Fabio Aurelio says that he thought he had seen most things during his time at Liverpool, but he was not prepared for the Benitez backlash following the 2-0 defeat against Fiorentina.

Benitez does not appear to be a manager that gets easily annoyed but the performance of his side the other night would have been enough to make even the most modest of managers completely lose the plot.

Aurelio said: “I think that was the most annoyed we have seen the manager, but we were all annoyed. We all felt like that after the first half and I think that’s why you saw a better performance in the second. But we didn’t need harsh words at half-time. We all knew that we were not playing well and that we had to be much better.”

“In the second half we controlled more of it at last and we created chances that normally we would have taken. We just couldn’t find a way to play against them in the first half, and they were finding a lot of space. They were controlling the ball and we couldn’t come up with any way to stop them.”

“It was so unlike Liverpool. In the second half we were a different side and if it had been like that from the start, it could have been a different result. We can’t think about that now, though, just how we will manage it again if we have the same situation in the future.”

“In football you always have a chance to put it right and turn things to your favour and ours comes at Chelsea on Sunday. It’s a good opportunity for us to get over the disappointment of losing in Florence.”

“It is a very important game in the Premier League, against a very strong side, and we have to recover from this result straight away and have the confidence we can do a good job again.”

Liverpool look as though they are going to be this season’s frustrating team to watch. Brilliant at one second but terrible the next. There is no secret plan to uncover, all the team has to do is find the form that saw them completely smash Hull City to bits and play like that in every single game.

Europe is a different league to the Premier League but Benitez has won this cup and will do every thing he can to make sure his side don’t slip up again.

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.