Liverpool gamble on Fernando Torres to keep their season alive

Rafa Benitez admitted he is gambling with Fernando Torres' fitness in a desperate bid to stop Liverpool's season blowing up before Bonfire Night.

Benitez claimed his star striker was subbed against Fulham to give him a chance of playing again on Wednesday night against Lyon, although he remains a doubt along with Stevie Gerrard.

But the Kop boss admitted he cannot give Torres the necessary time to recover from his injury because he is desperately needed on the pitch.

"The problem that we have now with injuries you cannot play without Gerrard, without Torres, without Johnson, without Riera and without a lot of players in too many games," said the Spaniard.

"If they are fit then you have to try and use the players. The question is, if you don't play Torres from the beginning, you will be talking about why he is not playing so it's a difficult decision.

"We decide to start with him because he can do a proper warm up but after we knew we needed to take him out at certain moments so we decided it was 60 minutes because last time with 80 minutes he needed four days to be fit."

Benitez said he removed Torres after an hour for fear of losing his talisman for longer.

"I think it was clear we needed to do something because always you think about protecting the player. In this case we were more or less in control of the game, but we had some chances in attack with Voronin, Kuyt, Yossi and Ryan Babel so to keep the player on the pitch could be a problem and maybe you lose the player for one month."