Stunned Rafael Benitez refused to contemplate his Anfield future in the aftermath of Liverpool’s sensational FA Cup exit on Saturday.
The loss leaves the Champions League as Liverpool’s only route to silverware this season, with Inter Milan visiting Anfield in the first knockout round first leg tomorrow night.
And when asked whether winning the European Cup for a second time in four seasons would be the only way to save his job, the beleaguered Benitez responded: “I only think about winning the next game.
“I don’t know too many managers who win the Champions League. We need to improve the squad, it’s a young squad with good players, keep working, keep improving the squad if we can.
“Everybody wants to win here, so the way to win is to keep working. If you say against Barnsley that the players weren’t working hard, I would say that’s not true. The team was trying to win.
“We are out of the Cup, that is the situation and we need to think about the Champions League. If we can create the chances that we’ve created against Barnsley I’m sure we’ll score goals.
“We must try to keep going, keep preparing the team for the next games, we have the Champions League and after the Premier League, we must keep working harder and keep creating chances.”
Liverpool created 31 chances but scored just once through Dirk Kuyt’s opener. It allowed Stephen Foster to equalise on 12 minutes after the interval before Brian Howard struck Barnsley’s winner in injury time.
And Benitez said: “In the last month we had a lot of chances in every game and couldn’t score the second goal and kill the game, and now in the last minute we lost.
“To the players you must send the same message: keep working hard, keep creating chances and we will have more confidence if we can score the first and second goal.
“We had chances to score the second goal, very, very clear chances and the keeper made great saves. It means that we need to score the goals and improve our confidence.”
Asked whether his confidence-hit players were afraid to shoot, Benitez said: “Some players maybe, but you could see our players were trying till the end.
“So I had confidence at 80 minutes, I could see the team attacking and attacking and attacking, so I had confidence we could win.
“If you don’t try you will not change anything. You must try to win games, sometimes you cannot. You can’t say ‘oh, because I couldn’t win this game I will stop training and working’, so we need to prepare for the game against Inter Milan and against Middlesbrough, so that’s football.”
The loss leaves the Champions League as Liverpool’s only route to silverware this season, with Inter Milan visiting Anfield in the first knockout round first leg tomorrow night.
And when asked whether winning the European Cup for a second time in four seasons would be the only way to save his job, the beleaguered Benitez responded: “I only think about winning the next game.
“I don’t know too many managers who win the Champions League. We need to improve the squad, it’s a young squad with good players, keep working, keep improving the squad if we can.
“Everybody wants to win here, so the way to win is to keep working. If you say against Barnsley that the players weren’t working hard, I would say that’s not true. The team was trying to win.
“We are out of the Cup, that is the situation and we need to think about the Champions League. If we can create the chances that we’ve created against Barnsley I’m sure we’ll score goals.
“We must try to keep going, keep preparing the team for the next games, we have the Champions League and after the Premier League, we must keep working harder and keep creating chances.”
Liverpool created 31 chances but scored just once through Dirk Kuyt’s opener. It allowed Stephen Foster to equalise on 12 minutes after the interval before Brian Howard struck Barnsley’s winner in injury time.
And Benitez said: “In the last month we had a lot of chances in every game and couldn’t score the second goal and kill the game, and now in the last minute we lost.
“To the players you must send the same message: keep working hard, keep creating chances and we will have more confidence if we can score the first and second goal.
“We had chances to score the second goal, very, very clear chances and the keeper made great saves. It means that we need to score the goals and improve our confidence.”
Asked whether his confidence-hit players were afraid to shoot, Benitez said: “Some players maybe, but you could see our players were trying till the end.
“So I had confidence at 80 minutes, I could see the team attacking and attacking and attacking, so I had confidence we could win.
“If you don’t try you will not change anything. You must try to win games, sometimes you cannot. You can’t say ‘oh, because I couldn’t win this game I will stop training and working’, so we need to prepare for the game against Inter Milan and against Middlesbrough, so that’s football.”
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