Football Talk - Benitez demands improvement - 30/09/09
After the defeat to Fiorentina Rafael Benitez has promised it will be a "very different" Liverpool side that faces Chelsea at the weekend before back-to-back Champions League clashes with Group E leaders Lyon. The Reds slumped to a disappointing 2-0 defeat in Florence with teenager Stevan Jovetic scoring both goals in the first half.
"We now have Chelsea away at the weekend in an important Premier League game," said Benitez. "I believe you will see a different Liverpool in that match, a totally different performance with a different mentality. Then we have Lyon home and away in this group, they are the leaders and it means we have to now win them both. We certainly will not be as bad again. If you make too many mistakes against such sides, you will be punished. It is very simple.
"Mentally we will have better days than this. We did improve, but we needed to score early in the second-half. We had the chances but we failed to take them." He added: "In that first half we did not play well, there were too many mistakes and problems. We did improve, but it was not enough. Our mentality in that opening period was just not right, we were bad all over the pitch and I cannot really recall a performance like that. They were on top of us all the time, we played badly and they were just better than us."
Liverpool went behind when Jovetic exploited the offside law which does not penalise players who are not interfering with play. Benitez said: "It is the new law, and another mistake by us. If a player is in such a position he is offside, and it makes it difficult for defenders who are distracted by him. But the law says the other player coming from deep is fine, he can go through. Just another error by us."
Benitez was also critical of the tackling and pressing from his team. He said: "I was not only disappointed with the challenging in midfield but all over the pitch. But they did not produce anything we did not expect. We had watched them, we knew about Jovetic, there was nothing new out there that surprised us. But we still played badly."
Fiorentina coach Cesare Prandelli was delighted with his team's performance. "We were fantastic, that is the best performance I have seen by a Fiorentina side in the four years I have been in charge," he enthused. "Liverpool did not play well, but that was because of the performance of my team. We were outstanding."
