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• Benítez hopes to start Torres and Gerrard against Birmingham
• £20m signing Alberto Aquilani will be on the bench

Rafael Benítez believes that Liverpool have been the victims of bad luck this season and has spoken of his conviction that the club will have significantly improved their league position within “one or two months”. The Liverpool manager, who has presided over six defeats in the last eight matches ahead of Birmingham City’s visit tonight, claimed he was “100% sure” his team would start to climb the table.

“You can see the table and it is not a big, big difference,” said Benítez, whose side are four points adrift of a place in the top four. “The main thing for me is we need to analyse our position and ask ourselves: How can we improve? We have to keep working and in one month or two months’ time I am 100% sure that we will be higher in the table and it will be totally different.”

The Liverpool manager hopes to start with Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard, who have been struggling with a hernia and groin problem respectively, while Alberto Aquilani is expected to make his Anfield debut from the bench. The Italy international, who was bought as a replacement for Xabi Alonso, has overcome a virus after initially being sidelined with a knee injury. “It could be the time to let the Anfield fans see Aquilani at last,” said Benítez.

Liverpool are desperate for three points, although Benítez feels that some good fortune is also long overdue. Asked whether he felt Liverpool had been unlucky this season, he replied: “Yes, in some games. It’s very clear. Against Tottenham and Aston Villa we scored and after we conceded one minute later. Too many things have happened like the beach ball, or the late goals we have conceded against Lyon. But hopefully that will change for the rest of the season.”

Torres has the better chance of being involved against the Midlanders. Gerrard has barely trained for a fortnight, but Benítez was pleased with his involvement in a training session yesterday. Fábio Aurélio, Martin Skrtel and Albert Riera are also likely to return from injuries. Glen Johnson has also improved his after training this weekend, but he and Martin Kelly are still struggling.

Benítez at least needs Torres on the pitch for a game Liverpool must win. “We hope to be able to keep going with Fernando. Maybe he can be available for Birmingham, we will see how it goes. It was a risk to play him against Manchester United, but he scored a fantastic goal and everyone was saying what a massive difference he makes.

“He played, and scored, at Fulham and I was criticised by a lot of ‘experts’ because he was taken off in the second half. They can see that he has a problem, but the same thing happened in Lyon when I took him off.

“Fernando will play if he continues to have less pain than before. Does he need an operation? Nobody really knows, we’ll wait and see. I have had many players with this problem over the years. They carried on, and sometimes you can play for the whole season with such a problem.

“But I have been surprised at what some critics have said about Torres’ involvement. People who have played football for years seem not to understand that the manager has more information.”

LiverpoolRafael BenítezPremier LeagueStuart Jamesguardian.co.uk

• Injured Liverpool striker sees specialist in Valencia
• Torres and Steven Gerrard may play against Birmingham

Liverpool’s concerns over the fitness of Fernando Torres have deepened after the striker flew to visit a specialist in Valencia for a second opinion on the hernia problem that has plagued him throughout Liverpool’s desperate run of one win in eight games.

Earlier in the day he had visited a private clinic on Merseyside for a scan on his groin, although that appointment was arranged before his 87-minute appearance against Lyon in the Champions League on Wednesday and has been a post-match routine since he developed the problem on international duty last month.

With Steven Gerrard, who has missed Liverpool’s last four matches with a groin injury, also being assessed on a day-by-day basis, the club have delayed a decision on whether to send the pair for operations in the hope that their captain and leading striker can help lift their season at home to Birmingham City on Monday. The international break which follows that game – it is three weeks before Liverpool play again in Europe – affords the club an opportunity to soften the impact should either Torres or Gerrard fail to improve.

“Fernando played with pain, and after the game he still had the same problems that have troubled him for a few weeks,” said Benítez of his compatriot’s display in Lyon, where Liverpool’s failure to win pushed them closer to elimination from the Champions League at the group stage. “He wants to wait, rather than have an operation. He wants to work with the physios to try to solve his problems, but still he has pain. He told me he needed to keep stopping during the game because of the pain. Whether there is the need for him or Steven to have an operation is a decision we will probably not take straight away. We must see how they can improve, and by how much. Then we will decide about any possible operation.”

Glen Johnson, Martin Skrtel, Fabio Aurelio and Nabil El Zhar, who all missed the Lyon game through injury, have returned to light training.

Fernando TorresLiverpoolSteven GerrardPremier LeagueChampions LeagueAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

• Goakeeper defends Benítez’s Champions League record
• ‘Miracles? They happen, particularly at Liverpool’

Anfield’s worried bean-counters may disagree, but José Reina has issued a staunch defence of Liverpool’s Champions League record under Rafael Benítez and insisted it is “not a disaster” if the club are eliminated at the group stage. He conceded, however, that Liverpool’s inability to ­ control their destiny in Group E is “disgraceful”.

The Champions League has played a pivotal part in Benítez’s reign at Anfield in terms of both finances and the manager’s rapport with the club’s support. Five successive qualifications for the competition as Liverpool manager and progress into the knockout phase in each of his five seasons so far has brought at least £100m into the club since his appointment in 2004. That record provided no consolation to Liverpool after Lisandro López’s 90th-minute equaliser for Lyon on Wednesday forced Benítez to concede they would need a miracle to avoid elimination, and the Anfield club will be out if Fiorentina beat the French club in Florence on 24 November. But it has prompted Reina to place Liverpool’s current troubles into context amid the continued despondency around Anfield.

“I do not accept that not going through will be a disaster for the club,” Reina said. “We have been in the Champions League for several years, one failure is not a disaster. Not many teams have reached the semi-final twice and two finals – including a title victory – in the last few seasons. It can happen again, we get closer to our real form with every game. Any team would miss the quality of the players who are injured at the moment, but we have others who can play and who can produce the right performances to get us out of this mess.”

Liverpool must beat Debrecen away and Fiorentina at home to have a chance of qualifying, but will miss out on an estimated £10m in Uefa prize-money and a cut from England’s lucrative television “market pool” should they drop into the Europa League. Benitez’s transfer budget will feel the impact of those losses at the end of a year when he was forced to balance the books on signings. Nevertheless, Reina was scathing in his assessment of the team’s position in Group E.

“It is not the end,” Reina said. “We have got two games to go and disgracefully we are not depending on ourselves; we need Lyon to get something in Fiorentina. Our priority is to win our two games that remain and we will keep trying. Miracles? They happen, particularly at Liverpool.”

The Spain international took encouragement from Liverpool’s display in France where, with seven players out and Fernando Torres and Daniel Agger playing with injury, they created enough chances to have revived their Champions League campaign before López struck. “That was our best performance in the Champions League so far this season. Even in some of our league wins, we didn’t play as well as that. We didn’t deserve anything but a win. I’m really disappointed as we were unlucky. We have got to look for the positives and that is we played well under big, big pressure. We can handle the pressure. We can trust in ourselves and we will turn this situation around, I am sure of that.”

LiverpoolChampions LeagueAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk