Benitez's boys in sight of Europe

12 April 2012

Rafael Benitez insisted his Liverpool side must achieve one more league win ahead of their Champions League semi-final next week with Chelsea.

The 2-0 home victory over Middlesbrough put the Anfield men one victory away from ensuring Champions League football next season. That, the Liverpool boss hopes, will come when Wigan are the visitors to Anfield on Saturday.

Benitez said: "We need that one more win before we play Chelsea, that will mean we will be able to concentrate fully on the Champions League semi-final matches."

He added: "And Middlesbrough made things very hard for us. You know that when you play against a side who defend so deep, you have to keep the ball moving to find the opportunities and openings.

"In such situations you need to do your job, and the first goal is the key. Once we had scored that it meant they had to come out and that created the space we needed."

And with the goals coming from Steven Gerrard, a 25-yard strike and a penalty, Benitez knew his side owed a debt to their skipper.

He said: "Quality players change games, and we know that players like Steven can do such things. It was a fine first goal, and it does not matter where we play him, either wide or in the middle, he can produce match-winning situations."

Middlesbrough boss Gareth Southgate believed he had achieved a response from his side after harsh words that followed Saturday's 3-1 defeat at Aston Villa.

He said: "Questions were asked after Saturday's performance, we took some severe criticism. And although this is a difficult place to come, I felt the players produced a display that was encouraging.

"They need to show hunger and play in a manner to produce the right sort of performance, and I got that here."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in