Rafa Benitez will have designs on Bob Paisley milestone

So far during his tenure, the contrast between an inability to mount a serious championship challenge in the Premier League has been stark to the regular progress in the Champions League.

Benitez's first campaign at Anfield was of course the prime example, with all of Liverpool's anxieties over a fifth-place finish domestically being eclipsed by their team's remarkable comeback against Milan in Istanbul.

While the highs and lows in the ensuing seasons at Anfield have been less extreme since the two 'fifths' of '05, Benitez, whose sole European title with Liverpool to date was achieved with a squad largely inherited from predecessor Gerard Houllier, will now be hoping he has finally found the formula to mount a challenge for a title both at home and abroad in a similar manner to great rivals Manchester United's double success of last term.

Despite guiding his side to a best-ever Premier League start, Benitez is bizarrely now receiving criticism in some quarters for seemingly abandoning his much-maligned squad rotation policy which was seen by many as a major contributing factor to an inability to make a serious title push in past seasons.

While the Spaniard is still adopting something of a horses-for-courses approach to a certain degree he must be privately scratching his goatee in wonder at such hypocritical attitudes.

But the dilemma with this change of tactic is given their potential increase in playing time will Benitez's core squad members have the legs to lift both a Premier League and Champions League crown come May? Even if domestic cups are taken out of the equation, Liverpool will have to play 53 games in their two senior competitions this season if they're to go all the way, 15 of which would be in Europe.

With such a busy schedule against foreign opposition it will come as little surprise that Benitez has reached his record 66-game total with Liverpool in Europe in less than half the time it took Shankly in those pioneering days.

The Scot also had a more varied experience, leading his side in all three of the European competitions that existed at the time - reaching a first continental final with Liverpool in the Cup-Winners' Cup in 1966 and winning their first silverware overseas with a 1973 UEFA Cup success.

In contrast, all of Benitez's games have come in the Champions League.

Even when Paisley was leading Liverpool to glory in the European Cup, their routes to victory were complete in a single-figure number of matches - nine in 1977 and just seven a year later.

It's always a dangerous game trying to compare managers and players of different eras so it's difficult to say whether it was easier back then given the fewer games needed to conquer Europe each year.

But while the minnows who could be turned over for rugby scores in the old European Cup now longer exist in the 21st century Champions League, it must always be remembered that paradoxically, despite the competition's name change, Liverpool would not yet even have qualified for the tournament since the ban was lifted under the old format.

With several clubs from the major nations qualifying each year, teams like Marseille who Liverpool have now played four times in little more than a year and other Group D rivals PSV Eindhoven, who the Anfield outfit will next month have met six times in three seasons are becoming regular foes, while a couple of seasons on from Istanbul it was Milan who Benitez's side faced again in the Athens final of 2007.

With their passage to the last 16 safely secured in Europe, a return to the bread and butter of accumulating league points is Liverpool's only focus for what's left of 2008.

There are a dozen Premier League matches until they next play a meaningful European game so for now Benitez's puzzle is all about finding the answers to produce number 19 rather than number six.