not referees who should carry most of the blame in situations like the one at Anfield. That's an area where I disagreed, until I heard what came next. I still think Styles is a useless c**t, who should never referee in this country again, but Rafa rightly pointed out some mitigating circumstances. Firstly, Florent Malouda wants hauling by the balls over the embers of a Newquay hotel, so blatant and disgusting was his dive that conned the ref. He didn't just fall over, he fell INTO a player in order that there'd be contact. He really tried to back up his theatrics, and is clearly a pro in the art of being a cheating t**t.

Secondly, Styles perhaps felt he owed Chelsea, so incredulously did they surround him every time he gave a decision Liverpool's way. The (clearly organised) protests of the Chelsea players must have had Styles thinking he'd dropped more than one clanger in Liverpool's favour. Watching on TV, from time to time even I thought Chelsea had been hard done by on occasion, so vehement were the denials. Except we had the benefit of replays, where we could see they were just being a bunch of cheating cockney b******s. Benitez' point, basically, is that referees are human. If you've got eleven guys deliberately trying to con them, by going to ground whenever possible and by debating every possible decision in order to undermine their self-belief, then they ARE going to make mistakes. He even suggested that certain clubs (Chelsea) target certain referees (Styles) as they know they're more prone to folding under the pressure. This is clearly a disgraceful and disgusting state of affairs, especially from the most expensively assembled group of players in English football history, who shouldn't have to resort to such tactics.

I always loved the understated, studious Rafa. And I must be honest, when I first heard his rant I was slightly amused, but also slightly alarmed, thinking back to the cracking-up Kevin Keegan's "I'd love it" monologue. It wasn't until I'd read his quotes through a couple of times and gone away and thought about it that I realised two things - A) pretty much everything he said was true, and B) it's about time somebody in the game said it. And you can say what you like, but a mild-mannered slightly shy performance in a press conference doesn't get your comments noticed half as much as a balls-out mentalist rant.

I still think he's sick of being likened to Peter Kay, and if he's got Ashton in his fantasy team that'll be p**sing him off just as much as it is me, but I also think he was 100% justified in not only saying what he did, but in how he said it. More of the same please Rafa, it's time we told the whingers, the divers, the tappers-up and the authorities exactly what we think of their antics. They've all got away with it for too long.