Benitez wins a major battle — now for the war

Unless Liverpool can develop and, more importantly, maintain a winning habit the feelgood factor revived by doing the double over Chelsea will quickly die in Merseyside throats.

THE natives were getting restless so, perhaps appropriately, it was a fellow Spaniard who saved Rafael Benitez at Anfield yesterday.

Instead of the familiar one-man rescue operation by Steven Gerrard, it was a late, late show from Fernando Torres which saw off Chelsea and, suddenly, the hitherto anxious Kop were in full voice and an increasingly vulnerable manager had some extra armoury for those contract talks.