Forget The Beachball- Liverpool Just Don't Have Enough Quality Players

The incident with the beachball in the game at Sunderland is bound to make Liverpool players and fans upset but it shouldn't blind everyone connected to the club to the facts- simply, they aren't good enough to make a title challenge.

A great Champions League run is within their capabilty- because Rafa Benitez is peerless at setting up teams to win two leg encounters and with Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard, Liverpool have the quality to beat anyone on any given day.

But over a 38 game Premiership season, Torres and Gerrard can't do it every week and their supportng cast isn't up to the mark. Outside of Anfield fans, nearly every football watcher in the country believed the Reds were in for hard time at Sunderland once news came out that their two big stars would be missing.

Liverpool fans may say that any team struggles without a pair of that calibre and that's true- but they don't struggle like Liverpool. Manchester United lost Christiano Ronaldo and went in aganst Bolton without Wayne Rooney but still found a way to win.The other top sides have far greater capacity to cover absences.

A good comparison is to take a look at the Anfield squad and imagine how many of their players wouldn't get into the squads of their main rivals- Man United, Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea and maybe even Aston Villa and Spurs.

Lucas, Dossena, Ngog, Voronin, Degen  and El Zhar would have no chance. There are serous doubts about whether a top Premiership side would come in for Skrtel, Babel, Kyrgiakos, Aurelio or Insua. Aquilani is an unknown quantity and Riera has potential but his contribution has yet to be decisive.

Benitez's bankers are just Torres, Gerrard, Mascherano, Reina, Carragher, Agger and Benayoun, Dirk Kuyt is valuable to Liverpool but in a different role to the one he was bought for, Its 50-50 whether he's attract one of the Premiership elite in his right side 'workhorse' role. Glen Johnson looks like a good new asset

The real quality in the squad is thin and getting thinner. Xabi Alonso's loss has been a blow and though Aquilani has been injured, the jury is out on whether the Italian is his replacement. The solid Alvaro Arbeloa left this summer and Sami Hyppia is a difficult man to replace.

There's very little wrong with the first eleven but an awful lot to worry about in the reserves. How it came to this isn't fully clear; Benitez may not have had the money he wanted, but then again some of his purchases have been very questionable.

Decisons like releasing Peter Crouch who can provide most teams with a valuable option have come under scrutiny, while Andrei Voronin remains a Liverpool player without ever justifying his presence in the squad.

Liverpool can still be a threat in any cup competition- in fact, they are more than likely to win a prize or go close but the squad of players they have at the moment will not only not win the title- they will struggle to stay in the top four unless the key figures stay healthy, because the competition is more intense in 2009/10 than it has been for the last decade.