Rafa Responds

Faster than you can say 'firm challenge', the Javier Mascherano rumours come to an abrupt halt as Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez tells the club's website, in no uncertain terms, that his man is not for sale.

Some good quotes in this one; Rafa is on form. My personal favourite:

"He has a long contract and any club can forget about bidding for him. They can offer £40m or even £50m, we don’t want to sell."

I'm not a Liverpool fan, but if I were, that is exactly the sort of thing I would want to hear the head honcho saying.

You can't really blame Benitez for adopting such a stance; he has constructed one of the finest spines in World football from back to front in Carragher, Agger/Skrtel, Mascherano, Xabi Alonso and Gerrard and to disrupt the balance and chemistry achieved by them - regardless of the club's supposed financial plight - would be quite criminal.

Another of the aforementioned players set to be put through his paces this summer is Xabi Alonso, as he has been linked with the second coming of Florentino Perez at Real Madrid, who is using the bank's money to fund his Real revolution.

Rafa may just have been the architect of this one; if Xabi does express an interest in leaving it must surely be down in part to the Gareth Barry saga of last summer, in which the Basque man with a pitching wedge for a right foot seemed the forgotten man at Anfield. Barry has left Aston Villa for Manchester City now though

For my money, Liverpool are better off with the superior Alonso anyway.