I can't wait to discuss this with my Scouser tenant
Mascherano was absolutely off his head in the game. In my opinion, he was lucky to remain on the pitch as long as he did. Even after that nasty lunging tackle on Scholes, he could have gotten an extra yellow for telling the ref to "fuck off" (I can lip read something that blatant) and the constant beaking at the ref for the rest of the half was just begging to be sent off.
It was so ridiculously insane that it was beyond belief. Even without the Cole incident in midweek, he would still have been riding the rails of dissent against the ref. Who on earth did he think he was going over to beak at the ref over Torres' booking? I have no idea what Torres said to the ref, but that did seem like a rather soft booking to me in all fairness. Maybe he thought he was covering for Captain Invisible or something, but there should be a better candidate than the hothead who'd been pissing the ref off the entire half.
I thought Bennet had a pretty fair game, although booking Rio for clearing the ball was a bit over the top. He showed pretty admirable restraint in not giving Mascherano the second yellow until the twit ran half the width of the pitch to force the issue.
Mascherano was quite simply a twit for getting his stupid self sent off, and Rafa is being a twit for trying to defend the indefensible. We had the game by the scruff of the neck by halftime anyway, so I don't think it altered the eventual outcome too much.
In fact, Rafa should consider himself lucky he wasn't down to 10 men after 5 minutes when Carrager almost hauled Rooney down in the box when he was clean through on goal. I do admire Rooney's honesty, but if he had gone down, it would have been a penalty and a straight red.