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Posts Tagged ‘until-the-end’

• Striker wants club to make ‘four or five’ significant signings
• ‘The first thing we can do is win games,’ says manager

The Liverpool manager, Rafael Benítez, hopes to keep Fernando Torres happy by going on a winning run until the end of the season to secure Champions League football.

The Spain international has stressed he is more concerned with significant investment in the Liverpool squad to make them title challengers than he is with playing in Europe’s elite club competition.

However, considering the state of the finances at Anfield, where the £237m debt has yet to be reduced, Champions League football may be more attainable than the “four or five” signings Torres wants.

“All the players we have at the moment are important and Fernando is one of the key players,” said Benítez. “If a striker is scoring goals he is a very important player and in trying to keep him happy the first thing we can do is win the games this year and try to be in the top four.”

LiverpoolRafael BenítezFernando Torresguardian.co.uk

• Liverpool defender unavailable until end of April
• Player will not need surgery on broken toe

Martin Skrtel will be out for up to eight weeks with a broken metatarsal he sustained against Unirea Urziceni last week.

Liverpool said the defender would be absent for most of the rest of the season with the injury to his right foot.

Skrtel will not need surgery, the club said on their website, but the recovery process means he will be unavailable to Rafael Benítez until the end of April.

The 25-year-old Slovakian had to be substituted midway through the second half of Liverpool’s 3-1 Europa League win in Bucharest.

Liverpool are poised to offer Javier Mascherano a two-year contract extension that will keep him at Anfield until 2014 and out of the clutches of Barcelona. The Spanish club have declared their interest for the Liverpool midfielder after Pep Guardiola, their coach, identified the Argentina captain as the perfect foil for Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta almost a year ago.

Talks are continuing and Liverpool are hopeful the player will agree to stay beyond February 2012, when his present deal expires.

Liverpoolguardian.co.uk

• We will be playing until end of the century, says Spaniard
• Benayoun unlikely to be risked but Kyrgiakos may play

Liverpool’s manager Rafael Benítez has ridiculed the idea of a play-off for the final Champions League place, claiming clubs “will be playing until the end of the century”.

Reports this week claimed the Premier League is looking into the prospect of having the sides from fourth to seventh face each other post-season to decide the remaining spot for Europe’s elite club competition.

It is a scenario which could work both ways for Liverpool, who have consistently finished in the top four but have seen their stranglehold on the spot threatened by Manchester City, Tottenham and Aston Villa. But Benítez is keen for the team that finishes fourth to get the final spot and not complicate the season even further.

“I have to agree with [Everton's manager] David Moyes,” said the Spaniard. “He said what would it mean for a team like Tottenham if they finish fourth and, after a fantastic season, have to play a team who finishes seventh, maybe 20 points behind, just to keep the competition alive?

“To play three, maybe four fixtures, when you don’t have time with international football – when will you play, how can you play these games and what does it mean for the team that finishes fourth?”

Benítez added: “Maybe we can do the same with the teams at the bottom of the table. If you finish fourth maybe you could play with the team who finished third from the bottom. Then during the whole season we can play 50 games and we don’t have to rest so that will be fantastic.

“If we continue playing games we will end up playing three games a week – which is fantastic for the television companies. We are playing too much as it is. They were talking about the 39th game being played in Asia so if we now play the play-offs we will be playing until the end of the century.”

The Champions League has been brought into more focus at Anfield this week as Liverpool conceded fourth spot to City last night and, having failed to qualify for the knockout stages, face Unirea Urziceni in the Europa League tomorrow.

It is not an environment the five-time European champions are accustomed to but Benítez stressed as it was their only chance of winning a trophy this season Uefa’s second-tier competition had to be taken seriously.

“When you talk about Liverpool, people talk about the history of the club but the history is not [currently] winning trophies,” he said. “When you talk about the Uefa Cup or Europa League now it is a massive competition and we have do our best and progress until the end.

“If we cannot it means maybe the teams are at this moment better than us and then we have to prepare the team for next year and be ready.”

Yossi Benayoun is unlikely to be risked for the match. The Israeli midfielder has not played since breaking a rib more than a month ago in the FA Cup defeat by Reading and although he has been training with the squad, he may be held back for Sunday’s match at Manchester City.

Maxi Rodriguez, meanwhile, is ineligible having already played in Europe for Atlético but Sotirios Kyrgiakos, currently serving a domestic suspension for the tackle that ended Marouane Fellaini’s season and which rules him out of the trip to Eastlands, is available.

Alberto Aquilani is back after missing last Wednesday’s defeat at Arsenal through illness and although Fernando Torres is recovering well from a knee operation, he is not yet close to a comeback.

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