At least Benítez can now be sure of the income, estimated at £10 million, for qualifying for the Champions League proper. It was never truly in doubt even if this was a far more fretful occasion than the Kop, or the Liverpool manager, had anticipated.
It would have been churlish to jeer the players, given that they had just secured their place in tomorrow’s draw in Monaco — when they could be placed in the same group as Chelsea — but the fans were certainly in no mood to salute Fernando Morientes, the worst of a mediocre bunch. Indeed, they saved their applause for the visiting team.
By the time that they resume their European campaign, Benítez expects to have signed a centre half and a right winger. He continues to play down talk of Owen returning to Anfield, but, while it may not be his priority, the Kop cried out for a clinical goalscorer.
With a 3-1 lead from the first leg, Benítez had felt confident enough to put José Manuel Reina, Jamie Carragher and Xabi Alonso on the bench. He had good reason to rest some of his senior players, given that this was Liverpool’s eighth game of the season, with the European Super Cup to follow on Friday night. Never truly in danger of following their spectacular European Cup triumph with an equally spectacular exit, nevertheless they made a contest of what even CSKA had expected to be a formality. Had the Bulgarians been capable of more composed finishing, home supporters might have had far more excitement than they wanted.
After an adventurous opening burst in which Djibril Cissé seemed intent on proving that his career on Merseyside is far from finished, CSKA took the lead in the sixteenth minute. Mohamed Sissoko gave away a free kick on the right edge of the penalty area and his team-mates were slow to spot the free kick routine in which Yordan Yurukov cut the ball back for Valentin Iliev to chip a looping shot over Scott Carson.
For the next 15 minutes, Liverpool were a mess. If ever CSKA were going to turn Anfield’s discomfort into panic, it had to be now, but, five minutes after the goal, Yordan Todorov chipped over the bar. “If we had scored the second goal, it would have been a real drama,” Miodrag Jesic, the CSKA manager, said.
Even on a night when the absence of most of the spine of the team, including the injured Steven Gerrard, made for a performance lacking in authority, Liverpool had chances to kill off the tie. Cissé twice tested the goalkeeper in the first half, although the best chance came late on when Sissoko struck the bar. Alongside Cissé, Morientes was suffering. A succession of misplaced passes drew increasingly loud groans and he took an age to shoot when he slipped behind the defence.
Benítez sent his men out with greater urgency for the second period, but, again, it was CSKA who might have scored. Mourad Hdiouad’s long-range shot hit the side-netting when, for an anxious moment, it appeared as though Carson had been beaten for a second time.
Darren Potter had been replaced at half-time and Benítez took off another of his rookies, Stephen Warnock, and sent on Boudewijn Zenden. On a night when he should have been sitting comfortably in the dugout, the manager was constantly out to the side of the pitch to bark orders. Job done, but not the way he would have wanted.