Speaking about the decision to substitute Torres after 65 minutes of Liverpool’s game at Craven Cottage, with the scores tied at 1-1, Benitez added: “It was clear we needed to do something because you always think about protecting the player.

“In this case we were more or less in control of the game we had some chances in attack with (Andriy) Voronin, (Dirk) Kuyt and Yossi (Benayoun) and to keep the player on the pitch could have been a problem.

“We were analysing what to do before the game, we decided to play him, that was the decision and you just have to manage it through the game.”

Meanwhile Benitez revealed that the club would be appealing against the two red cards that handed out by referee Lee Mason, one picked up by Swiss defender Degen for a reckless lunge on Clint Dempsey and the other shown to Carragher for a foul on Bobby Zamora.

Benitez said: “They were two incidents in a few minutes when we were losing and they were difficult to take.

“The first one was a yellow card.

“The second one you can clearly see that Carragher was kicking the ball.”