LIONS let down by donkeys.

On Monday night 4,000 Liverpool supporters provided nearly 25% of the attendance at Wigan, and would have had more had the ticket allocation been bigger.

As a show of commitment, you’d struggle to find better.

It would be reasonable to expect that the 11 representing Liverpool on the other side of the perimeter wall would show similar levels of engagement.

Instead we were served yet another helping of humiliation in this most embarrassing of seasons.

It’s coming to something when the most regular debate amongst Liverpool fans is not the best goal of the season, the best player or even our best side: now the hot topic of conversation is the worst performance of the season.

Reading at home? Wolves, Fulham, Portsmouth away? Any of our six Champions League games?

Wigan away will certainly run them close, though I suspect there may be a few candidates still in store for us before May.

The carefully crafted ‘recovery’ that’s taken place over the previous 10 games or so, built on clean sheets but requiring pillows for fans, has been shown to be an illusion, a conjuring trick intended to build confidence but in truth undermining it by stressing undue caution.

The injuries have cleared, the creative players are back, and still we can’t muster a single shot on goal against Wigan, a team without a win in their previous nine games and who have shipped five at home against United and nine away at Spurs.

In the first half especially, the whole side could have been arrested for passing without due care and attention.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many balls hit carelessly to the opposition or into touch.

Surely, given all our tribulations this season, we can’t have approached this match with an air of superiority, expecting a victory to be acquired with minimum effort?

For me the most worrying performances were those of our two local heroes. Steven Gerrard was uninspired and uninspiring, while Jamie Carragher followed up his alarmingly frank interview in a Sunday newspaper with an erratic performance which to me indicated a general dissatisfaction with his lot.

It’s always hard to tell if a manager has ‘lost the dressing room’, but if Gerrard’s torpor and Carragher’s irritation are signs of growing disaffection with Benitez’s administration, then even unlikely qualification for the Champions League and a Europa League win will not save him come the end of the season.