Liverpool were soundly beaten by Champions League qualifiers, Fiorentina, 2-0 during a long night in Italy. Two goals from 19 year old, Stefan Jovetic, were enough to bag the Italian team three points and highlight a number of worrying points for Rafael Benitez to look at.

It was one of the worst performances by a Liverpool team in Europe over the last few years and they never looked as though they would threaten at any point. The result will be used by Benitez critics as justification as to why the Reds will not do at all well in the Champions League this season.

Benitez said: “Never have I seen the team struggle as badly as they did in the first half. It was a poor performance. We had too many problems and too many mistakes, and we had to change everything. In the second half we were much better. In the first half, they were on top of us all the time and we were not doing the things that we had been talking about before the game. We were bad in everything.”

“Fiorentina did a good job. They were pressing all around the pitch and we were too nervous, making mistakes, and if you make mistakes you will pay for them. The mentality was not good enough in the first half.”

“Clearly, this new offside rule is changing everything. The best rule in football is the offside rule, but if you don’t know if a player involved is interfering, it is difficult. This time it will be totally different. Hopefully, we will see a different Liverpool, the one that we saw in the second half tonight.”

Liverpool will need to turn themselves around quickly if they are to get out of their Champions League group. The problems last night were quite clear and this should allow the club to address them very quickly.

The problem for Liverpool seems to finding a good level of consistency that will stand the club in good stead ahead of more important games. At the moment no one is able to tell whether the well oiled machine will turn up or the one that lost to Fiorentina last night.

The club need all of their big players to turn up in every single game they play and if Benitez can get the importance of all these points into his players quickly then it will not be long until this type of performance is turned around.