Crouch on the way to winning Kuyt fight

The Liverpool manager had stood by his misfiring frontline throughout a return of eight goals from their previous seven games and was entitled to a knowing smile after seeing them score as many in the space of 90 minutes.

An unlikely rise from the foot of Group A to a top-two qualifying position suddenly looked less farfetched, and there was a prolonged ovation for Besiktas' 8-0 conquerors on Tuesday night before Anfield finally started to empty.

The journey home was only just under way, though, when misgivings over the future composition of Benitez's strike force began to fill the airwaves on post-match radio phone-ins.

Fernando Torres' return to the starting line-up looked imminent after he was passed fit for a place on the bench, but who might get the vote alongside him?

Peter Crouch by a landslide, if public demand was any guide, but there was a grudging acknowledgement that it may well end up being Dirk Kuyt. They are renowned for knowing their stuff at Liverpool and they clearly know Benitez.

It is a dilemma he must wrestle with ahead of Saturday's visit of Fulham and Crouch scarcely made it any easier after seizing the opportunity of a rare start by scoring the first and last goal.

The £7million signing from Southampton has had to work his way back into favour with Benitez after evidently irking him with some of his conduct since the World Cup finals.

A suspicion that England status may have turned his head was reinforced when he elevated a gauche robot-dance goal celebration into a national talking point, while showbiz page coverage of his appearances at celebrity bashes on the arm of glamour girlfriend Abi Clancy also did little to endear him.

He can at least score goals, though, and that should be enough to give him the edge overKuyt, who has so far come up with little more than selfless hard work as a means of justifying his £9m price tag.

Clean-cut away from the pitch he may be, but it surely takes more than conforming to Benitez's code of behaviour to be considered worthy of inclusion in a side with designs on the title.

Kuyt has yet to score from open play in the Premier League this season and while the same can be said of Crouch, the former Feyenoord front-runner has had more than twice as many opportunities in the starting line-up.

There were mutterings in Holland when he left that a regular return of 30-plus goals per season in their league was an unreliable, if not downright misleading, guide to how he might fare against vastly superior English defences and the reservations increasingly appear to have some substance.

Like Andriy Voronin, who has scored only once since the start of September, there is a selflessness about Kuyt that is valued by Benitez but he does little to suggest he can share the scoring burden with record-signing Torres.

Crouch again looked the likelier option and there were even signs that he is belatedly heeding the warning from Benitez that profiles should be kept on the low side.

With his goal celebrations and post-match observations, he resisted any temptation to vent his frustration at being left to stew on the sidelines for so long.

Whether it has come in time to salvage his Anfield future remains to be seen but he was even falling with Benitez's understated way as he appraised a result and performance that might have had some shouting from the rooftops.

'It was fantastic, but we don't need reminding we have to play like that more often,' said Crouch.

'There is still a bit of frustration at being in this sort of position, as we know a couple of our performances have not been good enough.

'We have given ourselves a lot to do because of such a bad start and we knew we needed not only to win, but to do so convincingly. It could hardly have been more emphatic, but it is only three points and we still have a lot to do to go through. None of us are losing sight of that.

'It seems you only see the true Liverpool when we are up against it. They couldn't cope with our attacking play and we showed how good we can be but we need to be more consistent.

'I hope we are back on track, but we will only prove it by playing like that more often.'

Steven Gerrard made sure the match ball was signed by every Liverpool player before presenting it to hat-trick marksman Yossi Benayoun.

The Liverpool skipper had an ulterior motive, though, as Crouch explained: 'Yossi has to make himself a hero to England as well as Liverpool now and Stevie and I keep telling him he's got to make sure Israel beat Russia.'