PREMIER LEAGUE:The gap to United has been cut to four points but nobody other than the most deluded Red will be fooled, writes ANDREW FIFIELD

FOR SOME reason best known to themselves, Liverpool City Council is attempting to persuade tired and quietly-seething London commuters that the best way of relieving their metropolitan ennui is to spend a weekend attempting to understand what people are saying on Merseyside.

Their advertising campaign - strapline "It's happening in Liverpool" - centres on the possibilities afforded by the city's main thoroughfare of Hope Street, complete with a picture of its famous marble street sign. Sadly, the upbeat message appeared to be lost on the wag that had scrawled a large "No" in blue felt-tip on one hoarding near Angel tube.

No Hope Street? Well, not quite. Yesterday's win over Manchester United - an event which, just a few days ago, looked as likely as Tom Hicks and George Gillett sharing a slice of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving - has, if you believe Rafael Benitez, led Liverpool back up Hope Street, turned left into Rampant Optimism Alley and finally arrived at Ever-So-Slightly-Deluded Square, where the bunting is already being hung in preparation for a title-winning party.

The events at Anfield yesterday were, by turn, wildly improbable and utterly predictable. This, after all, is what Liverpool do and particularly under Benitez. Improbably heroics in the 2005 Champions League final, 2006 FA Cup final and too many league and European games to mention have turned the manager into a slightly rotund version of the Hollywood hero who prefers to wait until the countdown has reached 0:01 before implementing his rescue plan.

This penchant for disaster-prevention is a useful knack, but you have to wonder whether Liverpool fans would not prefer it if their club did not invite catastrophe with such open arms and soppy smiles in the first place.

Besides, Benitez's timing has let him down. The gap to United might have been slashed to four points but nobody other than the most deluded Red will be fooled: Liverpool's consistency is simply not the stuff of title winners or, indeed, Champions League hopefuls.

For all the sound and fury bubbling around Anfield yesterday, the club still appears gripped by slow, lingering decay. Usually, the preferred cure of Liverpool fans would be the surgical extraction of one of Gillett and Hicks - or preferably both - in order to rid the club of the boardroom angst which has lingered like a bad case of toothache for the last three years. But not now. Instead, for the first time since he swept into Anfield in 2004, it is Benitez who has been identified as rotten.

This, in itself, makes Liverpool's current traumas graver than anything than has gone before. Just six months ago, Benitez was untouchable: the Hero of Istanbul, yes, but also the mastermind of a league double over United and Liverpool's biggest victory at Old Trafford since the days when the Manchester Ship Canal was an important trade route, not just somewhere to build over-priced loft apartments. It was one of the reasons Rick Parry, the former chief executive and Benitez's bete noire, was dumped during the summer, with the Spaniard assuming control of everything from player recruitment to youth development. But Benitez is discovering those powers come with great responsibilities attached. There is, to put it bluntly, nobody else left to blame when things go wrong.

Hicks and Gillett remain fiercely unpopular, and the fans who marched in protest before yesterday's game were calling for American, not Spanish, blood, but given the lack of interest from new investors, Benitez is a more vulnerable target.

His use of transfer funds - and for all his complaints to the contrary, money has been in reasonable, if not unlimited, supply - has been poor and his tactics questionable.

Even his former strengths, such as his relentlessly driven personality and refusal to become emotionally attached to his players, are now perceived as weaknesses, with the latter contributing to Xabi Alonso's messy departure in the summer.

Now, inevitably, there are snipers creeping out of every corner, and while Benitez probably cares as much for the views of Jermaine Pennant - who laid the blame for Liverpool's struggles squarely on the shoulders of his former manager last week - as he does for proposals to increase the toll for the Mersey Tunnel, the drip-drip of negative headlines is undeniably corrosive.

Benitez is a Teflon-tough competitor who has always found a way to claw himself back from the brink in the past. In 2001, he was one game from the sack with Valencia when his team travelled to Espanyol. Two down at half-time, they recovered to win 3-2.

That was a minor miracle, but Benitez needs a bigger one now. Yesterday was a good start but, given what has gone before, even Anfield's optimists will be keeping their hopes in check for the time being.

"You have to wonder whether Liverpool fans would not prefer it if their club did not invite catastrophe with such open arms and soppy smiles in the first place