Rafa Benitez: It was our worst home performance

Oct 4 2007 by Chris Beesley, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL manager Rafael Benitez failed to contain his disappointment as he admitted that the 1-0 home defeat to Marseille was arguably the worst performance by his side at Anfield since he took over.

The loss – Liverpool’s first at home to any French club in Europe – leaves them trailing Marseille by five points in Group A of the Champions League while they are also three points behind Porto.

Given that Benitez had previously calculated that his team would need to collect 12 points to finish top of the pool, they now need to win all four of their remaining matches to reach such a tally and face an uphill struggle to qualify from what was initially regarded as a reasonably straightforward group.

Liverpool, whose starting line-up saw five changes from the side that began in Saturday’s 1-0 victory at Wigan Athletic, were strangely out-of-sorts all evening and a second consecutive home blank was made worse when Mathieu Valbuena grabbed the winner for Marseille 13 minutes from the end.

Benitez said: “That could be the worst performance since I came here, especially at home. We didn’t create much from the beginning.

“It was a poor game, we were not playing well from the beginning. We were giving the ball away and not creating chances.

“Only at the end we produced some pressure and created a little bit.”

The loss leaves Liverpool – Champions League finalists in two out of the last three seasons – in a difficult position to qualify from the group and it’s a fact that Benitez acknowledges.

He said: “We know in football if you want to progress you need to win. We need to win the next game.

“At this moment in time the best thing is to think about the next game. We’ve got Spurs here at the weekend and we’ll try and get three points and then see what happens in our next game against Besiktas.”

Benitez made five changes to his starting line-up from the Wigan game and continues to face criticism for supposedly tinkering too much with his team but the Spaniard insisted that whatever team he puts out, they should be capable of achieving a positive result.

He said: “We talk about team selection, we’ve talked about the big names before.

“We had big names today and we tried to change things.”

Liverpool were particularly ineffective down their left-hand side where Marseille’s Karim Ziani got plenty of joy out of Argentine youngster Sebastian Leto and Brazilian Fabio Aurelio, who is just returning from injury, and both players were substituted in the second half.

However, Benitez refused to let either player be earmarked as a scapegoat for the shock defeat.

He said: “We had a new partnership on the left-hand side but we needed the quality of Fabio and we were giving Leto an opportunity. He’s been playing well and working hard.

“We need to understand it is a team game. The whole team had a bad game, not one player.”

Despite Marseille’s slow start to the domestic season in France, Benitez insisted that his team did not take their opponents – whose squad contained former Liverpool players Boudewijn Zenden and Djibril Cisse – lightly and knew what they were up against.

He said: “We knew Marseille were playing better in the Champions League. They’re a good team and we knew the quality was there.

“The only comfort I can take from this game is that it’s finished.”

Meanwhile, Marseille’s new coach, former Belgian international defender Erik Gerets was delighted that his side, who became the first French club to triumph at Anfield, had written their way into the history books.

He said: “I feel we’ve created history. It wasn’t me, it was by my players. What they did was fantastic.

“We made a few technical errors but tactically we got it right. We’re celebrating tonight but we’re nowhere yet. But the club needed a lift and we’ve got it.”