Liverpool Echo report

SOMETIMES you should be careful what you wish for.

During a summer high on excitement and anticipation all the noises coming out of Anfield were that this season Liverpool’s Champions League ambitions would take a back seat to that long awaited title challenge.

Well, today, such decisions look like they could being taken out of their hands altogether following defeat to Besiktas in what was billed as a must win game.

Only a miracle to rival the one achieved in Istanbul two years ago would keep Liverpool in Europe’s premier competition and given the way they performed on their latest visit to Turkey’s most vibrant city you would have to think such an occurrence about as likely as a Mark Clattenburg appreciation society being set up at Goodison Park.

Besiktas are not a good side. A cast of Turkish journeymen and bargain basement South Americans marked them out as the likely whipping boys of Group A when the draw was made in August.

But last night they managed to defeat a Liverpool team which was tipped by many to coast through the group stages, but which now finds itself dumped at the bottom of the table with their hopes of progression hanging by a thread.

Searching questions need to be asked at Anfield about how this has come to pass.

Injuries to key players like Fernando Torres, Daniel Agger and Xabi Alonso can be put forward in mitigation. But every club suffers injuries during the course of a season and when you have a squad the size of Liverpool’s such excuses can only be offered so many times before they begin to sound hollow.

Fingers will again be pointing at Rafa Benitez’s much-maligned rotation policy and yet this is the very same policy which has served him so well, particularly in cup football, in recent years.

More mischievous souls will highlight the decision to substitute Steven Gerrard as evidence of a deficit in trust between manager and captain, but then Gerrard was far and away Liverpool’s best performer in the atmospheric Inonu Stadium so that one doesn’t really wash, either.

Maybe, when it comes down to it, the truth is far more prosaic than the conspiracy theorists and sensationalists would have us believe.

Perhaps the simple answer is that currently far too many Liverpool players are woefully short of top form and it could even be argued that, in certain positions at least, they lack the kind of quality which is expected of a top side.

In defence, there were times last night when Jamie Carragher resembled the little boy with his finger in the dyke, struggling manfully to repel the waves heading towards him, but in the knowledge that he would be getting precious little support from those around him.

In the past three seasons you would do well to count the number of bad games Steve Finnan has had on the fingers of one hand, but instead of being his usual ultra-dependable self, the Irishman is currently struggling badly.

Normally, this would not present a major problem. All teams have to cope with players who aren’t at their best but when three out of your back four aren’t functioning at full throttle you’ve got big problems – and that is the case with Liverpool at the moment with Sami Hyypia cursed with bad luck and an ageing body which slows his reaction time and John Arne Riise unable to emerge from a rut which has now lasted for several months.

So it should come as no surprise that the Liverpool defence is all of a sudden conceding the kind of bad goals which have been almost unthinkable under most of Benitez’s reign.

Besiktas sensed this vulnerability, exploited it and earned themselves a famous victory which their magnificent fans – are their any louder in all of Europe? – celebrated long into the night.

But it would be unfair just to highlight the deficiencies of the defence. Gerrard apart, the midfield was lacking in imagination and verve and though the post match statistics show chances were created there weren’t that many opportunities.

Again, this is a collective problem as, without the pace and direct running of Fernando Torres, Liverpool’s attack never looked particularly threatening until Peter Crouch’s belated emergence from the bench allowed him to play a crucial role in setting up Gerrard’s wonderfully directed header.

In scoring that goal, Gerrard joined Ian Rush in second place in the club’s all time European goalscoring charts. His current total of 20 puts him just two strikes behind Michael Owen and underlines the fact of just how important the captain is to Liverpool.

But he can’t do it on his own and at times last night it looked as if that was exactly what others were expecting of him.

Unless last night’s reversal is removed from their systems immediately with a positive performance and result against Arsenal at the weekend it could come to represent another false dawn. And that is something Liverpool can ill afford following a summer of promise.

A Premiership challenge was top of everyone’s wish list at Anfield at the start of the season. Today, it seems all too likely that it will shortly become their only major target, save for the domestic cup competitions.

If the priority was a title tilt then a potential early exit from the Champions League could be viewed as a positive. But a failure to progress in Europe would also leave Liverpool drinking at the last chance saloon for the rest of this season – and that is something which few even contemplated when the Champions League draw was made.

BESIKTAS: Arikan, Kurtulus (Avci, 41), Zan, Delgado (Higuain, 61), Bobo (Diatta, 85), Tello, Cisse, Uzulmez, Ozkan, Tandogan, Toraman.

LIVERPOOL: Reina, Finnan, Carragher, Hyypia (Crouch, 82), Riise, Pennant (Benayoun, 58), Gerrard, Mascherano (Lucas, 75), Babel, Voronin, Kuyt.

Referee: Claus Bo Larsen

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