Champions League draw was a lucky escape - Rafael Benitez
RELIEVED Rafael Benitez admitted Liverpool were "lucky" to escape with a goalless draw after suffering a battering in Belgium.
The Spaniard's side produced a dismal performance in their Champions League third qualifying round first leg against Standard Liege last night.
Pepe Reina's 11th-minute penalty save to deny Standard's Brazilian full-back Dante ensured the tie remains level going into the return match at Anfield on Wednesday week.
The goalkeeper had earlier made a controversial save to deny Marouane Fellaini, with television replays failing to determine whether the ball had already crossed the line or not. Missing out on the group stages would cost Liverpool an estimated windfall of £12million.
And an unhappy Benitez said: "We were lucky not to concede a goal. Clearly we did not play well. The performance was poor but the result was good.
"It's always important not to concede away from home, and the second leg in Anfield has to make a massive difference.
"The players know the performance was bad, and sometimes you don't need to say too much to them because everybody knows."
Benitez was forced to press Steven Gerrard into action during the second half, despite admitting the skipper was not fully fit. "I'd rather not have risked Stevie," he said. "We spoke with the doctor and we knew Stevie couldn't start. We didn't really want to use him, but at the end we needed him."
Robbie Keane and Andrea Dossena had unhappy competitive debuts, the former substituted for Gerrard and the latter conceding the penalty. But Benitez insisted it was a collective failure: "The team didn't play well so the strikers didn't play well, the midfielders didn't play well and the defenders didn't play well. Clearly Pepe Reina was our man of the match. We were not our best."
He added: "Standard were very aggressive and we couldn't keep the ball, our passing was bad and our control was bad. We were losing the first and second balls, and in the first 15 or 20 minutes they were on top of us.
"In the second half, they started in more or less the same way and began playing long balls and we were under pressure.
"I was a little bit surprised by how we played because we were playing well with a lot of confidence in pre-season.
"I told the players that we knew Standard could be very aggressive. They were organised and pressing, and it was difficult for us to keep the ball."
Standard's Romanian coach László Bölöni praised his team's display but conceded Liverpool were now favourites to go through.
"A 0-0 draw at home isn't that bad a result," he said. "The problem is that we have to score at Anfield. Maybe Liverpool were asleep when they came here, but now everybody has woken up. The second game will be much more difficult for us."
Of Fellaini's early header, Bölöni added: "Somebody told me it was over the line and somebody told me it wasn't. It was a moment, but we have to forget about that now."
Meanwhile, Liverpool's pursuit of Aston Villa midfielder Gareth Barry is likely to take a decisive turn this evening. If he appears against FH Hafnarfjordur in the UEFA Cup it will cup-tie the England international from playing in Europe for another team until February.
"If he's still our player he has as good a chance as anyone of being on the bus," said Villa manager Martin O'Neill.
Benitez said last night: "I don't know if we will have new players, I'll just try to keep improving the players I have at the moment."
Liverpool duo Ryan Babel and Javier Mascherano will face-off in the quarter-finals of the Olympic Games on Saturday.
Babel helped Holland to a 1-0 victory over Japan in China yesterday to seal second place in Group B, and set up a tie against Argentina for whom Mascherano starred in the 2-0 win over Serbia.
Lucas Leiva played the full 90 minutes in Brazil's 3-0 defeat of hosts China, and the Group C winners now face Cameroon in the last eight.
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