Carragher prays for salvation

RAFAEL BENITEZ followed Andrey Arshavin’s example at Anfield on Sunday and dissected Liverpool’s weakness in an instant. “It’s not a question of quality. It’s a question of confidence,” he said.

How badly Liverpool are lacking in that department was illustrated by Jamie Carragher’s admission yesterday that the team which wilted against Arsenal is the strongest at his manager’s disposal.

Carragher has confessed praying for salvation from the wilderness of Liverpool’s season, but it is the revelation that a side containing the experience and pedigree of himself, Steven Gerrard, Jose Reina, Javier Mascherano and Fernando Torres can lose self-belief as swiftly as it did on Sunday that underlines Benitez’s problems.

Three wins in 15 games would take an exacting toll on any team, and Carragher was seeking reasons to be optimistic as he gave an assessment of the Liverpool side that presented two contrasting faces to Arsenal. But the fragility has been exposed.

“That’s probably as strong a side as we have,” said the Liverpool vice-captain. “There are still players in that team who are not 100 per cent fit yet, but we need that team playing regularly now and if we produce the sort of performance we did in the first half and get a few more players fit, I’m sure we’ll win plenty more games between now and the end of the season.”

But potential turning points are diminishing rapidly. Benitez’s team host Wigan tomorrow night, with the Liverpool manager hopeful Mascherano can recover form the knee injury that forced his withdrawal against Arsenal, before Portsmouth, Wolves and Aston Villa complete another turbulent year for the Anfield club.

“The run we’re on is a very difficult one and that saps a bit of the confidence,” Carragher said. “We’re only human, and when things aren’t going well the confidence does go a little bit. You can see that at times. We played really well in the first half against Arsenal, and then the goal goes in at the start of the second and that’s when the confidence seemed to go.

“That’s when you need character. The only way the confidence comes back is by winning games. You grind out a few results and hopefully with each game you get more confident. But when you’re on the run we are, the confidence goes, and that’s only natural.

“Statistics can change quickly and we have got to do that. It’s tough at the moment, but part of playing for Liverpool is having big character. That’s what we need now. Between now and May it is going to be a grind at times, but we have got to stick together, get through it and, as I’m doing, pray to God that at the end of the season there will be something worthwhile for what we’ve gone through.”

The targets for a season that opened with ambitions of a first league title in 20 years have been watered down into Champions League qualification, the FA Cup and the Europa League.

Thus far the team’s only consistency has come in discovering new ways to drop points. Even those reduced targets, however, are secondary to the desperate need simply to beat Roberto Martinez’s unpredictable team at Anfield and commence the slow process of rebuilding self-belief.

“Wigan is a massive game for us,” said Carragher. “I’ve tried too many times down the years to work things out, so there’s no point looking further ahead than that. We’ll just try and get three points on Wednesday and then move on to Portsmouth.

“We can only judge the season at the end and see where we are. We could pick up a couple of cups and everyone would be delighted. But we’ve got to look at ourselves and realise that we’ve got to do much better.”

An exasperated Benitez has echoed those sentiments and pleaded with his players to show backbone.

“Everyone was expecting us to be higher in the table after the Arsenal game and a victory would have taken us to fifth place.

“It is difficult to explain what went wrong in the second half, we were very poor and we have to improve on this.

“The target is just to be in the top four and to start winning matches we should be winning.”

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