The Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez is dumbfounded that his team didn’t beat Birmingham last night despite totally dominating the first half at Anfield.

He says everyone will be talking about Ngog’s penalty claim, but Liverpool should have scored so many goals for the discussion to be irrelevant.

“I think it is difficult to explain why we didn’t win, we had some many chances, plenty of possession,” Benitez said.

“But in the end we are talking about the penalty – whether it was or not, maybe it wasn’t, but we deserved to win as we had some many opportunities.

“I was talking to him and he said maybe it wasn’t a penalty, but anyway I would say that with 74 per cent of possession in the first half and how many attempts it is unbelievable that we are talking about a draw in this game.”

He was then asked if Liverpool could still turn this run of form around and go on to challenge for the title. He replied: “We have to be ready for the next game, that is it,”

“Playing as well as today and showing he character we did, you could see the belief of the players and that is the message. The message for everyone here is that we are working very hard and things will change.”