Benitez wants Liverpool to be genuine Premiership contenders

MANAGER Rafael Benitez may be turning his attention to winning the Champions League for a second time in three seasons, but he is intent on making sure Liverpool are genuine Premiership contenders next term.

Liverpool matched last season’s third-place finish with a scrappy 2-2 draw at home to relegated Charlton on Sunday. Today they head to La Manga in southern Spain for a five-day training camp ahead of the May 23 final with AC Milan in Athens.

However, Benitez knows that, with the major influx of money from new owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett available this summer, Liverpool must make a far better fist of their title challenge next time around.

Liverpool finished 21 points behind champions Manchester United and Benitez knows that is not good enough.

“I am happy we finished third – it was the same as last season – but obviously we want to go better than that next season,” he said. “We aim to be contenders and we know we must improve, especially in our away form.”

Benitez already had big spending plans for the summer but, for now, his total concentration is on repeating the 2005 victory over Milan in Istanbul.

And he has a dilemma over Harry Kewell’s possible selection, with the Australia winger’s return to fitness coinciding with him insisting he would be happy to sign a new contract to keep him at Anfield for life.

Many felt he could be one of the first out of Anfield in the summer after a year of injury problems and Kewell, who has limped out of three Liverpool finals (Istanbul and the 2006 FA Cup and 2005 Carling Cup finals) in recent seasons, seemingly had no chance of making the squad to face Milan.

His return in the last two matches and his penalty goal against Charlton has pushed his chances of a place in the Champions League final squad.

But Benitez suggests Kewell has to impress him during the next week’s training: “We could see against Charlton how fantastic Harry can be. You could see him trying to beat players, keeping possession and working really hard. He set up one goal and scored the penalty. We will now have a week of training, it is not easy to say anything for sure about him now.

“We have several players who were not involved against Charlton. We will just have to see how they train over the next week, but yes, someone is going to be left out.”