http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport....v04.xml
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Perhaps the Premier League should do the decent thing and surrender the fourth Champions League position on the grounds that no team are good enough to occupy it.
Liverpool will argue that by surviving longer than Arsenal and Manchester United in this season's premier European competition, they are worthy of launching another challenge for a trophy they have captured four times. Domestic form suggests otherwise, though.
To be kind to the Merseysiders, they have been erratic during the injury-ravaged first year of Rafael Benitez's managerial tenure. To be cruel, they have fallen unacceptably below the level expected from a club who have invested so much in rebuilding.
Now they are threatening to emerge triumphant in a much-vaunted, but in essence embarrassing, race to finish "best of the rest" behind the undisputed Big Three.
The smart money is now on them to overhaul their neighbours Everton to claim what is a substantial prize for a "second division" contest.
Those hopes could have been wrecked at Anfield on Saturday by Bolton visitors who arrived with aspirations of improving their own claims to finish fourth, but who departed unfortunately pointless and nervously clinging on to what would be the first European qualification in their history.
Bolton had every incentive to give Liverpool a bloody nose after being insulted by the pre-match comments of Benitez to the effect that they play to a different set of rules than other teams.
"My players read that and were offended," said the Wanderers manager Sam Allardyce, after seeing an impressive Bolton performance undermined by Igor Biscan's late and undeserved winner.
"I just take joy out of the fact that if managers complain about my tactics it must be because I'm probably becoming a better manager than they are." Allardyce confessed to being "gutted" at the result after his team dominated a tense affair.
Stelios and Kevin Davies had efforts cleared off the line by Steve Finnan, Ricardo Gardner should have headed in a Gary Speed corner, while Kevin Nolan and Jay Jay Okocha were both denied by Liverpool's teenage goalkeeper Scott Carson, making his Premiership debut.
Liverpool were limited in attack and forced Jussi Jaaskelainen into only two serious saves before Biscan punished slack defending to profit from Djimi Traore's floating centre.
The unexpected 86th-minute strike sent a packed stadium into delirium.
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