The Liverpool manager has admitted that he wants to win the Premier League title more than anything, and if he doesn’t manage it with Liverpool, he will have a “feeling of failure”.

With a crunch game coming up this weekend against Mark Hughes’ Man City side, who are probably Liverpool’s biggest rivals for fourth place this season, Benitez admitted that things started to go wrong for him when Gareth Barry, who now plays for City, failed to arrive at Anfield.

Benitez said: “Anyone who knows me knows that I want to win every trophy, every game. But if you ask me what I prefer, I will say the Premier League. If I do not win the title, I’m sure I’d be so disappointed maybe I would have this feeling of failure.”

“You never know,” he continued. “Football is a funny game. The plan was for Barry to play on the left and feed the ball to Robbie Keane, who would play up front with Fernando Torres. This blueprint had to be scrapped. The collateral damage was Keane, who signed from Tottenham Hotspur before the Barry deal had been done.

“When we wanted to sign Barry, we were sure we were signing a good player with a very good mentality and the quality to play in the Premier League. The priority was Barry, then Keane.”

It won’t feel like a “funny old game” if Liverpool drop another three points against City this weekend!