Allardyce Was Right About Benitez!

The Spaniard had spent the build-up to Wednesday's shock Champions League 2-1 defeat by Besiktas trying to play down the uproar over his controversial substitution of skipper Steven Gerrard in the Merseyside derby last weekend.

He will return to Anfield having had his failure to use Peter Crouch earlier in this Group A match questioned.

Crouch was standing on the line waiting to come on with 10 minutes left when Brazilian Bobo broke away to score Besiktas' second goal, having gone ahead early in the first half when Serdar Ozkan's effort was deflected home off Sami Hyypia.

Gerrard finally gave Liverpool hope with a header with five minutes left, but despite a grandstand finish the Merseysiders could not salvage a draw from a dramatic night.

Benitez said: "We needed to make a change, but the players were doing well. Dirk Kuyt and Andriy Voronin were creating chances, I was happy with the way they were playing.

"It was just bad luck that Crouch was waiting to come on when they scored their second.

"We were attacking so much it was hard to defend against the counter-attack. In the end we had 28 attempts on goal, it was not the creating of chances that was the problem, it was putting those chances away.

"It was down as much to bad luck as anything else. Everything we did could not make up for missing so many chances.

"But if we keep playing like we did here, we will win matches because we will certainly score more next time around if we play like that.

"I still think Liverpool can progress to the next stage. We know now we need to win all three of our final games, there is no more margin for error."

Having only drawn in Porto and lost at home to Marseille, Liverpool are now bottom of the group and not even sure that they can qualify for the UEFA Cup.