FA PREMIER LEAGUE: Hull City 1 Liverpool 3: ROY KEANE may harbour contempt for runners-up but Rafael Benitez knows finishing second often demands congratulations.
It would take some serious self-destruction on Manchester United’s part for Alex Ferguson’s team to let the Premier League title slip now but Liverpool remain poised to push them all the way and Benitez believes his players deserve plaudits.
“You always talk about trophies and you have to be contending but, in England, there are so many strong sides and it’s not easy,” said Liverpool’s manager. “But the team, the squad, has shown that it’s better now. This season’s experience will be a fantastic help for the next few years because we are in a position now that we were not before.”
That Ferguson is sufficiently bothered by Benitez to have come out with all that nonsense about the Spaniard supposedly “disrespecting” Sam Allardyce during a recent game against Blackburn and, ludicrously, depicting his Anfield counterpart’s behaviour as being “beyond the pale” speaks volumes about Liverpool’s progress. Not to mention their potential for upsetting the Old Trafford apple cart next season.
Keane’s big mistake at Sunderland was trying to move too far too fast but Benitez appreciates the importance of baby steps and his, sometimes frustratingly, patient attempts to build a title-winning side now look tantalisingly close to reaching fruition.
Admittedly Liverpool were not at their best against a Hull ensemble who seem to have finally recaptured some of their early-season drive but, having weathered a few home attacking storms, emerged with those, albeit slender, hopes of overtaking United intact.
Caleb Folan’s second-half dismissal for a stupid kick at Martin Skrtel clearly helped the Merseysiders but Benitez insisted his squad – for whom Pepe Reina experienced a few uncharacteristic wobbles – were always on course for victory.
“These kinds of games, which we’d been drawing in the past, have to be the difference in the future,” he stressed. “It was difficult because Hull were pushing us but there’s a big difference when you know you can win. It’s not ‘we’ll see what happens’ now. This time we say ‘we can win because we are better than the other team’.”
Such positive thinking is right up Phil Brown’s street and, typically, Hull’s manager applied his own psychological spin by emphasising that his team were very much on-message. “These players are one million per cent behind their manager and that makes me very proud,” declared a man who has seen Hull win just one league game since he gave them a half-time St Stephen’s Day lecture on the Manchester City pitch.
Brown is acutely sensitive to suggestions he “lost” his dressingroom that day but, for all his faults, he does not lack either humour or a certain charm and regular Hull watchers believe such qualities have enabled him slowly to win round some of those who felt betrayed at Eastlands.
Despite ending in defeats, their last two games have seen a marked upsurge in performance and, with Geovanni seemingly finally forgetting his differences with Brown and playing for the manager again, Hull are not yet doomed to relegation.
Tellingly, their mini improvement has coincided with George Boateng’s impressive return to central-midfield enforcement duties following a serious knee injury.
Even so, Boateng was largely responsible for Liverpool’s opener after fouling Javier Mascherano and conceding a free-kick from which Xabi Alonso, whose initial strike rebounded off the wall, volleyed beyond Boaz Myhill at the second attempt.
When the excellent Dirk Kuyt headed the second it looked game over but, whatever Ferguson claims, Benitez is not one to trust two-goal leads. He duly endured a few anxious moments after the unmarked Geovanni guided Daniel Cousin’s cutback home and waited until the 89th minute for Kuyt’s scrambled second.
Guardian Service
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