February 21, 2009
Rafael Benitez tells rivals: don't fear Manchester United
Rafael Benitez: take issue with Wenger 'to say United are untouchable is not right'
Rafael Benítez has sent out a message to the rest of the Barclays Premier League, urging other teams not to be intimidated by Manchester United’s reputation as “untouchables”.
Arsène Wenger declared this week that United “look untouchable” even before they went five points clear at the top of the table, having not conceded a goal in their past 14 league matches. But Benítez, whose Liverpool side remain in hot pursuit of the champions, has taken issue with the Arsenal manager’s description of Sir Alex Ferguson’s team.
“In football, anything can happen,” Benítez said. “They [United] are a good team, for sure, but to say they are untouchable is not right.
“I’m sure that you can see a lot of games where they weren’t playing that well and weren’t scoring a lot of goals. I think the other teams know that, until the last few games, they were winning a lot of games 1-0, but then, after two or three results, people are talking about the whole season. Clearly they are a very good team with very good players, but we think we can beat them when we play them [at Old Trafford on March 14]. Clearly there is a big gap in the table, but we can reduce the gap if we win our games.”
Benítez believes that the title race could be affected by the resumption of the Champions League next week, with United visiting Inter Milan on Tuesday and Liverpool travelling to Real Madrid 24 hours later. Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool captain, is expected to be fit to face Real, despite having been ruled out of their match against Manchester City tomorrow.
By then, United hope to have moved eight points clear by beating Blackburn Rovers at Old Trafford this evening, but Ferguson drew on bitter experience — when his team conceded a far bigger lead to Arsenal — to warn about the pitfalls ahead. “In 1998 it was a foregone conclusion that we would win the league until we came to the beginning of March,” he said.
“Injuries played their part and, when you lose a game, it gives the team chasing you real encouragement.”
It is not only rival managers who are encouraging the perception of a one-horse race, with Paddy Power, the bookmaker, having already paid out on United becoming champions again. Ferguson said: “It’s only a gimmick. I haven’t had my bonus yet [from the club]. I only get that when we win the league, so I’ll have to keep working.”