Martin Samuel: When Andriy Voronin's your only hope, Liverpool must know the game's up
By Martin Samuel 5th November 2009
European royalty, said the red and white banner, but this time it really does look as if the king is dead. Liverpoolâs destiny in the Champions League is out of their hands and, if Fiorentina win their next match at home, this seasonâs campaign will be concluded before the final group game at Anfield.
A stadium that is traditionally so full of noise and vitality on European nights will then bear subdued witness to a meaningless encounter that has purpose only as a metaphor for Liverpoolâs increasing loss of direction under Rafael Benitez, the manager.
Lyonâs equalising goal came late enough for stalwarts to claim some degree of misadventure but the fact is Liverpool were not good enough at the Stade de Gerland, and have not been at the majority of venues in Europe this season, including Anfield.
The single goal victory over Debrecen has been placed in perspective by the 13 goals the Hungarian champions have conceded in three games subsequently.
Lyon have been allowed to score late goals twice, to win at Anfield and then draw here, while the 2-0 defeat in Florence has placed Fiorentina in the box seat to claim the second qualification place in Group E.
Lyon went through last night, another reason why Fiorentina will hope to wrap it up when the teams next meet.
There can be no complaints if that happens. Liverpool had their chances, even here, when a goal from Ryan Babel gave them a lifeline, but they could not hold the lead through injury time.
The defending for Lyonâs goal from Lisandro was poor, reflecting the makeshift nature of Liverpoolâs back four, but there mitigation ends.
Benitez has had five years of ceaseless transfer dealing to assemble a squad capable of rolling with the punches at home and in Europe, and is too often exposed.
Yes, Lyon appeared fragile and had Steven Gerrard been available and Fernando Torres fully fit the scoreline may have been different, but Benitez should have more to call upon than two stellar talents, one inherited, by now.
Maybe he does, but in preferring Andriy Voronin down the centre he ignored the opportunity to partner Dirk Kuyt with Torres, the Dutchman toiling in the wide areas once more.
Voronin, true to form, missed a glorious early chance. Benitez cannot always be depicted as a victim of circumstance; on nights like this he must take responsibility for the big decisions.
And removing Torres with three minutes remaining was certainly another. It looked inconsequential at the time, a manager protecting an injured player with the game won, but it had the effect of releasing Cris, who had been marking Torres and immediately went to join Lyonâs attack.
He was involved in the move that led to the goal, and certainly helped Lyon front-load the team in those final moments.
Liverpool do not play again until Monday when Birmingham City visit Anfield, so what difference was another eight minutes going to make to Torres?
He was removed at Fulham on Saturday with the score tied 1-1, and Liverpool lost 3-1, but if anything this was worse. At Craven Cottage, Benitez could be said to be keeping him in reserve, but what was his reasoning here?
The travelling supporters still sung the managerâs name, but they are an admirably loyal lot. Their reaction to a result that could damage spirits in the dressing- room beyond repair was a chorus of the club anthem.
The players, warming down, looked on blankly. It seemed like so much whistling to keep the spirits up.
If Liverpool become only the third English team to exit the Champions League at the group stage since it became a 32-team tournament, we will know what this signifies. It happened to Manchester United four years ago, and they went on to win three championships and the Champions League, but Sir Alex Fergusonâs squad had a solid backbone and Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney coming of age.
There is no comparison to the raw material Benitez is working with, Torres head and shoulders above his team-mates, yet reduced without Gerrard by his side.
Gerrard has, in turn, been weakened by the sale of Xabi Alonso and his vision was missed again last night. It is missed whenever Liverpool lose, or under-perform, and as they strived to find a way past a rather ordinary Lyon side, it seemed as if Torres was searching for his passes forlornly, as one might for a lost family pet.
So some problems will be solved when Gerrard returns from injury, but far from all.
Lyon are hardly indestructible at home â no English team has lost here since Tottenham in 1967 â yet they did not have to be.
Backed into corners previously Liverpool have turned in astonishing powerhouse displays such as the 16 goals scored in three matches against Besiktas, Porto and Marseille two years ago, but this was tame by comparison.
Watching as Lyon laboured for long periods, the question remained: how did Liverpool get into such trouble in this group? If Lyon are the best of it, this says little for the rest.
To their fans, Lyon are the Gones. It means kids. Liverpool, meanwhile, appear to be Goners.
Soon to be gone from a tournament that was supposed to be their speciality; gone, too, the air of supremacy they had contrived to assume under Benitez. Gone for good, perhaps.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1225359/Martin-Samuel-When-Andriy-Voronins-hope-Liverpool-know-games-up.htmlTony Barrett, Lyon, Russell Kempson
Rafael BenĂtez admitted last night that Liverpool will need a footballing miracle if they are to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League.
After a 1-1 draw away to Lyons, their hopes of making it into the last 16 are out of their hands. Liverpool need to take maximum points from their two remaining group games â away to Debrecen and at home to Fiorentina â to stand any chance and will be out if Fiorentina beat Lyons on November 24, a result that would cost the Merseyside club at least ÂŁ10 million.
Liverpool took the lead through a magnificent strike from Ryan Babel seven minutes from time. However, as they had done in a 2-1 win at Anfield two weeks ago, Lyons struck a decisive late blow with a 90th-minute goal from Lisandro LĂłpez to seal their qualification.
One bookmaker responded by lengthening the odds against Liverpool winning the competition from 20-1 to 50-1.
BenĂtez, who has come under mounting pressure during a run in which they have won once in eight matches, refused to throw in the towel while it is mathematically possible to go through.
