Benitez still hopeful for qualification

Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez refused to concede his side’s hopes of reaching the last 16 of the Champions League were over after a 1-1 draw at Lyon

“It is difficult for us to qualify, but not impossible,” said Benitez.

“We have to win our game and see what happens with Fiorentina and Lyon. Then we will approach the last game.”

“We are really disappointed because it was a great opportunity for us,” added Benitez.

“We had some chances, but again it was a late goal against Lyon that made a massive difference.

“If you analyse the goal we conceded, we had a lot of players in position and we were not in a bad position.

“We made a mistake, but not because we were too high or trying to attack. We were trying to control the game, but we couldn’t.

“It is something we have to improve on because it has happened before.

“When we are winning we have to close the game out and stop teams scoring against us at the end of matches, like Lyon have done in both games against us.

“We have to learn to keep the ball at times and be stronger in the challenge.

“But football is like this – sometimes you need luck, and we didn’t have it in the end.”

“I think we had too many problems before the game, so I am quite pleased with the performance of the players,” said Benitez.

“We had many players in different positions, and they did well.

“I think it will be good to analyse the performance of the team. The players will see we were working very hard and had many chances and that is positive.

“The players know if they work as hard as against Lyon they will win matches.”

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Posted by Bilal Sulehri on Nov 5 2009. Filed under Football, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry