It's a slow day today, what with the international break on, so why not have a bit more Benitez baiting?

We head off to the Times, where Oliver Kay uses his match report of the 2-2 draw at home to Birmingham City to underline a few problems for Rafa.

A sequence of one victory in the past nine matches in all competitions is simply not good enough for a club of Liverpool’s size and ambition and, no matter how much sympathy Benítez and his players might attract during an unforgiving crisis of confidence and personnel, they were grateful beneficiaries, as the manager admirably admitted afterwards, of a highly contentious penalty award midway through the second half when David Ngog went to ground without being touched by Lee Carsley.

A half-fit Steven Gerrard, who had come off the bench as a substitute for the hamstrung Albert Riera, converted the penalty, but, no matter what he and the enterprising Glen Johnson tried as they went in search of the winning goal in the final quarter of the game, Birmingham stood firm.

It was a strange game, with Liverpool starting like a house on fire, taking an early lead through Ngog’s acrobatic volley and yet somehow they were 2-1 down by half-time. Rafael Benítez was right to take some comfort from the way his team had performed, but, even when their football was at their most incisive when they led, there was a haphazard, reckless feel to their play that was contrary to everything that their manager has spent the past five years trying to instil in them.

It is nothing that an upturn in confidence should not be able to rectify, but what will come first: the confidence that yields a result or the result that yields the upturn? The momentum gained from one supposed turning point, the victory over Manchester United last month, soon dissipated and their first game after the international break, at home to Manchester City on November 21, has now assumed huge importance for both clubs.

And a quick visit to the Daily Telegraph before we depart. Rory Smith reckons most people have not yet realised just how much trouble Liverpool are in. And the fact he had to rely on an unfit Steven Gerrard to rescue them against Birmingham shows this.

Gerrard is seen, with good reason, as a panacea to all of Liverpool’s ills.

His class, his quality, his endless power and boundless reserves of quality see to that. When he is absent, as he was for 44 minutes here, Liverpool lack urgency, that cutting edge of quality.