Rafael Benitez has dismissed the financial implications should Liverpool fail in the Champions League and called for passion and cool heads from his players in the make-or-break showdown with Besiktas. If Liverpool lose tomorrow at Anfield their chances of qualifying from Group A for the knockout stages will have gone.
Should they win they will have to beat Porto at Anfield at the end of the month and then go to Marseille in December and win again to be sure of fulfilling their qualification dreams. That is the massive task facing boss Benitez and his side, with failure casting a giant shadow over a club who have enjoyed two Champions League finals in the past three years.But suggestions that Liverpool's demise would cost the club between £17m and £20m and influence owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks over future decisions is not something Benitez claims to be worried about. With striker Fernando Torres likely to return after a adductor strain, Benitez insists he is not under pressure and has great confidence that his recently maligned squad can keep the dream alive.
He says: "I am surprised by talk of money. I am being told we will lose £17 to £20m, but that is the money only the finalists get and only two clubs can do that. "We are planning to build a stadium costing £400m, so if we lose some money now it will be only £10m one way or the other.
"That is the difference but don't forget what we have made in two runs to the final." Benitez revealed he has had recent talks with the American owners but that money was never the issue, only the future direction of the club. Liverpool will get the go-ahead tomorrow from city planners for the revised Stanley Park stadium scheme and hope by the end of the day to also have a European triumph to celebrate.
Benitez said: "The owners must be pleased with the way the team and the club is going, we are changing a lot of things. "There is progress. Maybe the problem is that when they arrived at the club we were beating Arsenal and then Barcelona, and then Chelsea. Maybe they thought it was easy and we could always be in a final, especially as we were then in another final, our second in three seasons.
"Tell me how many teams have done that. They know what can be achieved and we have had a positive meeting about the future. They are focused and supportive and they know the future can be great and could be brilliant. "People have said I have £25m (to spend in January), or £20m or someone said none at all. I don't know, but when we talked to the owners about the future we were not talking about money."
He added: "The financial implications in losing are not as big as people suggest. But we must think about football first and not to be bothered by other things - that will be taken care of later. "I have talked to the owners, but not about money, just our ideas for the future. "For the financial situation we know that if we win we progress, but we have been in two Champions League finals in three years so clearly the problem is not money. "If we do not win this game, we will talk about money then. But more important is the way we play and how we score the goals to win.
"As a top side you want to win and that is the pressure. You must win to improve and that is the aim and real pressure." Benitez has revealed that Xabi Alonso will be out for a further month with another metatarsal injury suffered in a physical clash with Arsenal last weekend. And he said of the clash with the Turkish side: "Now we need to play with our head as well as our hearts against Besiktas this time. "We always have passion, but we want to keep that and still do the right things. You cannot all charge forward, you need a cool head as well as passion. "That is the difference between the very top players and the rest. They have passion and a cool mind."
Benitez once again looks to skipper Steven Gerrard to lead Liverpool away from impending disaster after the shattering defeat by Besiktas in Istanbul last month which left Liverpool bottom of their group with just one point from three games. He added: "We have not been at our best in Europe but people were saying we were better in Besiktas and Steven Gerrard was better. "He can be contagious, that is positive. We have different players back from injuries and in a few weeks everyone will be fit again - Torres, Alonso, Agger - it is only a matter of three weeks or so now."