Reds may have missed the bus

AND on and on it goes. If it were fiction, the story of this season’s title race would surely be rejected as too far-fetched.
For Steven Gerrard, of all people, Captain Fantastic, Mr Reliable, inspiration and to whom only a curmudgeon would deny a title medal, to make the decisive blunder! For Fernando Torres, of all people, once a hero of the Kop but now a Chelsea flop and booed at every step, to make the final, killing break.
How glad the Spaniard must have been to have an accomplice alongside to gently deliver the coup de grace!
For Luis Suarez, Footballer of the Year, to produce his least effective game of the season when it mattered most!
And for Jose Mourinho, just when even his fans in the media were tiring of his antics and wondering if he was finally losing it, to produce a second trademark defensive, spoiling, irritating, time-wasting, bus-parking masterclass in a week!
Manchester City gratefully capitalised on the Chelsea gift to become new favourites but it would be a brave man who’d bet on this being the final twist. City still have to go to Everton, of all people, who have not given up on their own Champions League ambitions and are City’s bogey team.
Irony doesn’t begin to describe what it would feel like if Liverpool’s title hopes were revived by their quiet but eternally jealous neighbours.
So what can we glean from this latest episode of a scarcely credible epic that the makers of 24 might have hesitated to script?
It tells us that Mourinho is a genius, a flawed one, but a genius and that Chelsea are the most magnificently cussed defenders on the planet. Against the other three of the top four teams, the Portuguese has taken 16 out of a possible 18 points.
A week after castigating him for his antics, this column is saluting him. That’s the conundrum, that’s the man, the most controversial of our times.
There is no one better – or worse, if such tactics are not to your taste – at stifling an opponent and then picking his pocket the moment he’s off-guard.
Nor is it all down to him. Chelsea never did it better than against Barcelona and Bayern to win the 2012 Champions League trophy – before the Special One returned. Cussedness is in their DNA.
Another supreme irony is that Roman Abramovich bought the club to see glorious attacking football: he’s ended up with the polar opposite. But credit must be given to Mourinho, however much we dislike his dark side.
To drill a team to defend with their lives, to eradicate mistakes, pull every stunt, waste every second, rile every opponent, fan and neutral alike… and wait until your adversary’s guard slips and then strike suggests uncommon motivational and organisational skills.
Indeed, to get a team to do this on a consistent basis, concede possession and take what appears to be a pounding requires a rigour and discipline the Spartans would have been proud of.
When it was done to him, he called it parking the bus. On Sunday Rodgers claimed there were two buses. What a pity the Special One never got the LRT contract.
What we saw on Sunday was rope-a-dope. It was Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. Like Chelsea at Anfield, Ali went into their 1974 fight in Zaire as the underdog. Foreman was king of the heavyweights back then, having just annihilated Joe Frazier. Like Liverpool, he seemed unstoppable.
But Ali, like Mourinho, devised a plan. It was to let Foreman attack him, stay on the ropes, parry the blows and wait until he punched himself out. In the eighth round, with Foreman a spent force, Ali knocked him out.
Like Ali, Mourinho did not wait until the bell to start the mind games. Where the boxer made sure the crowd was on his side, Mourinho managed to lull Liverpool into thinking the title was theirs.
After the Sunderland defeat, he said he would field a weakened team. “I’ll have to play the kids,” he whined.
Then he went weak himself, apparently travelling separately from his players and going into “quarantine”. Even subliminally, Liverpool may well have thought they were going to meet a bunch of wet-behind-the ears teenagers with an absent manager.
There’s no way of knowing if it was a ruse but you wouldn’t put anything past him.
Then came the time-wasting - from the kickoff. It got up Liverpool’s nose and despite warnings from the referee, did not amount to more than three minutes of added time. Another irony was that in that time, Gerrard slipped and Demba Ba pounced.
It was a shattering defeat for Liverpool and may have taken a lot out of them. They were not their usual selves, missing Jordan Henderson and (from the start) Daniel Sturridge.
They were effectively smothered and the crowd was soon subdued. Expectations had been too high, they had wanted it too much but will have learned a valuable lesson. Alas for Gerrard, it may never come now.
But it is not over. Newcastle at home is surely a given but Crystal Palace away must still be negotiated. Awkward customers of late, there will be no more assumptions but as Tony Pulis acknowledged, now they’re safe, there was “an edge missing” from Palace’s play.
And City could still slip up – especially at Everton.
Chelsea could sneak it but their best chance – even with a weakened team – is the Champions League where neither Real Madrid nor Bayern will relish meeting them in the final should they get past Atletico tomorrow.
But now we’ve seen Chelsea play like this in a transitional season, you have to wonder what they’ll be like next time around when Mourinho has the team he really wants.
It could be that he’s already nearer to a title-winning side than either City or Liverpool, both of whom need a bit of surgery. With patience wearing thin in the corridors of power and even his pals losing faith, he will never be more motivated.
A new book The Special One: The dark side of Jose Mourinho has just come out detailing his dirty tricks in Spain.
Opinion remains divided. To image-conscious romantics such as Bobby Charlton, in the space of eight days he’s demonstrated just why Manchester United didn’t want him; to results-orientated pragmatists, he showed just why they should have hired him.