Rafa Benitez: Why I subbed two-goal Robbie Keane

Nov 10 2008

Robbie Keane 200

“I’m sure he was thinking ‘Why me? Leave me on the pitch’, but I wanted to use the pace of Torres. They were playing high up the pitch.

“I didn’t get to speak to him after the game, apart from saying ‘congratulations’ when he came off, because he was getting his man-of-the-match award.

“You can have sentiment as a manager sometimes but at 2-0 you have to be careful because one goal for them and it becomes very nervous at the end.”

Keane was partnered by Dirk Kuyt on Saturday with Steven Gerrard reverting to a central midfield role.

And Benitez said: “I had been using Robbie and Stevie up front and he is different type of player to Torres.

“Torres has the pace to run behind defenders and Keane has good movement.

“For Gerrard, it was more difficult to find the pass to Robbie and more difficult for Robbie to find the run behind defenders but, with two strikers, I knew he would have more chances and it would make things easier for him.

“The only thing is you lose some of the balance of the team playing that way but we were better than them.

“Sometimes we’ll play with two strikers and other times we’ll just go with one.

“Going with two strikers helped Robbie in this game but it will be a good problem for me to have Torres fit again, Gerrard and everyone else fit.”

Alvaro Arbeloa scored his second career goal for Liverpool by sealing the victory with a well-taken strike in injury time. However, the Spanish full-back also picked up his fifth league booking of the season and will miss Saturday’s trip to Bolton.