Ferguson fears Wenger, Wenger fears Mourinho and Mourinho fears Benitez.
Too simple, too trite but not altogether untrue.
After Wednesday's Champions League encounter at Anfield, it was possible to believe that contests between Chelsea and Liverpool might shape the future of the Premiership. If football matches are won in the centre of the pitch, then a midfield of Xabi Alonso, Steven Gerrard and Luis Garcia looks a surer, younger and more settled foundation than the players available to Manchester United or Arsenal.
In style, the contrast between Benitez and Mourinho could not be starker. One wears his flamboyance on his sleeve, the other, Benitez, could hardly bring himself to take the cheers when Valencia paraded their first title in 31 years through the streets of the city to the Basilica of the Virgin.
But others have always had confidence in him. Benitez's biographer, Paco Lloret, recalls picking up the telephone to hear a friend say: "Some day this guy will become manager of Valencia and make us champions." Benitez was then an entirely obscure figure. His wife, Montse, told her husband he would manage European champions by the time he was 45. He was born in 1960.
His birthplace was Madrid, and the danger for Liverpool is that Benitez will be tempted back to the Bernabeu, the ground where his dreams of playing were crushed. Since he was the man who last year ground down a seemingly impenetrable lead built up by a Madrid side managed by Carlos Queiroz, they might want him back.
It is a scenario Lloret, who has known Benitez since he was a young, struggling manager with Extremadura, can never see happening. The galactico culture of the Bernabeu, where marketing is placed at the heart of president Florentino Perez's strategy, is something he could not stomach.
"Rafa can never go to Madrid. He told me that he cannot accept players whom he cannot teach to do the right thing in training," said Lloret, who has written the first biography of Liverpool's quietly extraordinary manager. "It would be hard to work with Raul, Ronaldo or Zidane. He could never accept the kind of interference from the president that they have there.
"I remember talking to Rafa in 2004, when Valencia were fighting Madrid for the title. I said that I felt sure we were going to win because I had friends in Madrid and I knew how they were training. There was no real work; players were training for 45 minutes. I knew how hard they were working in Valencia and how they would seek to improve every week. He said to me, 'Madrid have a bigger car than us but our car has petrol'.
"For the chairman of Real Madrid the goal is to sell shirts in Australia and China and to market the club all over the world. I know Rafa; he's only happy when all the players are working together for a single purpose. He couldn't train with Ronaldo when Ronaldo is going off to some sponsor's session."
Michael Owen told friends before leaving Liverpool for Madrid that Benitez was not a man who would put his arm round a player in need of reassurance, and Lloret agreed. "It's true, perhaps. Sometimes he would like to be a warmer man, but on the other hand he's so professional - he wants 100 per cent from every player."
Yesterday Alonso, who represents Benitez's best and most expensive piece of business since coming to Anfield, described his dressing-room talks. "Rafa's analysis of the opposition teams is so thorough - he knows every strength and every weakness - and I like the way he takes care of every small bit of detail."
Sometimes the detail can be making sure that two players who are to perform similar tasks on the pitch share a hotel room before an away game. And mostly, this is admirable. It explains why Mourinho's tactics of enveloping a defence with Damien Duff and Arjen Robben on the wings, while Frank Lampard pushes through to support the striker, has generally failed to unsettle Liverpool. Not for nothing was his Valencia side called 'The Crushing Machine'.
However, the obsessing over detail also calls to mind the dossiers of Don Revie that turned a great Leeds manager into a paranoid, over-cautious figure, especially with England. During his long, debilitating final illness Revie confessed to his great lieutenant, Johnny Giles, that he wished he had allowed Leeds to express themselves. This season Liverpool have managed a single goal in four matches at Anfield and that against Sunderland.
"Rafa knew he was taking a big risk going to Liverpool and that he would need time," said Lloret. "In Spain he was number one. He didn't know the English game and he was worried by his knowledge of the language. But he wanted to show everybody he could be successful in a country where no Spanish coach has succeeded."
Interestingly, while Benitez's European triumph with Liverpool in Istanbul was the lead item on Spanish television news, Mourinho boasts an altogether lower profile. "Nobody in Spain can believe he has become such a good coach," Lloret said.
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