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Liverpool are on the brink of elimination from the Champions League after conceding a close-range equaliser to the otherwise muted Argentinian Lisandro López in the last minute. The visitors, third in the group, are now five points adrift of Fiorentina immediately above them. A mere two fixtures remain for Rafael Benítez’s men.

They deserved far better last night, after dominating here. An utterly deserved victory seemed inevitable when the substitute Ryan Babel turned to drive a 30-yarder high into the net after 83 minutes. Despite the outcome, there can only be admiration for the endeavour of the visitors.

There was nothing self-pitying about the way Liverpool approached this test and the clearest chances belonged to them in the first half. The difficulties facing Benítez were made manifest by the fact that the outstanding opportunity in that spell was wasted by Andriy Voronin. Fans of the club would have been appalled yet not wholly surprised that he should fire against the goalkeeper Hugo Llloris after breaking through on to a long ball from Lucas after 28 minutes.

That had been the simplest opening, but there were others that might have been taken. Lyon had their excuses in injuries that required two substitutions before half-time, but there was a lethargy about Claude Puel’s men that had never been glimpsed during the win at Anfield.

The coach had tinkered with his selection and Liverpool’s left-back Emiliano Insúa ought to have been euphoric that Sidney Govou, his tormentor of two weeks ago, was on the bench. If anything lowered Liverpool’s spirits, it would have been their wastefulness. When Insúa’s cross broke to Fernado Torres in the 12th minute, the Spaniard directed a poor attempt against Llloris. Dirk Kuyt deserved credit minutes later for a good try that the goalkeeper tipped over the bar.

Liverpool were free of self pity despite the miseries endured of late. Benítez can find no enjoyment in this troubled Champions League campaign, but his reputation is that of a strategist and the challenge here was to think his way out of a crisis. He was bold in his use of a 4-4-2 system designed to apply pressure. Still, the handicaps borne by Liverpool should not be understated.

The news that the line-up had just a couple of alterations from the team that downed Manchester United 10 days ago would have been met with ambivalence. It meant that there was a numerical degree of continuity, but the differences were still substantial. Sotiris Kyrgiakos and Voronin came in for Glen Johnson and Fabio Aurelio, although not as direct replacements.

It looked more like a significant degree of disruption when it was realised that this was merely Kyrgiakos’s fifth start for the club. Voronin has appeared far more often, but seldom to the satisfaction of the supporters. The club’s plight was underlined as well by the need to resort to Jamie Carragher as a right-back.

The role is familiar to him, but those who believe his lack of pace is becoming more pronounced would not have wanted to see him there. Apart from that, he had been a major factor in the defeat of United when he challenged pugnaciously in and around the penalty area. There had, all the same, to be trust in Benítez. The manager has earned that much after ensuring that Liverpool famously survived previous scrapes in this tournament.

Any surprise here still lay with the passivity of Lyon. It brought back memories of the fact that they had looked near to defeat at Anfield until their two goals in a late spurt. It was the measure of Liverpool’s endeavour and confidence before half-time at Stade Gerland that the worth of Puel’s men was being doubted once more.

Liverpool took vast encouragement from the tentativeness of their opponents. Lyon had not resembled men inflamed by the knowledge that a win would clinch their place in the knockout phase. The visitors were galvanised by their plight.

In the second period it came virtually as a surprise when Lyon’s Michel Bastos had an opening after being picked out by the overlapping left-back Aly Cissokho, but he headed high. The onus, all the same, lay with Liverpool. With half an hour remaining the home side did start to act as if they would no longer allow their opponents to dictate the nature of the game.

There was no high excitement from them immediately, but Lyon were more vigorous and alert. A scrappy second-half was exasperating for Liverpool when a share could not be satisfactory. Despite Torres’ injury problems, Benítez was reluctant to replace such a striker at first, and Voronin made way for Babel in the first substitution for Liverpool.

The visitors were on the verge of a goal in the 69th minute. Lucas’s shot was parried by Lloris and Kuyt’s overhead kick was then cleared. Benítez’s men might have claimed a moral victory, but they had required more than that.

