THE fretting Anfield faithful weren’t the only ones kept awake by their team’s calamitous performance on Monday evening.

Deep into the night, Rafael Benitez could be found poring over a rerun of the 3-1 defeat to Aston Villa, seeking out the reasons for an uncharacteristically sloppy Liverpool home display.

“I try to watch the games if I can,” says the Spaniard. “If I have the DVD I try to watch and analyse important things. I try to analyse every game soon after. Sometimes it’s later than midnight.

“After watching the DVD of the Villa game, the crucial thing was the timing of the goals. That made our confidence low. We had chances and if we scored early on it could have been a game similar to that against Stoke.

“But we can’t change that. Now we have to find the problems and find the solutions.”

Viewing the video nasty of Monday’s game will have given Benitez more questions than answers.

A second defeat in the first three Premier League games means Liverpool have already lost as many as during the whole of last season.

Not the ideal start to what many have perceived as being another concerted push for the title.

But despite already standing six points adrift of Chelsea and early pacesetters Tottenham Hotspur, Benitez has rubbished suggestions that Liverpool’s championship challenge has suffered a terminal blow in the opening fortnight.

“Clearly everybody was expecting three wins in a row and then we’ll have won the league by September,” he says. “It’s not the case. It’s impossible.

“You have to be positive. After two defeats we are really disappointed but we still have lots of games to play. We have to improve, play better and make less mistakes.

“We can’t change what happened. We conceded an own goal, a penalty and from a corner. Everything was against us on Monday. But that’s part of the game. Now we have to start doing well and think about the positives.

“Clearly we have more competition this year at the top of the table. Any top side can lose games. I don’t think it will be like before when some team wins the title as they have just won 10 or 12 games in a row.

“When you don’t play well, you have to analyse why. Were the tactics bad? Did the players do what we asked them? You have to analyse everything, put them together, and if the team isn’t doing well you have to change things and improve how to approach the game.”

The recovery begins at Bolton Wanderers this afternoon. Liverpool have done the double over their North West rivals in the previous two seasons, with Trotters manager Gary Megson under similar pressure to Benitez having yet to see his team earn a point or score a goal in the Premier League.

And the Spaniard is hopeful of an instant response from his players to ensure the victory he believes can act as a catalyst for the campaign.