I STILL remember Liverpool beating Real Madrid 1-0 away and whacking them 4-0 at Anfield last season.

I don't think Liverpool have turned bad overnight, but they have had to deal with an injury crisis and they were missing the inspirational players in key games.

The two matches against Lyon were crucial - in the home game Liverpool missed Fernando Torres and in the away game they didn't have Steven Gerrard.

In both matches, they took the lead but somehow still managed not to win either game. All these ate into their confidence and even Gerrard's comeback from injury has not lifted the Reds as usual.

Liverpool need to stick to what they are good at - counter-attacking, and not try and create complex attacking play, at least not with the players they have now.

They will need to get rid of some players like Lucas Leiva and Andriy Voronin, who are not fit to wear the Liverpool jersey.

Even as they are knocked out of the Champions League, the Reds cannot just lose hope now because there is still more than half the season left to play for.

Be it the Europa League or the FA Cup, whatever silverware they still have hopes of winning, they must go for it. At least by winning a trophy in a troubled season, the Reds can still keep the critics' mouths shut.

Finishing among the top four in the Premiership will be a priority now.

IN THE WIRES

LIVERPOOL'S players and their supporters were defiant until the bitter end, hoping against hope for news of a miracle in Florence that never came.

After hearing that Fiorentina had beaten Lyon, so evicting them from the Champions League, Liverpool's fans chanted 'We've won it five times' but the words were steeped in misery.

A banner hanging from the away end declared 'Same Old Faces, Different Places'. Now those same old faces of Liverpool's loyal support will be appearing in different places, in the less glamorous outposts of the Europa League, which they fall into as Group E's third team.

The target now is the Hamburg final. 'Germany, Germany; we're the most famous team in Europe and we're off to Germany,' chanted Liverpool's fans.

BUDAPEST may be the birthplace of Harry Houdini, but there was to be no miraculous Champions League escape act from Liverpool.

Rafa Benitez's players were reduced to watching their hopes and dreams disappear as they viewed the final few minutes of the game in Italy on a monitor in the tunnel of the Ferenc Puskas Stadium.

And that enduring image of their fate in others' unwilling hands will remain to haunt Benitez and his side, because really, this is a desperate humiliation for Liverpool, given the quality of opposition in their group.

A NUMBING night for Liverpool did not leave scope for anguish. They must have come to Budapest prepared for the worst.

There is nothing left now to take minds off topics such as the troubled effort to stay in the top four of the Premier League.

If the fans' minds are to be distracted from that, it will only be by further comment about the relationship between the owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks or their financial position.

Guardian