Reds will not take any chances with Gerrard, says Benitez

RAFAEL BENITEZ will make Steven Gerrard’s long-term fitness his foremost consideration when he names his team for tomorrow’s European Super Cup match.

The Liverpool captain missed Tuesday’s Champions League match against CSKA Sofia with a calf injury and Benitez considers him a doubt for the match against CSKA Moscow in Monaco.

Benitez said: “It is only a possibility that Steven can play. We need two more days with him working hard with the physios in the morning and afternoon. But it will now be difficult, even if we will still consider the possibility because the player wants to play. But we need to be careful with him.

“I have talked to the doctor and it will be hard for Steven to play in the Super Cup. He wants to play and I want him to play, and it is a trophy we want to win, so we will wait and see.”

Benitez has moved to reward full-back Stephen Warnock with a new contract after a bright start to the season. The youngster almost quit the club for Coventry before Benitez took over last summer, but he has made a major impact on the Spaniard.

Warnock has taken full advantage of an injury to Djimi Traore to make the left-back position his own, starting ahead of John Arne Riise.

Meanwhile, stand-in skipper Sami Hyypia believes Liverpool need to heed the warning signs following their shock defeat by CSKA Sofia.

Hyypia was brutally honest after the embarrassing 1-0 defeat, declaring: “We were not good enough.”

Liverpool scrambled into today’s group stages draw in Monaco thanks to a 3-2 aggregate victory, but it was not the way they had wanted to reach Europe’s elite stage, where they are now number one seeds as holders.

Hyypia said: Okay, we lost but we are grateful it hasn’t really done us any harm in terms of reaching the next stage. But now we need to see what went wrong during the match and work harder on putting things right, because we were not good enough.”

For long spells on Tuesday, Liverpool were in danger of being humbled by the Bulgarians with initially £10m of UEFA cash - qualification bonuses and television revenue - riding on the result. It would have been a catastrophic failure, financially, had they failed to reach the lucrative stages, where they made around £30m for winning the trophy last season.

Benitez has admitted to already spending his budget and more, and a return to the UEFA Cup would have wrecked his plans.

Hyypia said: “We are in the group stages now and nobody can take that away from us. When I knew we had to start in the first qualifying round and that our first match was on July 13, I wasn’t very happy. It wasn’t good for us as players to start back playing competitive matches so early, particularly as the Istanbul final had only been seven weeks earlier.

“But we’ve done the job and reached the group stages. Now we have to go on from here and do our best to defend the trophy.”

However he added: “It is a relief when you lose a game but know the result doesn’t really hurt you. During the warm-down after the game we were talking about the same stage last season when we lost here to Graz and then went on to win the competition. Maybe that will be a good sign for us for this season.”