CRISIS is a word which  is a staple in the football  writer’s lexicon, and  which you often see  used to describe events  as varied as a minor  injury to a key player,  or, as legend would  have it, a shortage of  wine in the Cobbold  Brothers’ Ipswich Town  boardroom.

Overused as it is, it  seems an appropriate  epithet to describe what  we’re going through at  Anfield at present.

After all the optimism  generated by last  season, here we are at  the end of October one  defeat away from  ending our interest in  the Premier League  title, and with our  Champions League  participation hanging by  a thread so thin you  couldn’t see it in a  Thunderbirds episode.

Our worst run of  defeats for more than  20 years containing  three performances that  will linger long in the  memory as some of the  weakest of recent  years.

And I use the  word ‘weak’ advisedly;  because that’s the  overriding impression  left in my mind after  watching us field sides  of sub-standard players  who’ve been outfought  or outplayed in three of  those four games.

Whether slight of  mental or physical  strength, we just  haven’t been up to the  challenge this season, and, you could argue, since the start of the season.

Sure we’ve been  hobbled by injuries in  the last couple of  games, but both our  talismans were on the  pitch against Fiorentina  and Chelsea, and  earlier in the season  against Spurs and Villa.  

The loss of Alonso has  also bitten deep, but  this just underlines the  general point: the  pundits have been  proved right who said  that our squad was  paper thin on quality  and experience.

That we had to field a  centre-forward and  right-back with a  handful of games  between them in such a  critical match as against  Lyon showed the  paucity of the resources  at our disposal, well though Kelly in particular played.

The likes of Babel,  Voronin, Lucas and  Riera are, I’m afraid,  just not up to the job. Throw in the  catastrophic loss of  form by our central  defenders, and the  suspicion that  Mascherano now  spends his spare time  thumbing through  Barcelona travel  brochures, and you’ve a  toxic mix that will poison  any trophy hunt.

Try as I might, I can’t  find any other place to  lay the blame for this  situation than at the  manager’s door.

Five  years’ tenure and  £200m should buy you  a squad that can  withstand a couple of  injuries, however key  those individuals are, and should include more than one experienced striker and at least one decent winger.

Don’t bother me with ‘net’ spending statistics, as most of the income generated has been off-loading players brought to the club who weren’t good enough and were shipped out to avoid further embarrassment. And would you have liked to see Crouch, Bellamy or Keane playing on Tuesday night?

I don’t believe we’re  at the point where  Benitez should be  shown the salida, and  he still retains my  support, but the factors  that brought Houllier’s  downfall are rearing  their ugly heads and  Rafa needs to use all  his undoubted tactical  and technical prowess  to get us back on track  soon.

The fresh hell of the Europa League, with its Thursday night matches and resultant Sunday league games, might just prove too much to bear for both fans and our beloved American cousins alike.