Champions LeagueLyonLiverpoolKevin McCarraguardian.co.uk

His squad is depleted and form is poor – but some of Rafael Benítez’s finest triumphs have come in adversity

Rafael Benítez often seems conservative and even glum. Compliments are handed out so sparingly that the Liverpool manager must suppose they are a natural resource on the brink of exhaustion. Experience has deepened the wariness in his character and Benítez had been sacked twice by lower-division clubs in Spain before making his breakthrough.

Even then, Valencia had been spurned by other candidates before they arrived at his name well down the list. Adversity seems natural to Benítez. That is just as well, considering the circumstances Liverpool face tomorrow night. It would be an achievement to take a draw in Lyon, although such a result would probably still leave his side struggling to get out of Group E.

The immediate challenge is to keep some hope alive. Liverpool have prospered under Benítez in the Champions League precisely because of a survival instinct. He won the trophy at his first attempt with Liverpool, but it tends to be forgotten that there was a brush with elimination in the group stage of the 2004-05 campaign.

With 10 minutes to go at Anfield, Olympiakos were drawing 1-1 and on the verge of knocking out Benítez’s side. Liverpool wriggled free with an 80th-minute goal from Neil Mellor before Steven Gerrard added another. It was the only time Mellor ever scored in European competition and his career total for the club was six.

Benítez, were he the romantic type, could invoke more recent exploits. Liverpool arrived at the Vélodrome for the last group fixture in December 2007 with just seven points but went through to the last 16 thanks to a 4-0 rout of Marseille. The line-up included not just Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, but also gifted creators such as Harry Kewell and Yossi Benayoun.

While the means are more restricted todaytomorrow, Benítez has often been at his best when eking out thin resources so the disadvantages in Lyon will not disconcert him. Memories of last month’s match with Claude Puel’s side at Anfield may even perk up the Spaniard, despite the fact that Liverpool were ultimately beaten 2-1.

Adversity had been extreme there, with Gerrard forced to go off in the 25th minute and Torres unable to take part at all but Martin Kelly had a laudable debut at right-back, Benayoun opened the scoring and there were chances to polish off Lyon before the visitors struck twice in the later stages.

Puel has unease of his own, judging by the accounts of indiscipline and bickering within the camp. In addition, Lisandro López, the apparent replacement for Karim Benzema, who moved on to Real Madrid in the summer, was ineffectual at Anfield and did not complete the game. Benítez will not be without hope this evening and the numerous blows he has taken have landed him in a situation to which he is well-adapted.

Ambition had been coercing the manager into a flamboyance that is not his natural state of mind. With Liverpool splitting champions Manchester United and Chelsea in the league last season, he had scant option but to take the next step and search for the expressiveness that might bring his side to the head of the table.

Circumstances mean that any such approach has to be suspended for the moment. Glen Johnson, the overlapping right-back, is not even with the party in Lyon and while the attacking midfielder Alberto Aquilani has travelled, he has so far been limited by injury to one outing of about a quarter of an hour at Arsenal.

Benítez is restricted to familiar faces and methods, but at least he is dealing with known quantities. While the vacancy at right-back is hard to fill, it would surely be folly to shunt Jamie Carragher into that area. The manager needed no reminder of the defender’s particular expertise but the player was at the root of Liverpool’s win against United 10 days ago.

Carragher thrives when blocking in or around the penalty box and there was pressure of that sort to be endured in the 2-0 victory. It was by far his best display of the campaign and it was no mystery that adversity should bring out the best in him. The centre-back becomes more uneasy the closer he gets to the halfway line.

He will not be particularly averse to siege defendingtomorrow night. The Liverpool side as a whole will have to be tight-knit. They achieved that in the defeat of United when, then as now, they had no Gerrard but could call on a semi-fit Torres. Lucas Leiva had an outstanding game that day and such less-celebrated footballers will have to come to the fore at the Stade Gerland. The encouragement of the Anfield stands may be absent this time, but the strategist Benítez will be gladdened by the knowledge that Lyon are scarcely so formidable as United.

