RAFAEL BENITEZ has backed his Liverpool players to produce a cup final performance in Marseille and avoid an early exit from the Champions League.

Liverpool face a make-or-break fixture in southern France as they strive to remain among the European elite after Christmas.

Saturday evening’s 3-1 defeat at Reading was hardly the ideal start to a week that ends on Sunday with the visit of Manchester United.

But Benitez remains confident nonetheless. He said: “We have experience of finals so we will do the same thing we were doing before. It is an important game but the players have experience of those.

“Since I have been here we have been in seven finals. We have won four so we have enough experience and quality in the squad to win.”

Indeed, the Spaniard insisted he was personally relishing the pressure he finds himself under and likened it to his most successful seven days as a manager, in 2004.

He said: “We played one Saturday for Valencia to win the league and then on the Thursday to win the UEFA Cup. We won both so I like to be in this sort of situation because it means you are playing for something. We have confidence that we can do it.”

Reading deservedly ended Liverpool’s unbeaten start to the Premier League season with a 3-1 success at the Madejski Stadium.

Benitez’s initial choice of formation was also a talking point afterwards, with Hunt and fellow winger Bobby Convey having made Liverpool suffer down the flanks.

Reading manager Steve Coppell said: “We were talking the day before the game about Gerrard maybe coming from a wider area, which obviously makes them a sort of ‘thin’ team, if you know what I mean.

“They were thin and we tried to play with width. That was the contrast and is the way we set up against teams who bulk up the middle. Obviously with players who are being asked to play wide, they are not comfortable there. They are forever making the pitch thin and we just tried to turn that round by attacking down the flanks as much as possible.”

But Benitez argued the formation had worked in the past.

He said: “Sometimes it is easy to talk about this after the game but at Newcastle we played the same system and everyone was saying what a fantastic team we were.

“Against Everton in the first half it was the same - we were much better than them - so sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Meanwhile, Peter Crouch doesn’t believe Liverpool were distracted by their forthcoming Champions League decider.

“None of the players were looking ahead to any fixture beyond Reading,” said the striker. “These things happen sometimes. Reading is a tough place to come. The manager has got them playing well. They’re difficult to beat and they proved that. I think the credit has to go to them.”

Of the decision to award Reading a penalty, Crouch added: “We could see with the marks on the pitch that it was clearly outside the box and told the linesman and the referee but I don’t think they were ever going to change their minds.

“That was frustrating and that made it very difficult for ourselves. Stevie has got us back in it with a great goal and I thought we would go on and win it from there but it wasn’t to be.”