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  Rafael Benítez targets another Liverpool escape in Lyon |
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• Benítez says Liverpool have right experience to cope• Fernando Torres expected to play through painRafael Benítez leads Liverpool into their crucial Champions League tie with Lyon tonight admitting a victory to ease the pressure and revive qualification hopes would rank among the finest achievements of his Anfield career.Benítez, who will ask Fernando Torres to again play through the pain barrier amid an injury crisis that has cost him seven players, is in familiar backs-to-the-wall territory following a dreadful sequence of six defeats in seven matches.
The Anfield club have never lost three successive matches in this competition but will be staring at a costly exit should that ignominious statistic arrive at Stade Gerland.Liverpool are far more reliant on Champions League money than traditional "big four" rivals Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea, and missing Uefa payments for reaching the knockout phase plus a lesser share of England's television "market pool" would be keenly felt at Anfield.
But it is the impact on the club's besieged manager that now carries greater resonance, with the Spaniard, victorious in the Champions League in 2005 and runner-up in 2007, taking solace in the words of the club's anthem."It is always important for us to win at Liverpool and we have a lot of good memories, but it will be a massive achievement if we can do it here," Benítez said.
"It is such an important game that could give us a better atmosphere [around the club] and can give us a platform to build on.
Our fans are very clever.
They know what the position of the club was when we arrived and what it is now.
They know sometimes you have bad moments and that we are working so hard to try and change this."Asked what victory would mean for his own position, the manager responded: "I am really pleased to be here and I want to be here for a long time.
Always, if you walk through a storm you hold your head up high, so that is what we will do."Liverpool have a tradition of dramatic recoveries in Europe and under Benítez, of course, with the sense of crisis apparently lifted only last week with victory over Manchester United before a Carling Cup exit at Arsenal and a calamitous league reverse at Fulham..
They have twice had a worse points total at this stage of a group and qualified on both occasions - in 2001-02 and 2007-08, when they collected only one point from their first three matches then defeated Besiktas, Porto and Marseille to progress."We are very positive.
We know it will be difficult but we have experience of this," Benítez said.
"We have to believe we can do it because we've done it in the past.
We respect Lyon but we have to do our job and play well and win.
When you are under pressure you have to show character, analyse things and be calm.
If you are nervous you make mistakes.
We have experience of the way we need to do things."Benítez will be without the injured Steven Gerrard, Albert Riera, Martin Skrtel, Martin Kelly, Andrea Dossena, Glen Johnson and Fábio Aurélio tonight - while Torres is nursing a hernia, Daniel Agger, David Ngog, Alberto Aquilani and Diego Cavalieri all have problems.
Liverpool's defence has been badly hit by the injury crisis and Johnson's calf problem could lead to Jamie Carragher being deployed at right-back or possibly a first ever start for the 21-year-old Stephen Darby.Agger was in such difficulty with his back yesterday he could not sit down for the duration of the team's flight to France and Benítez admitted: "We maybe haven't had this amount of players missing at the same time before."The chances of Torres starting appear optimistic, although the Liverpool manager confirmed his leading striker is at risk of requiring surgery on a hernia if he is overplayed.
Benítez added: "I was talking with the doctor and he said it's a sportsman's hernia.
It means he has a problem and we have to manage the problem.
The positive thing is he is improving.
He is training, sometimes with pain and playing sometimes with pain, but it's less pain every time.
Hopefully we can continue doing well with him, and maybe he will not need an operation, that is our idea."
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