Liverpool's Rafa throws in towel against Reading

It may be that the Liverpool boss believes he has much more urgent business in Marseille tomorrow and salvaging the millions which the knock-out stages of the Champions League are worth certainly takes priority over the ignominy of losing to a club where maximum points did not escape Arsenal and Chelsea this season.

But we should not deny Reading, even though their springboard for this victory was a penalty that should not have been awarded, for they punched way above their weight to achieve a thoroughly deserved victory.

It is to their manager Steve Coppell's lasting credit that he continues to entice maximum effort from ordinary players, though Liverpool contrived to make Kevin Doyle and James Harper look like world beaters.

The most significant sight of the afternoon was not the unsuppressed pleasure Reading gave to their faithful, but the premature exit of masses of Liverpool fans who had made the journey south on a day of atrocious weather.

Benitez should appreciate sooner rather than later that the ache in the hearts of their fans is not for another Champions League victory — welcome though it would be — but for a League title that has eluded them for the last 17 seasons.

The sight of Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher being withdrawn in the final half hour of the game with the team trailing 3-1 was too much for the punters. It was tantamount to surrender.

But Rafa regrets rien. He said: "When you make these decisions you believe you are doing the best to protect a key player and replace him with one of quality and pace, especially at 3-1 down when we are not creating clear chances. I know the three players I took off want to play in every game but I need to think about if I can change something in what was a difficult game."

In his mind, Benitez might be looking at the bigger picture, perhaps the one over the pond, where the American owners are weighing up their options before meeting their manager this week.

Indeed, he also had the backing of Coppell, who admitted he might have done the same thing had he been in Benitez's position with a must-win game in France looming and Manchester United to come this Sunday.

Fans, of course, are more myopic than realistic and in Liverpool they do not expect to lose to Reading, with or without their best players. The beef among the former Liverpool players watching the match was the odd system the visitors employed, playing the game very narrow and with the central midfield too far detached from the three strikers.

Benitez added: 'It is easy after the game to talk about the formation but we played the same system against Newcastle and everyone was talking about a fantastic team.

In the first half hour of this game we were much better than them.' Perhaps more credit should go to Reading because Coppell had prepared his team well for the challenge.

A Stephen Hunt penalty gave Reading the lead, but Liverpool skipper Gerrard equalised just before the half hour.

Kevin Doyle got the merest of touches to Nicky Shorey's free-kick to put Reading back in front before James Harper rounded Reina and rounded off a good day for Coppell.

The Reading boss revealed: 'We did not want to get too involved in their system and start playing a game of chess. We felt that in recent games, teams have been subservient to Liverpool so we wanted to be playing our way and getting some width.'

Coppell classed this as perhaps the club's biggest win, since they had not previously beaten one of the Barclays Premier League's 'Big Four'. He added: 'We've had a couple of bad results recently and you start to question everything you do at the club.

"You start to think what you are doing isn't working and so you have got to change it. Sometimes you have to say, "well, because we are punching above our weight we have no right to expect certain results". So if they don't go our way we have got to have the faith just to continue doing what we do."

Faith is what Liverpool will need in Marseille, with Peter Crouch admitting: "It is a massive, massive game for us. We have had a fantastic record in the competition over the last two seasons and we want to continue that.

"This was a blip but, if you look at the last few games, we've played some great football, scored a lot of goals and won convincingly."

They will only achieve that in France if they come out fighting and do not throw in the towel.