THERE’S something strangely appropriate that Rafael Benitez should turn to a doctor who specialises in radical treatment using a horse’s placenta to help breathe new life into Liverpool’s season.

From complete obscurity, radical therapist Mariana Kovacevic has become one of the most prominent names in football during the past week, her Belgrade surgery the place to be for the Premier League’s walking wounded.

That number have included Yossi Benayoun and Albert Riera, who sought her expertise to help their recovery from torn hamstrings.

So successful was the treatment that Glen Johnson and Fabio Aurelio also jetted off to Serbia for an assessment on their respective hamstring and calf problems.

Now all four are in line to appear when Liverpool aim to kickstart their campaign with victory over Manchester City in today’s lunchtime Premier League fixture – thanks to the remarkable healing powers of Kovacevic.

“She is a doctor who has been working with top class players for seven years,” explains Rafael Benitez. “(Vincent) Kompany and (Pablo) Zabaleyta at City have been there, (Robin) van Persie has been there. She is really good with muscle injuries.

“There’s a really big player there at the moment, in fact. She is doing curative procedures on players, it’s not injections, it’s creams and a wave machine.

“We don’t exactly know what is going on, but the cream and the wave machine and the way she is doing the treatment certainly seems to work. Women know better than men because a lot of cosmetic products have placenta in them, or did have.”

Benitez adds: “The positive thing at Liverpool is that we have a medical department that has an open mind, you can see that when we send players to French and Spanish doctors. We had some contacts, they said she was good, so we sent the players.

“If a player is supposed to be out for four weeks and he is back available within two or three days, and everything is clear, they are natural products, then why not?

“It’s curative. It’s not trying to improve the performance of the player, it’s trying to cure him.

“We had some players that were injured, and with natural products and treatments they are available, and that’s surely a positive.

“We had positive information on her. The first we’d heard was about 15 days ago.”