Huth piles pressure on

Stoke C 1 Liverpool 1:THE TWO security guards resembled the Mitchell brothers and they were detailed to track two conspicuous targets at the Britannia Stadium: a €10,000 lottery prize and Rafael Benitez whenever he walked from tunnel to technical area. However, rich in symbolism the latter assignment may have been it is not physical protection that Benitez requires. His survival at Liverpool depends on the men he leads, which explains why his prospects appear so bleak.

It was the match official, Lee Mason, who needed the extra security on offer from Stoke City. Having dismissed three Liverpool players in their defeats at Fulham and Portsmouth this season, he left the field with the heat from an angry travelling horde on his neck for rejecting two penalty appeals by the Brazilian midfielder Lucas Leiva.

Benitez, at both half and full-time, received only a rapturous ovation from the Liverpool contingent who resisted the urge to head for the exits once Robert Huth inflicted the latest last-gasp damage on their hopes of an escape. Theirs was a show of defiance to a season in tailspin, as much as one of support for a beleaguered manager, but their reward was only further torment.

In terms of the character and commitment shown against Stoke, this is not a dressingroom that Benitez has lost.

The defiance in the away section and in the manager’s assertion that he will not quit was equalled by Liverpool’s reaction to the aerial assault from Stoke until the 90th minute. But the quality on display from both sides was galling. Without the injured Fernando Torres, who underwent a successful operation on his injured knee on Saturday, Steven Gerrard, sat in the stands here, Yossi Benayoun, Daniel Agger and Glen Johnson, the Liverpool support did not have to imagine what mediocrity is like. It came to them.

“I don’t know what’s going on in their changing room but I think it is like when I was there,” said the Stoke and former Liverpool midfielder Salif Diao, one of three dreadful Gerard Houllier signings – along with Bruno Cheyrou and El Hadji Diouf – who helped to create the vacancy Benitez filled in 2004. “They need someone in the dressingroom to really lead them with Gerrard not being on the pitch right now.

“But I think they have showed they do not just rely on Torres and Gerrard. Maybe getting a point at Stoke isn’t such a bad thing for them. I think it’s taken a lot of guts for them to do what they have here. They were under the cosh and they showed courage to respond as they did. It would have been easy for them to leave with nothing.”

At the Britannia at least, it was not spirit that Liverpool lacked and in Jose Reina they possessed a goalkeeper who overcame excruciating back pain to lead the resistance to a Stoke performance that only found accuracy and momentum in the final stages, and once Sotirios Kyrgiakos had taken advantage of a Thomas Sorensen fumble to bundle Fabio Aurelio’s free-kick over the line. Another amnesty beckoned for Benitez until Liverpool’s defence finally creaked in the closing seconds, as it has done too many times this season, and Huth converted Danny Higginbotham’s header from a Matthew Etherington corner.

The reprieve looked back on in stoppage time when Aurelio delivered an exquisite cross under pressure and Lucas took a nudge in the back from Huth as he leapt for the header. Mason, who had earlier booked the midfielder for an apparent dive over Higginbotham’s tackle inside the area, missed the connection and Dirk Kuyt, having scented an opening with a run from deep inside his own half, missed the back of the net when he flew in with a diving header. The ball rebounded off the woodwork and came back into play. The misery for Benitez and Liverpool did likewise.

“Normally in these situations you would see a goal but at this moment, okay, what we get is bad luck, but we still should have had two penalties that could have changed everything,” said the Liverpool manager, who, after the game, had only regret for an escort.