A comical own goal from Djimi Traoré six minutes into the second half was enough to secure victory for Burnley in a rearranged third-round tie, but the bare facts barely begin to tell the story.
The Spaniard has been on the wrong end of cup upsets before. In his first season in charge of Valencia, his team were eliminated from the Copa del Rey on a technicality after he picked more than the three permitted non-EU players against the part-timers of Novelda. Bearing in mind the diminished status of cup competitions in Spanish football — and that he was to end that season by leading Valencia to the title — it could be said that his selection last night was even more mistaken.
Benítez seemed disappointed by the result, but he insisted that he had no regrets. “You can’t play in four competitions with the same players,” he said. “It’s not possible, not with the squad we have.
“What happens if one or more senior players had played tonight and picked up a problem for the games ahead in the Champions League and Premiership? I don’t think it was a mistake. We picked the same kind of teams in the Carling Cup against Millwall, Middlesbrough and Tottenham and we won. This time we lost. When you win, it’s the right thing to do. When you lose, people say you were wrong.”
The difference is, though, that even a place in the semi- finals of the Carling Cup, in which they lead Watford 1-0 after the first leg, could be said to mean less to Liverpool than a run in the FA Cup, a competition that retains a mystique among fans. Within half an hour of the final whistle at Turf Moor, Liverpool fans were bombarding a television phone-in to say that they could not understand Benítez’s selection.
This is the first time since 1998 that Liverpool have fallen at the first hurdle in the FA Cup and, for all Benítez’s talk of the bigger picture, defeat by Burnley was particularly unwelcome, coming only three days after Manchester United won at Anfield. For all the good work that Benítez has done since his arrival at Anfield, notably by introducing a greater fluency to Liverpool’s attacking play, these are suddenly testing times . They are fifth in the Premiership, seven points behind Everton, who are in the final Champions League place Injuries to key players, including Chris Kirkland, Steve Finnan, Xabi Alonso, Harry Kewell and Djibril Cissé, have undermined his cause in recent weeks, but even so Steven Gerrard and others were rested last night in deference to the youngsters. Four of the starting line-up — David Raven, Zak Whitbread, John Welsh and Darren Potter — boast a combined total of seven minutes’ Premiership experience.
Burnley will not care about that as they look ahead to a winnable fourth-round tie at home to Bournemouth, but it was difficult to say what an evening such as this signifies for the FA Cup. On the one hand it has been devalued, or even dismissed, by a leading club with bigger fish to fry, but on the other, that team has had its comeuppance. Perhaps others, perhaps Benítez, will think twice about treating the Cup so lightly in future.