Resilient Liverpool back in title hunt

SOCCER/PREMIER LEAGUE:RAFAEL BENITEZ last night claimed Liverpool had revived their title challenge with a dramatic late victory over Chelsea as Luiz Felipe Scolari admitted his prospects of bringing the Premier League trophy back to Stamford Bridge were vanishing into the distance.

Fernando Torres scored in the 89th and 94th minutes to spare Liverpool an eighth draw in 11 matches, but only after Frank Lampard had been sent off on the hour by the referee Mike Riley for a studs-first challenge on Xabi Alonso. Television replays later confirmed the England international played the ball before the man and Chelsea intend to appeal against the resulting three-match ban.

Victory closed the gap between Manchester United and Liverpool to only two points, albeit with the champions having played a game less, and came with Tom Hicks and George Gillett making their first joint appearance at Anfield since December 2007 and with Robbie Keane watching from the directors’ box.

The Liverpool manager refused to divulge whether the American owners’ presence at Anfield would break the impasse over his contract dispute with the club.

Instead, he preferred to dwell on a result that lifted much of the recent frustrations at Anfield. “You can’t change your position every week in terms of how you approach the situation,” said Benitez. “It was a really long race before this game, and we were in a good position, and it is still a long race now but we are in a better position. We deserved to win. We were better than them with 11 against 11 but with 11 against 10 we had more control and more opportunities.”

Benitez claimed not to have witnessed the controversial incident that saw Lampard receive a straight red card for the tackle on Alonso but in which the Chelsea midfielder played the ball first.

“I had no intention of injuring the player,” Lampard claimed. “I obviously touched the ball and there is no way that was a red card.” The red card was harsh in the extreme and another chapter in a long-running feud between the midfielders. In an interview only this weekend Lampard revealed the enmity that exists with Alonso and that originates from his foul that left the Basque with a broken ankle at Anfield on New Year’s Day 2005.

Every encounter since, the England international claimed, has involved a verbal or physical confrontation while his attempts to apologies to Alonso personally four years ago were met with resounding silence.

Both Lampard and Scolari were indignant yesterday, however, that Riley had committed an injustice that changed the course of the game, one in which Jose Bosingwa had escaped unpunished for an appalling foul into the back of Yossi Benayoun.

Scolari added: “I don’t want to say anything about the referee. I only ask the referee and the people at the FA to look at it again on video. If they look at it and see that Lampard has not made a foul for a red card then maybe they can change it. Bosingwa did not make a correct situation. I am sure he could have been sent off. Bosingwa made a mistake and if he is punished by the FA then they can also change Lampard’s red card. It changed the game one million per cent.

“The game was 50-50 until Lampard was sent off. We didn’t have more chances than Liverpool, they had two or three more, but it was a normal game until that point. Possession was more for Liverpool, but it was not dangerous and after Lampard is sent off they had more chances, created more, arrived in our box more and scored two normal goals.”

Defeat means Chelsea have taken only one point from a possible 15 against their ‘big-four rivals’ this season and the Brazilian admits their title hopes are seriously diminished. “Our chances are more distant now,” Scolari said. “We have two clubs ahead of us, Manchester United and Liverpool, and Aston Villa are with us, but we need to play game by game and see what happens at the end. But it is not in our hands.”

The result increases the pressure on Scolari too, but he said: “Pressure for me? I have my job. I work hard every day. I do my best. It is not pressure. I am a football man; I lose and I win. It is not a problem in my life if I do my best every day.”

Hicks and Gillett sat 12 seats apart in the directors’ box but were accompanied by a group of Kuwaiti businessmen, including a member of the Al-Kharafi family, as their separate attempts to bring new investors to the club continue.

The Liverpool finance director, Philip Nash, met representatives of the billionaire Nasser Al-Kharafi last month only for the Kuwaiti to withdraw from a possible investment in Liverpool when the meeting became public knowledge.