Tony Barrett on Torres

Shortly after Fernando Torres arrived on Merseyside, he was stopped from entering a wholesale supermarket by an overzealous security guard on the grounds that he was not a member.

How Phil Brown must have longed for a quartet of similarly stubborn individuals to man his defences at Anfield on Saturday.
 
"It was demoralising for me, and hopefully for the players too, because I was disgusted with the defending both individually and collectively," the Hull City manager said. On an abject afternoon for Hull, Torres scored a hat-trick of such quality that it drew a standing ovation from the visiting fans who put aside their own pain to salute the Liverpool forward.
 
"You could say Torres was the difference between the sides," Brown said, somewhat erroneously. "But we gifted them the goals, and to throw away our position just after half-time was disgusting." The position in question was a losing one, with his team trailing by two goals to one, but the point was relevant because from being in the game at the interval, Hull capitulated to such an extent that Liverpool ended the match looking like they could score from every attack.
 
The half dozen that they settled for not only created a bit of statistical history, it surely ended the lingering misconception that Rafael Benítez's Liverpool are high on pragmatism and low on flair. As the Barclays Premier League's leading scorers this season and having struck three goals or more in 13 of their past 17 league games, not to mention becoming the second most prolific team in the club's history at this stage of the season, the evidence does not just point towards a reappraisal, it demands one.
 
The Liverpool manager's explanation for his team's increased productivity in front of goal was prosaic. "Maybe we have more accuracy this year," Benítez said after two goals by Ryan Babel, the substitute, and a speculative effort by Steven Gerrard had provided a flamboyant flourish to Torres's efforts. "If you look at the statistics, we're having more shots on target and we are scoring more goals." There is, of course, truth to the banality. But there is also a growing feeling that Liverpool are accumulating more because they are speculating more.
 
Benítez is still not totally happy, though. In his eyes, Torres can still improve and so can his team. Being a perfectionist means that faults, such as the defensive shortcomings that allowed Geovanni to score, will grate, even on days when the positives outweigh the negatives to such a profound extent. "In this game we conceded a goal that we could have avoided," Benítez said. "It was a great performance but it could have been better."
 
How Brown must dream of being faced with such "problems". With only two league wins this calendar year, it is little wonder that Hull are rarely mentioned without being preceded by the words "crisis club".
 
Desperate measures were implemented in the wake of their latest resounding defeat, with a furious Brown taking a leaf out of Benítez's book by demanding more from his senior players. But while it is one thing trying to extract a little bit extra from players such as Torres and Gerrard, as Benítez did recently, it is a different matter calling on players who are drawn from several rungs below on football's ladder of talent.
 
"Certain people in the dressing room are backing away from their responsibility, even a blind man could see that," Brown said. "There are one or two solid characters and it is up to them to step up to the plate. It is the biggest challenge of my managerial career but I am confident we can win this challenge. We have good players and we can get it right, we just have to defend better."
 
At least he can content himself in the knowledge that his defenders will not be confronted by Fernando Torres every week. "Thank God," Brown added. A small consolation, but a consolation all the same.