Will Rafa lift title? Not by the hair on his chinny chin chin

TV View:When the Sky Sports reporter asked Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez yesterday, before the game against Chelsea, if his new goatee beard "will stay until you win the title" we were moved to look up the record books, where we found a reference to a Norwegian man, Hans Langseth, who, on his death in 1927, had a beard that was 17 feet, six inches long. The stuff of Victor Kiam's nightmares.

Further research yielded the fact that, on average, a beard grows half an inch a month.

If we pressed the right buttons on our calculator, and we quite probably didn't, that means Liverpool only have to go title-less for another 34-ish years for Rafa to beat Hans's record. We're saying nothing.

But then we began to wonder. A glance at the Premiership table before the game at Anfield showed Manchester City and Wigan on top, Manchester United slugging it out in the relegation zone with Derby, Bolton and the like.

All we could conclude was that everything we thought we knew was wrong. So, maybe mad stuff will happen this season, like Derby staying up and Rafa being clean-shaven come May.

True, there are 35 games to go, so maybe we're being a little hasty penning an obit for United's title hopes, just as, perhaps, Sky's Richard Keyes was being a touch premature when he almost billed the clash of Liverpool and Chelsea as a title decider.

Maybe it's the weather that has Richard thinking this is April - it was, after all, quite showery yesterday - but there's plenty of time for normal service to be resumed - eg, for Wigan and City to plummet hopelessly in an entirely downward direction, for United to be planting their flag on the summit come Christmas, and for Liverpool to beat Arsenal, Chelsea and United away, before drawing with Birmingham, Middlesbrough and Fulham at home, thus guaranteeing Rafa will be tripping over his goatee next summer.

Or, cripes, maybe Liverpool will win the title. While we're on the subject of improbables: asked on Football Focus on Saturday if he believed there was any chance of his beloved Blues beating United in the Manchester derby, the City fan grimaced, shook his head solemnly and responded thus: "We tend to struggle against teams in the bottom half of the table."

Now, that class of cheek is only asking for a hiding, which City didn't get, largely because they won. "They looked to lack a Plan B," said Jamie Redknapp of United, when, to be honest, we struggled to detect a Plan A.

Jamie, though, thought it was a little early for United to panic, while suggesting they seriously needed to do some panic buying this week. No problem at left-back, however; he's a big fan of Patrice Evra, whose murderous display in the Community Shield he so admired: "That was great skill; he has literally left him for dead."

As for Liverpool and Chelsea, well, we were with Rafa when he described that penalty decision as "hunbileebabal". With luck like that he'll go to his grave with a goatee.

Jose Mourinho, meanwhile, reckoned Chelsea deserved their point for their swashbuckling approach to the game: ie, they played one-and-a-half men up front. There's "a different style, a different smell" to Chelsea's football this season, he said.

Jamie wasn't convinced. Clothes-peg-pinching his nose, he reckoned Liverpool were robbed, the pong of Chelsea's penalty leaving him for dead. Literally.

"He has the face of a man that doesn't suggest clean living at all times," Joe Brolly didn't say of Jamie's boy-band visage; he was referring to Cork's Noel O'Leary - call him anything but a shrinking violet - after viewing a replay of his tete-a-tete with Graham Geraghty at half-time in yesterday's All-Ireland semi-final.

Tony Davis reminded Brolly that O'Leary had "seven brothers", so it was best not to insult the fella. From there on in Brolly, like Meath, showed nothing but deference to Cork, and all who sailed in her.

Which came as something of a surprise to those of us who had wondered who Meath would play in the final, Kerry or Dublin.

"You can't come out of the blue and win an All-Ireland; you must have an arse on your trousers," said Brolly, explaining why we'd got it so wrong.

"You can't come out of the blue and win a Premiership; you must have an arse on your trousers," we just cannot quite imagine Jamie saying of Liverpool.

Meanwhile, Rafa's goatee just keeps on a-growin'.