Football - Liverpool FC: We only have ourselves to blame for Champions League exit, admits Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez

Nov 25 2009 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

Football - Liverpool FC: DISAPPOINTED Rafael Benitez admitted Liverpool have only themselves to blame after they crashed out of the Champions League last night.

David Ngog’s fourth-minute strike was enough to beat Hungarian champions Debrecen in Budapest and earn Benitez’s side only their second win in 11 games.

But with Fiorentina defeating Lyon in last night’s other Group E fixture, the Italians joined the French side in progressing to the knockout stage with Liverpool now dropping into the Europa League.

It is the first time Liverpool have not emerged from their group in six seasons under Benitez’s tutelage, during which they have won the competition in 2005 and finished runners-up two years later.

And the Spaniard pinpointed the results against Lyon – when injury-time goals cost Liverpool a draw at Anfield and a victory in France – as the key to their failure.

“If you analyse the group games, the two late goals against Lyon have made a massive difference,” said Benitez. “We weren’t worse than them in those games.

“If you take away the first half at Fiorentina and the two late goals, it could be different. But that’s football, it’s difficult to control everything.

“We made mistakes in the games where we conceded in the last minute, so it’s our fault at the end of the day. We are really disappointed as we had chances to win in all the games and we could have won all of them.

“At half-time we knew the score (in Florence) and after the game we were waiting for the news from there. During the game, though, the players didn’t know about the score.

“It hurts to go out, especially the way that we have gone out. If we hadn’t conceded just one of those late goals against Lyon, we would still be fighting in the competition.”

Benitez believes Liverpool’s early exit – they will host Fiorentina in a dead rubber in a fortnight – has brought into sharp focus their success of recent European campaigns.

“A lot of teams don’t play in the Champions League and haven’t qualified,” he said. “And because we have qualified for five years in a row, people think it’s easy.

“Every year we were there, and everybody was expecting us to get to the final every year. But it’s really difficult to do that.

“When you play in a group stage then you have to play well from the beginning.”

Benitez added: “I like to win every game and do as well as possible in all competitions. We knew we had to win and we won. We did our job tonight.

“I’m disappointed but you could see the players working very hard. The pitch was difficult but we had a lot of chances. Thinking about the players, the staff and fans, I’m disappointed for everyone.

“But we can’t change that now. We have to think about the next competition, the Europa League, we have to try and do our best.”

Liverpool must now pick themselves up with the small matter of the Goodison derby to come on Sunday afternoon.

And Benitez believes there were reasons for encouragement last night, and said: “The positive is that we have won and we created a lot of chances, and the fans could see the players were working really hard.

“We have to win against Everton, it is a massive game on Sunday and that’s our priority now. If we can do it then we can start thinking about winning games in a row.

“Gerrard can now play more or less 90 minutes and Aurelio is back, so we have players coming back from injury and that has to be good for the rest of the season.”

Gerrard has already trained his thoughts on winning the Europa League, with Liverpool parachuted into the last 32 of the competition where they could yet be joined by their neighbours. The skipper said: “Of course it’s disappointing, we played fantastically well tonight and despite getting three points we don’t progress.

“We’ll be in the Europa League now so we’ll try to win that.

“The main prize has gone and to be playing in the Europa League is disappointing but we have to accept that, move on and try to win that competition.

“The only consolation in this is if we go on and win the secondary one.”