After a frankly disastrous FA Cup defeat at the hands of Reading on Wednesday night, the future of Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez is once again high on the agenda of the nation’s press.

Their season over in January - bar the Europa League, a competition they never wanted to be in - Liverpool must ask some tough questions of their manager and while financial problems, unlovable owners and abusive board members have all proved handy scapegoats at times this season, the papers call for some intense scrutiny of Rafa’s record.

Jason Burt, writing in the Telegraph, leads the criticism against the Spaniard and asks if the club are in the right hands in his article, ‘Rafael Benitez must accept responsibility for the turmoil Liverpool are in’.

"The facts are plain. Out of the Champions League, out of the Premier League title race and now out of the FA Cup, the Liverpool manager is staring at a season in ruins. A career on the line. A famous club in furious turmoil.

"The blame game will start. Benitez needs to shoulder much of the responsibility. It is his duty. Never walk alone? Time, Rafa, to stand tall. Take a lead. It is said he is almost unsackable because of the long, lucrative contract he signed last season and because of the tumult over the club's despised American owners. Benitez has become a rallying point for Liverpool supporters who remain the most loyal in the country.

"But that doesn't wash. It's rubbish. You can't blame Tom Hicks – senior or junior – for this one. Liverpool cannot afford, in sporting or economic sense, to slide into decline, especially if Benitez then slips into his default mode. And that is to accuse everyone else. But it's gone beyond that now. Now is the time for the Spaniard to show something removed from a capacity to apportion responsibility to others.

"There is something rotten, and rotten beyond the board room in a team that surrenders a goal advantage at home at Anfield in such circumstances. This was a new nadir, a new low point. Confidence is smashed, the team fractured, the manager appears to have, in that time-old phrase, lost the dressing room. Maybe, also, it's time for all at Liverpool just to step back and examine what Benitez has achieved. Take away that incredible first year, the unbelievable comeback in Istanbul and have they really, truly progressed?

"Benitez is very good at railing against his detractors, against the perceived injustices he has faced and very good at playing the sensitive victim. This morning he needs to look in the mirror and accept where the responsibility lies. Accept who it was who sold Xabi Alonso, having alienated him, and has overseen five years of frantic, inconsistent team-building which has delivered very little. Benitez needs to earn his money – rather than complain about a shortage of cash. Liverpool need new owners, for sure, but maybe, also, a new manager."

Writing in the Guardian, Kevin McCarra is more restrained but he still warns that Benitez is at a crucial juncture of his Liverpool career.

"There may be even more troubles ahead for Liverpool. Gerrard has found it tough to regain his former vivacity and this has not been a happy campaign, either, for a familiar mainstay such as Jamie Carragher. It is not impossible that there will be further deterioration rather than a fightback from Liverpool.

"Tom Hicks and George Gillett will surely be conscious that Liverpool's habitual Champions League qualification cannot be taken for granted now, in particular when Manchester City are going to such expense to reinvent themselves. The proprietors would not be human if they did not have reservations about Benítez's capacity to reinvent himself to meet that challenge.

"It would, of course, be terrifyingly difficult to name a successor who could galvanise the club and do so on modest means. On the other hand, no manager survives for long simply because it is awkward to appoint a replacement. Benítez will have to pull off an astonishing upsurge if he is to survive beyond the next few weeks and months at Anfield."