James Lawton: Argentine's Brainstorm Mocks Value Of Benitez's Hard-won Investment

Javier Mascherano is rated as £17m worth of hard professional acumen. He is supposed to hold the keys of Liverpool's defence. He persuaded his manager, Rafa Benitez, that his permanent signing was crucial enough to risk everything in its pursuit. Right now, though, you wouldn't trust him to guide a pub team through a tumultuous Sunday morning. You wouldn't back him to preserve peace at the Last Supper.

But then, in the aftermath of Chelsea and England full-back Ashley Cole's anarchic contempt for the role of the referee, where would you look for a sense that big-time football has a clue about protecting its image? Not Liverpool, as they prod among the ashes of the belief that they might just finally make some impact on Manchester United's well nurtured assumption that they belong in a different, classier street.

Mascherano left Benitez in a fever of denial after a dismissal which could be attributed not so much to arrogance as relentless stupidity. "He was asking a question," Benitez protested weakly after the referee Steve Bennett, who had been a distinctly passive fourth official when Cole behaved so dismissively towards the referee Mike Riley at White Hart Lane, had shown a second yellow card to the Argentine. This was true enough, but perhaps not in the way the Liverpool manager intended.

Mascherano's question took us to the heart of football's latest public relations nightmare: how long can the authorities agonise over their free-falling reputation for maintaining even nominal respect for officials when players like Cole and now Mascherano make it so clear that they feel free to operate without a moment's reflection on possible consequences?

From the moment Mascherano was booked for his 11th-minute foul on Paul Scholes, he conducted a non-stop attempt to influence Bennett whenever United committed a transgression. This was not infrequently, but the greatest certainty of all was that Mascherano was pushing ever closer to breaking point. This came, quite irrevocably, a minute before half-time when Liverpool's Fernando Torres was booked for dissent.

Mascherano ran across the field to make his statement or, as Benitez would have it, ask his question. His eyes were wild. His face was filled with contempt. It was as though the Cole affair had never happened.

For the Football Association the point was being underlined in the most lurid colours. Anarchy was indeed marching through the first leg of what had been billed so extravagantly as Grand Slam Sunday – and was doing rather more than represent the case for a serious review of existing disciplinary measures.

As the regulation stands, Mascherano would expect an automatic one-match ban for such a sending-off, but it seems likely the case will be put in a special category. Certainly, Mascherano's behaviour made a competitive nonsense of the belief that Liverpool, a team of growing coherence in the wake of Benitez's apparent rejection of a strict rotation routine, might at last be ready to strike a winning blow at Old Trafford under Benitez. They couldn't even maintain their clean sheet against Cristiano Ronaldo, the lauded superstar who had yet to score against Liverpool or Chelsea.

Ronaldo profited from Nani's corner and a second defensive mistake by a Liverpool who had become steadily stretched in the absence of the Argentine. Mascherano, who like Ronaldo, though in a starkly different way, had been so impressive in the 2006 World Cup, had played sharply enough even as he pushed himself towards the brink.

Ronaldo? The man who the former United midfield general Pat Crerand claimed was on the point of passing George Best not just in a season's goals tally but in general genius-class accomplishment , was almost embarrassingly inconsequential but for his scoring intervention.

He went to ground with a dismaying ease and on several occasions threw up his arms when he was separated from the ball in a way which would have had Best's eyes blazing in anger and disbelief.

Still, Ronaldo will have other chances to prove that he can make an impact on more than the cannon fodder of the Premier League with coming Champions League action and, who knows, possibly significant collisions with Arsenal and Chelsea.

United's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, will certainly be comforted by Wayne Rooney's willingness to battle on in the absence of good fortune and there were moments when the England forward seemed just a stride from reigniting some of the fires of a game which never lacks a high degree of commitment.

Ferguson was no doubt also encouraged by the growing assurance of Scholes. As Liverpool began to count the cost of Mascherano's brainstorm, the veteran midfielder increasingly found the soft spots in Liverpool's resolve. They grew at an alarming rate, and not least in the increasingly ineffective performance of Steve Gerrand.

Gerrard, notionally at least a candidate to lead Fabio Capello's England, was less than a dominant figure when Mascherano finally pushed Bennett too far – and the same was true of his general performance.

While Scholes grew in authority – and facility with a stream of accurate passing – Gerrard's presence slid almost to the point of oblivion. It was the best possible development for a Ferguson who had been anxious that Grand Slam Sunday might puncture the growing conviction that United were just a step or two from confirming the weight – and the inevitability – of their title defence.

As the dusk came to Old Trafford, and Didier Drogba moved into another gear at Stamford Bridge, those fears were dwindling at a remarkable rate.

For Rafa Benitez, though, there was the desperate hope that he might just conjure another improbable run to the peak of European football. It was something he could hold on to quite perilously, though. Javier Mascherano was supposed to be a rock of hard-eyed professionalism at the heart of his team. Instead, on a day of vast importance, he had betrayed both his club and his own reputation for being a man who knew how the game worked.

What price such men now? At least, it seems, £17m.