Sir Alex Ferguson branded Rafael Benítez “ridiculous” and “disturbed” last night after a 3-0 win over Chelsea took Manchester United to within five points of Liverpool at the top of the Barclays Premier League with two games in hand. Goals from Nemanja Vidic, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov inflicted Chelsea's heaviest defeat since February 2006 to extend their miserable run to one win in five league matches and raise further questions about their own title challenge.

Ferguson was full of praise for his side after seeing them keep an eighth successive clean sheet in the league, but he also made a point of responding to Benítez's claims that he intimidates referees and exercises too much influence on the Football Association.

The governing body could yet write to the United manager asking him to explain his comments regarding the fixture list, but the Scot poured scorn on Benítez's complaints. For his part, the Liverpool manager was unrepentant, arguing yesterday that David Gill, the United chief executive, is too powerful an influence at Soho Square.

“I think you have got to cut through the venom of it and hopefully he'll reflect and understand that what he said was absolutely ridiculous,” Ferguson said. “I think he was an angry man, I think he was disturbed for some reason or another.

“They are not facts because it's well documented, but I'm not going to get into that because we should concentrate on chasing the leaders and we have got games in hand, so we want to try and catch them up.”

United can go top before Liverpool are next in action - at home to Everton a week today - if they beat Wigan Athletic at home on Wednesday and win away to Bolton Wanderers on Saturday. The one piece of bad news for the champions was a back spasm that ruled out Rio Ferdinand against Chelsea. The defender will have a scan today.

“We have got all the main teams at home and we really need to win those games,” Ferguson said. “We have got the first one out of the way. We have got Wigan on Wednesday, who are playing fantastically well, and then Bolton, which is always a tough game, so there are a lot of interesting matches in the next few weeks. January is a big month for us, we have got about eight games, but we have got the squad and hopefully we can cope.”

Chelsea have proved less resilient as they have taken only ten points from the last 24 and Luiz Felipe Scolari, the manager, made little attempt to defend his team. The Brazilian admitted that Chelsea will not win the championship if they continue to underperform, although as they are only four points behind Liverpool, he refused to concede the title.

“If we play three or four more games like this, we will not win the league, but now is the time for me and the players to think about our future,” Scolari said. “Have we lost everything or are we men who can improve?

“Respond in the first of those ways and the team will be dead. I am not a man for this and neither are my players. Don't think that because we lose one game we are finished. We have 17 games left and will fight until the very end.”

A bad day for Chelsea was compounded by a small section of their fans offering a sick song expressing the wish that Cristiano Ronaldo had died in the car crash in which he was involved on Thursday, bringing an appropriate response from Scolari.

“I said to Ronaldo today, 'Pray every day to God and say thank you.' He should be happy to be alive,” Scolari said. “I don't know what they [the fans] said as my focus is the game. Ronaldo knows I like him very much.”