Rafa Benitez

TROUBLED boss Rafa Benitez will have to win the Champions League to save his job.

That’s the stark reality facing the Spaniard this morning in the wake of his team’s humiliating 2-1 FA Cup fifth-round defeat at home to Championship side Barnsley.

The Cup exit, plus Liverpool’s failure to make any kind of Premier League title challenge this season, has left Benitez in an increasingly uncertain position.

The pressure will now be on him to deliver the goods in the Champions League tomorrow at Anfield, where his team meet runaway Italian League leaders Inter Milan in the first leg of their last 16 clash.

The club’s American co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett, whose relationship with Benitez has deteriorated in recent months, look increasingly likely to dispense with his services this summer — unless he can guide the team to another Champions League success.

An Anfield insider said: “The feeling we are getting is that the people at the top were already upset by the fact that we are out of the top four in the League.

“Now we have lost to a Championship side in the FA Cup and not playing at all well. If we don’t get to the Champions League final and win it, I can’t see Rafa surviving and I think he knows that.”

Benitez refuses to discuss his future in public but he did admit in the wake of the shock defeat by Barnsley that his team are lacking in confidence.

He said: “We have to get the players to keep working hard and we will get more confidence if we can score the first or second goal. We need to score goals and improve our confidence.”