THERE aren't many days when watching football is a bit of chore but I have to say, after the week we've all just had and the disappointment of Paris still raw, the Premier League didn't have a lot to offer in the way of consolation.

Sure, the bump and grind of weekly action rolled back onto the stage again and this week the Champions League will decrease the size of the headlines Thierry Henry's hand has been attracting.

No Irish football fan will ever put that awful moment in the Stade de France to bed and it will be even harder to take when the show kicks off in South Africa in seven months’ time.

But spare a thought for a group of football fans living through a bigger torture. If the Republic of Ireland AND Liverpool are your teams of choice, the week ahead is lining up to be as bad as last.

Rafa Benitez kept his head down during the international break and the furore around the Henry handball was so great that there was neither the time nor space to refocus on Liverpool's troubles before Saturday.

There was a lot of ‘ifs' from Benitez about injured players and talk about putting things right with a series of positive results. The biggest news of all was the availability of Steven Gerrard.

Even his return couldn't help. Before, Gerrard made the difference between winning and drawing. Now his job is to score goals that will help get a point against Birmingham.

Someone said to me the other day that Liverpool will really know their place in the scheme of things if they end up playing a Merseyside derby in the Europa Cup against Everton. Don't rule it out.

They should be able to beat Debrecen, just as they should have been able to beat Birmingham but anything less than a win and the right result in the Fiorentina/Lyon game and the Europa and FA Cup competitions are all that's left and still a month to go before we reach the half-way stage of the season.

The Premier League title went up in smoke at the weekend. A 13-point gap at this stage in the season makes it nigh on impossible, especially when you look at the power Carlo Ancelotti was able to pull into his team after an international week.

Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack and Deco all missed the game but Ancelotti had more than enough to cope.

Even the young kid Kakuta, who was at the centre of Chelsea's recently suspended transfer ban and really looks like he could be a player, was a class above most of the players Benitez has on the training ground.

That's why it's so difficult for Liverpool fans to find a way through this situation to a place where they can be optimistic about the future again. As poor results pile up, belief in Benitez will diminish.

The idea that the Europa Cup is the right standard for the club based on performance and squad strength will not be easy to stomach but it has to be faced up to.

DISTANCE

Even if Liverpool couldn't match Chelsea, Arsenal or Manchester United over the last 10 years, they still kept a respectable distance between themselves and Everton and always managed to hang around the Champions League long enough to bank some of the really big money.

But there's a good chance now that this about to change and the terrible thing is that it's no great surprise.

Benitez has always pointed to the circumstances surrounding the club since he took over as justification for his concentration on the Champions League and unless there's a small miracle, he won't even have that to fall back on.

There's been a sense around the club for a while now that fourth in the Premier League is good enough and the Champions League will deliver the glory.

That's unacceptable for Liverpool Football Club and it's the reason I've been getting so wound up about Anfield of late.

I wouldn't mind, the fourth place qualification for the Champions League looks like a more and more distant prospect while Liverpool drop points to teams like Birmingham City.

An even worse scenario would see them struggle to qualify for the Europa League next season unless results improve radically and rapidly.

Anyone who cares about the club has to be unhappy with the current situation and particularly with the fact that Benitez seems to have about a dozen players and nobody else when a few injuries hit the squad.

Benitez does have a knack of belting out the right result when he most needs it and this time, the Merseyside derby next Sunday will provide him with that opportunity if things go wrong in the Champions League.

He caught a break with the World Cup play-offs and it gave him a chance to regroup and enjoy some time away from the spotlight.

But if things don't go right in Hungary and Benitez followed that with a defeat by Everton, the pressure on him will be ferocious.

- Ronnie Whelan