Soccer-Absence of dynamic duo expose Liverpool's soft underbelly

By Mitch Phillips

LONDON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - It takes a lot to make Liverpool fans boo their own manager but when Rafa Benitez replaced Yossi Benayoun with Andriy Voronin in Tuesday's Champions League defeat by Olympique Lyon the jeers told their own story.

The 2-1 reverse made it four defeats in a row, two in the Premier League and two in the Champions League, for Liverpool, their worst run since 1987, when they still finished runners-up to Everton.

With league-leading Manchester United at Anfield on Sunday another defeat, which would be their fifth in the league, will surely guarantee their championship drought extending beyond the 20-year mark.

In the Champions League, Lyon have nine points, Fiorentina six and Liverpool three, leaving the 2005 winners and 2007 runners-up likely to need to win their three remaining games to progress to the knockout stage.

They have done it before but the team turning out at the moment, at least when shorn of Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard, looks ill equipped to repeat the feat.

Sections of the Anfield crowd booed the team off on Tuesday, disgruntled as much by the performances of the men given the honour of wearing the red shirts as by Cesar Delgado's late winner for Lyon.

Torres missed the game with a groin strain and Gerrard lasted only 25 minutes after going off with a reoccurrence of a similar injury that had ruled him out of last Saturday's loss at Sunderland.

The hosts ended the night with a strike force of David N'Gog and Voronin supported by the ineffective promptings of midfielders Lucas, Fabio Aurelio.