Rafael BenítezLiverpoolLyonChampions LeagueKevin McCarraguardian.co.uk

Hit by injuries to 10 first-team players, and already fielding the Premier League’s cheapest defence, Liverpool’s squad looks threadbare

There is surely no greater indictment on the sorry state of Liverpool’s squad than the prospect of Rafael Benítez regretting excluding Philipp Degen from his Champions League list. There is also no weakness more glaring in Liverpool’s transfer strategy than the defence that Benítez fielded at Fulham, the cheapest to appear in the Premier League this weekend with the exception of a club that spent the previous 33 years in the lower leagues, Burnley.

It is easier to find order to Liverpool’s chaotic finale at Craven Cottage than perspective on Benítez now that the post-Manchester United bubble has spectacularly exploded but the above realities demand consideration at a time when every mistake, whether in the transfer market or in David Moores’ choice of his replacements as owners, is returning to haunt the Spaniard.

The Liverpool manager has been accused of prioritising tomorrow’s Champions League tie in Lyon over a title challenge on the evidence of his starting XI in west London and his decision to withdraw Fernando Torres after 63 minutes, although the news that Torres may need a hernia operation justifies that substitution. Yet with first-team regulars missing through injury or illness, 10 if Martin Kelly is included, Benítez had no alternatives at Fulham. Benítez had to turn to his fourth choice centre-half, Sotirios Kyrgiakos, his reserve right-back, Degen, and persist with the promising but now struggling left-back Emiliano Insúa. Alongside the home-grown Jamie Carragher, that entire defence cost £2.5m. And to think there are those in the Anfield hierarchy who deny the club squandered a glorious chance to push on this summer, having finished second last season with 86 points.

No squad in the country is immune to 10 absent players plus the finest talent available hobbling with injury, as is currently the case with Torres. Although, and this is the failure costing Benítez most of all, it is doubtful any club with consistent Champions League income and designs on the title would enter a season with such woeful cover for their one world-class, and injury-plagued, striker.

The extremes are swinging violently at Liverpool and their squad for tomorrow is liable to turn the beads of sweat on Benítez’s temples at Fulham into a torrent in France. Before the Carling Cup tie at Arsenal last week, when the relief and ecstasy of beating United were still tangible, Alberto Aquilani was preparing to make his first-team debut and Steven Gerrard had hope of facing Fulham, the manager could envisage the luxury of options on his horizon. Merely 48 hours later it was back to crisis management once again.

With the exception of the club’s record signing, every decision Benítez has taken on a striker in recent seasons was open to scrutiny given the lack of adequate replacements for Torres at Fulham. Even Craig Bellamy’s departure is suddenly being mourned in some quarters when the Wales international was barely given a passing thought at the time.

The inability of Ryan Babel to realise the rich promise of his appearances at the European Under-21 Championship in 2007, and to justify his £11.5m fee from Ajax, is well documented. So too Benítez’s misuse of Robbie Keane in the six months he spent at Anfield before returning to Tottenham Hotspur, although the Republic of Ireland captain rarely seized the opportunities that did come his way.

It was financial constraints at Liverpool, not only form, that forced Benítez’s hand on Keane in January, however, with the Spaniard having to cut his losses and recoup as much of the original transfer fee as possible in the first window of opportunity. Those same constraints were exposed again against Fulham.

Degen, Kyrgiakos and Andriy Voronin have been presented as evidence of Benítez’s most obvious transfer errors since they started on Saturday but, while only their mothers would champion their causes, all three provide a more accurate reflection of transfer policy. Degen, now Liverpool’s only fully fit and recognisable right-back but ineligible for Lyon, was a free transfer from Borussia Dortmund. Voronin was a Bosman from Bayer Leverkusen and Kyrgiakos was all Benítez could afford at the end of a summer when he balanced the books and was priced out of moves for Michael Turner and Matthew Upson. He would also have sold the Ukrainian back to Germany until it became apparent there was no money for a replacement.

They are signings made after Benítez has concentrated his resources on Torres, Javier Mascherano and Aquilani. They are padding to the Liverpool squad but, with the enforced exception of Degen, may be required again in Lyon and elsewhere in the weeks to come. Benitez will be praying they can follow the example of Neil Mellor, Florent Sinama-Pongolle and Antonio Nunez in the must-win group game against Olympiakos on the road to Istanbul, and finally deliver.

LiverpoolRafael BenítezChampions LeagueLyonAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk