Manchester United neverdid not play Valencia in their Rafa Benitez pomp. They met the Spaniards with Hector Cuper as their manager. When Benitez was in charge, Valencia were too good for Arsenal and Liverpool in the Champions League, but United were never put to the test. This is relevant because while Sir Alex Ferguson has won six and drawn one of the other seven Premier League meetings with Benitez, those matches were against plain old Liverpool. Only now does Benitez feel he can field a side close to the one he always intended creating, one that mixes Anfield traditions and local playing ingredients like Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard with the strategies that worked so well at the Mestalla.

Call them “Pool-encia”. “It’s more or less the same system,” Benitez said of the 4-2-3-1 pattern he has settled upon, with Gerrard supporting Fernando Torres centrally, and Dirk Kuyt and Ryan Babel augmenting the attack in wide areas. With his Valencia players such as Mista, Vicente, Rufete, Pablo Aimar, John Carew and Miguel Angulo filled these four attacking roles.Seven consecutive wins have resulted from Benitez using a settled team and deploying the Valencia formation. Why not do this sooner? “Every year people were talking about our signings but if you analyse the players who came here, Jose Reina, Xabi Alonso, Daniel Agger, Martin Skrtel, Javier Mascherano, Torres, Babel, we have found players that are now the spine of the team (with Carragher and Gerrard). Ferguson needed seven years to win his first Premier League and now we are in my fourth year. I’m disappointed because we could be closer, that’s clear, but now you have a spine, a group of young players you can progress with.

“We had the plan before, but not the options we have now. Everyone is saying, ‘Oh, you spent money’, but we only spent an important amount of money this year and on Torres, Mascherano and Babel. People were criticising (signings like) Mauricio Pellegrino, Antonio Nunez, but we didn’t spend money on them ose playersand we were trying to find the pieces we needed to improve the rest of the team. Pellegrino is a fantastic professional, for example, and Carra and Sami Hyypia learnted a lot from him.”

Another factor behind the creation of “Pool-encia” appears Benitez’s decision to admit defeat, for nowat least, in his quest to find top-class, out-and-out wingers. It is curious it has taken him so long, because his wide men at Valencia were not pure wingers but players who could come inside to either supplement their strikers or their midfield, as was one of his most successful early signings at Anfield, Luis Garcia. This did not stop Benitez looking for traditional flank men. Mark Gonzalez and Nunez came and went, Harry Kewell has hadgiven numerous opportunities and Jermaine Pennant and Sebastian Leto are in the current squad but descending the pecking order. Benitez’s current wide boys guysare converted strikers, Babel and Kuyt, neither of whom are particular crossers of the ball but who dooffer energy, goal threat and the inclination to come inside. At United, Cristiano Ronaldo has proved the potency of being a “winger” with non-traditional qualities, though his dribbling ability is as classic for the position as was Stanley Matthews’s.

Even more strangely, considering in terms ofhis delay in going to 4-2-3-1, Benitez prophesied the remodelling of the wide player when he was a young coach at Real Madrid. “I have an article from maybe 15 years ago which I wrote in a Spanish newspaper , El Mundo,and the title was, ‘Where are the Wingers?’ I was in the academy of Real Madrid and Vicente Del Bosque was its head. We used to talk: ‘Where are the wingers?’ The teams were all playing 4-3-3 and were trying to find players to put in the wide areas. They were difficult to find so you had to create them,” Benitez said. For “Pool-encia” to move to the next level, he needs more goals from Babel and Kuyt, who have scored eight and nine for the season respectively. “But if Torres scores 30 goals maybe you don’t need your wingers scoring,” he said with a smile.

Carragher observed Liverpool, their midfield choked by United, underused Torres in the December defeat. Benitez shared the expectation that today will be different: “Torres has improved. His understanding with Gerrard is much better and he needed time to settle, so he’s more dangerous now.”

Liverpool fans, reminded too often about their manager’s poor domestic record in “Big Four’ clashes, might wish to look away. Against United, Arsenal and Chelsea in the league he has played 20, won four, lost 12. He repeated his view that in most of the matches it has come down “to a corner, a free kick, small details”. It may also have been because until recently he has been managing Liverpool, and not “Pool-encia”.