EITHER Rafa Benitez has a hugely elevated sense of his own abilities or he simply loves to manage and can’t contemplate life away from the game. Or maybe it’s a bit of both.

There is really no other way to read his decision to take on the Newcastle job when, barely 10 weeks ago, he was managing Real Madrid.

He takes over a team mired in the relegation zone and his first game, tomorrow night, is an away trip to the league leaders, Leicester City. His second is a local derby against fellow relegation strugglers Sunderland, who have won the last five clashes between the two clubs. And his third, on April 2, is a trip to Norwich in a classic relegation six-pointer.

Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. Newcastle could very well find themselves half a dozen points from safety in the next 20 days.

You can see why Newcastle sought him out. With Steve McClaren in free-fall and relationships badly soured, it made sense to make a change. And Benitez was arguably the best manager not named Jose available.

You can’t see why he would say yes. For a guy who prides himself on meticulous preparation and slow, but steady progress, he will enjoy neither at St James’ Park. He’ll need to deliver straight away, with no time to prepare properly.

If it doesn’t work out, he’s in the Championship. And, odds are, it will hurt his reputation. In the same way that Alan Shearer is still mocked for failing to keep Newcastle up (and he’s Mr Toon, which Rafa decidedly is not), taking them down will be a blot on his record. Not just that, but he will then need to bounce straight back up, which is far from straight-forward in the second-tier.

And if it works out?

Well, then he’ll get to go into next season with the same sub-par dysfunctional squad that struggled under McClaren. He will have the same unpopular, distant owner. And the same guys - Graham Carr and Lee Charnley - will be doing the recruitment. One of them is 72 and was called out by name by Shearer during his Match of the Day mini-rant, the other is 38, has worked for the club for nearly two decades and yet, when he was appointed managing director, the Newcastle Chronicle wrote “not much about him is known”.

In other words, Rafa just chose for himself one of the most difficult and frustrating paths back to the big time. Those close to him insist that he simply loves management and therefore jumped at the chance. It’s a tough explanation to swallow, particularly when you would imagine there would be a string of more appealing jobs this summer.

Nobody, I guess, can accuse him of having taken the easy road.

AT some point, it becomes like shooting fish in a barrel. You lose 2-0 to your arch-rivals in the first leg of a Europa League game - and, but for the goalkeeper you dropped at the start of the season over a contractual dispute, the gap would have been much greater - and, one would think you would speak with a bit of humility.

But no. Instead Louis van Gaal talks about how his style of play is “working”.

“When you analyse what we have done this season and last season then you cannot say it is not working,” he said.

Really? Working towards what? Working towards mediocrity?

Going into the weekend, Manchester United were sixth in the table, two places lower than where they finished last season. They have nine points fewer than they had at this stage last season. Heck, they even have fewer points than they did under David Moyes.

But, have no fear, it’s “working”.

Van Gaal also proceeded to talk about how “very difficult” it is to play in three competitions “when you don’t have too many players”. This is the same Van Gaal who has used 33 players in the Premier league alone this season. And no, they are not all youngsters: 26 of the 33 are aged 21 or older. And, of course, the same guy who spent some £250 million in the past four transfer windows.

Yet he has the gall to complain about not having “too many players”?

Just for comparison’s sake, Manchester City have used 25 players, 21 of them aged 21 or over. And, yes they have been in the same number of competitions as United. And they have also had a string of long-term injuries: from Vincent Kompany to Samir Nasri to Kevin de Bruyne.

Sometimes it feels as if Van Gaal is living in his own personal universe. And we’re only just visiting it.

United host West Ham today in the FA Cup quarter-final. Win, and you have got a shot at winning your first silverware of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era. Lose and it will be another opportunity to hear Van Gaal’s nonsense.

PARIS St Germain can win their fourth consecutive Ligue 1 title today with a win at Troyes, who are bottom of the table and have lost seven of their past eight. Wrapping up the domestic league by mid-March underscores PSG’s might relative to the rest of the league, which this year is even more marked due to the slow starts of Marseille and Lyon, the two clubs who were expected to, if not give Laurent Blanc’s men a race, at least keep the gap semi-respectable.

It is a luxury for a team that can now switch their focus entirely on the three cup competitions they can still win. They are in the final of the French league Cup, the semi-final of the French Cup and, after comprehensively dismantling Chelsea, the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

It is easy to look at their immense resources and not credit Blanc. Easy, and wrong. Because it was only a year ago that many wondered whether he could keep the many egos in check, particularly since the owners did not seem to mind when players by-passed him and went straight to the top with their complaints. Blanc took it in his stride. He ignored the controversy, disciplined his players when he needed to and stood up to the egos, often on his own. This title will be the sweetest he has ever won, as a player and a coach.