âClearly it is difficult, but itâs not impossible,â BenĂtez said. âWe have to win our next game and see what happens. We have produced miracles before and maybe we can do so again.
âThe main thing now is to play against Debrecen, to win, and then we can think about the last game.â
Claude Puel, the Lyons coach, insisted that his side would not take it easy in their remaining fixtures. âYou donât have to worry, we will play fair because we want first place in the group and we will be going there [to Florence] to try and get some points and then Liverpool would have their fate in their own hands,â Puel said.
For BenĂtez, the only thoughts were of what might have been. âI am really disappointed because it was a great opportunity for us,â he said.
âWe had some chances and yet again a late goal against Lyons has made a massive difference. In football sometimes you need luck and clearly we didnât have luck at the end of the game.
âBut you could hear our fans supporting us at the end and they know that our performance was improved. We had our chances and we were working very hard together.
âEveryone is very disappointed but the players will know that if we work as hard as we did today then we will win many games. If you analyse the goal that we conceded, we had players in position and we were thinking about controlling the game, but we couldnât. Clearly we made a mistake and we have to do better.â
Jamie Carragher, the Liverpool defender, said: âI think we can pull it off. We have been in difficult positions before and came through. Itâs going to be difficult but we are not out of it yet.â
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/liverpool/article6903737.eceKevin McCarra at the Stade Gerland 5 November 2009
Liverpool are on the brink of elimination from the Champions League after conceding a close-range equaliser to the otherwise muted Argentinian Lisandro LĂłpez in the last minute. The visitors, third in the group, are now five points adrift of Fiorentina immediately above them. A mere two fixtures remain for Rafael BenĂtez's men.
They deserved far better last night, after dominating here. An utterly deserved victory seemed inevitable when the substitute Ryan Babel turned to drive a 30-yarder high into the net after 83 minutes. Despite the outcome, there can only be admiration for the endeavour of the visitors.
There was nothing self-pitying about the way Liverpool approached this test and the clearest chances belonged to them in the first half. The difficulties facing BenĂtez were made manifest by the fact that the outstanding opportunity in that spell was wasted by Andriy Voronin. Fans of the club would have been appalled yet not wholly surprised that he should fire against the goalkeeper Hugo Lloris after breaking through on to a long ball from Lucas after 28 minutes.
That had been the simplest opening, but there were others that might have been taken. Lyon had their excuses in injuries that required two substitutions before half-time, but there was a lethargy about Claude Puel's men that had never been glimpsed during the win at Anfield.
The coach had tinkered with his selection and Liverpool's left-back Emiliano InsĂșa ought to have been euphoric that Sidney Govou, his tormentor of two weeks ago, was on the bench. If anything lowered Liverpool's spirits, it would have been their wastefulness. When InsĂșa's cross broke to Fernando Torres in the 12th minute, the Spaniard directed a poor attempt against Lloris. Dirk Kuyt deserved credit minutes later for a good try that the goalkeeper tipped over the bar.
Liverpool were free of self pity despite the miseries endured of late. BenĂtez can find no enjoyment in this troubled Champions League campaign, but his reputation is that of a strategist and the challenge here was to think his way out of a crisis. He was bold in his use of a 4-4-2 system designed to apply pressure. Still, the handicaps borne by Liverpool should not be understated.
The news that the line-up had just a couple of alterations from the team that downed Manchester United 10 days ago would have been met with ambivalence. It meant that there was a numerical degree of continuity, but the differences were still substantial. Sotiris Kyrgiakos and Voronin came in for Glen Johnson and Fåbio Aurélio, although not as direct replacements.
It looked more like a significant degree of disruption when it was realised this was merely Kyrgiakos's fifth start for the club. Voronin has appeared far more often, but seldom to the satisfaction of fans. The club's plight was underlined by the need to use Jamie Carragher as a right-back.
The role is familiar to him, but those who believe his lack of pace is becoming more pronounced would not have wanted to see him there. Apart from that, he had been a major factor in the defeat of United when he challenged pugnaciously in and around the penalty area. There had, all the same, to be trust in BenĂtez. The manager has earned that much after ensuring that Liverpool famously survived previous scrapes in this tournament.
Any surprise here still lay with the passivity of Lyon. It brought back memories of the fact that they had looked near to defeat at Anfield until their two goals in a late spurt. It was the measure of Liverpool's endeavour and confidence before half-time at Stade Gerland that the worth of Puel's men was being doubted once more.
Liverpool took vast encouragement from the tentativeness of their opponents. Lyon had not resembled men inflamed by the knowledge that a win would clinch their place in the knockout phase. The visitors were galvanised by their plight.
In the second period it came virtually as a surprise when Lyon's Michel Bastos had an opening after being picked out by the overlapping left-back Aly Cissokho, but he headed high. The onus, all the same, lay with Liverpool. With half an hour remaining the home side did start to act as if they would no longer allow their opponents to dictate the nature of the game.
There was no high excitement from them immediately, but Lyon were more vigorous and alert. A scrappy second half was exasperating for Liverpool when a share could not be satisfactory. Despite Torres's injury problems, BenĂtez was reluctant to replace such a striker at first, and Voronin made way for Babel in the first substitution for Liverpool.
The visitors were on the verge of a goal in the 69th minute. Lucas's shot was parried by Lloris and Kuyt's overhead kick was then cleared. BenĂtez's men might have claimed a moral victory, but they had required more than that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/nov/04/lyon-liverpool-champions-league
