In April 1988, a 46-year-old Alex Ferguson, not yet knighted and virtually the same age as Jose Mourinho is now, gave his take on how Liverpool benefited from refereeing decisions. "I can understand why clubs come away from Anfield choking on their own vomit and biting their tongues knowing they have been done by the referee," he said. "It would be a miracle to win here. I am not getting at this referee. It is the whole intimidating atmosphere and the monopoly they [Liverpool] have enjoyed here for years that gets to the referees eventually."
More than 20 years on, despite all that Ferguson has said since, that quotation is one of his most memorable. In fact you can still buy T-shirts in Manchester bearing those words. Coming after a 3-3 draw it became the defining take on the perceived bias of referees towards Liverpool at Anfield. It was argued over for months. The point is not whether Ferguson was right or wrong. The point is that people remembered. The point is that referees remembered.
If Rafael Benitez's invective yesterday against United was designed to do anything then it was designed to stick in people's minds, especially the part about United players haranguing referees and getting decisions at Old Trafford. Liverpool fans, spare me the pious emails telling me he is right. This is not about right or wrong – and who on earth could ever judge which team gets the most decisions at home? It is about having a calculated effect on referees in a title run-in that is heating up nicely.
Ferguson is a bully. In fact he's brilliant at it. After the FA Cup third round tie against Southampton, the manager Jan Poortvliet said, as respectfully as possible, that Ferguson stood up once in the whole game and after that every decision went for him. He may well be right, but does anyone seriously expect Ferguson not to use his 23 years of unprecedented success, his fame, his forceful personality to give himself an advantage? There is no manager who would not do the same.
Benitez has taken Ferguson on at his own game and for that he deserves admiration. It is testament to his own understated way of going about things that he had every argument typed out in bullet points on a sheet of paper. Ferguson prefers the molten-eruption, phlegm-flecked, finger-jabbing approach. Benitez delivered in the manner of a geologist giving a lecture on soil erosion.
The desired effect for the Liverpool manager is that every referee in charge of a United game from tomorrow to the end of the season is eager not to be the man fingered for caving into Ferguson. It will be the issue that grips us from now on: is Benitez right? And that is just the way the Liverpool manager wants it. If one referee has a moment of doubt because of what Benitez has said and denies United accordingly then, for Liverpool, it will have been worth it.
Ferguson will have to come back at Benitez, he will have to do so in order to defend his team. He has been here before, to a lesser degree, when Arsène Wenger accused the Neville brothers of targeting Jose Antonio Reyes in the famous 49-game unbeaten run-ending match in October 2004. Never mind the "Battle of the Buffet" that ensued, Ferguson was most concerned to address a public perception that his team were dirty because he realised how damaging that could be.
If you have any sympathy, save it for the referees who find themselves in a no-win situation. No one can actually remember whether that decision to send off Colin Gibson that sparked Ferguson's rant almost 21 years ago was right or not. They do not recall whether Steve McMahon should have been sent off too, which he also believed. They just recall the impression that Liverpool got decisions at home. Which is exactly the same legacy – albeit with referees at Old Trafford – that Benitez wishes to create.
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