DERBY SICKENER: REACTION
As the dust begins to settle on the 204th Merseyside derby, and Evertonians continue to celebrate their 'cup final' Rafa Benitez will be contemplating some important decisions ahead of Tuesday's clash with PSV Eindhoven.
The first consideration will be whether he will drop Jose Reina who has cost Liverpool goals in two consecutive Premiership games.
The second is whether to stick with Carra and Hyypia for the game or bring back Agger.
He must decide whether to drop both Garcia and Alonso also, the two most underperforming of the midfielders, and whether to bring back Bellamy - some rumours seemed to suggest that the player reacted angrily to claims he wouldn't be playing against Everton. These rumours are false.
Rafa acknowledged that the problems lay at the back and his tone seemed to suggest that Reina will be one of the players to suffer in the PSV re-shuffle.
"We will have to improve in defence. We made a lot of mistakes, too many mistakes and in football, you pay for them.
"In the second half, we went forward and created chances but couldn't score, so in the end, we paid for that."
Rafa was pushed over whether he brought Carragher back to early. He responded:
"I think he was okay, he was training the last two days, but it was not just one player to blame in the defence."
"We have to think about the mistakes we made," he added.
The game ended with the reds down to 10 men. John Arne Riise suffered a recurrence of the injury he had been out with since the opening day - he will miss two weeks including the Chelsea game next weekend.
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