As a son of Madrid whose father was a fanatical supporter of Atlético, Rafael Benítez must have looked on wistfully when he watched Sergio Agüero conducting a television interview on Tuesday night in which he insisted that demotion to the Europa League would not be a failure for the Spanish capital’s second club.

With Liverpool on the verge of being eliminated from the Champions League and shunted into the second tier of European football — relegated, to all intents and purposes — Benítez knows full well that failure is the only word that can apply to their plight.

When you have been a leading member of the continental elite for the past five seasons, then anything other than qualification for the lucrative knockout stages is only ever going to be considered a calamity.

For Liverpool, the situation is made even worse by the fact that the club do not appear financially robust enough to be able to cope with such setbacks without further questions being asked of their future on and off the pitch.

The best-case scenario is that they would lose — or, more accurately, fail to earn — about £10 million of what they budget to make annually from the Champions League by failing to make it into the last 16.

In previous years, such a loss would be eminently manageable for a club of Liverpool’s size, although it could eat into the manager’s transfer budget. But whatever happens at Liverpool has to be viewed through the prism of the ownership issue at Anfield.

The possibility of not being one of the leading Champions League clubs is surely one that would reduce the ability of Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr to bring in the kind of investment that has eluded them so far, particularly at the price they are asking.

It is known that Merrill Lynch, the investment bank representing Hicks, has held talks with a number of potential investors, offering a 25 per cent stake in the club for £100 million. As yet, no one has been prepared to pay such a high price for a minority share in a business that has debts totalling at least £250 million and a stalled stadium project desperately in need of a cash injection to the tune of £400 million.

If the sums did not add up before, they will add up even less if one of Liverpool’s revenue streams is curtailed, for the present season at least.

There is also the marketing factor, which cannot be underestimated. Liverpool market themselves as a Champions League club, a member of the European elite, and as such they are able to attract leading companies to enter into deals of mutual benefit, the recently announced £80 million, four-year sponsorship agreement with Standard Chartered being the most obvious example of their pulling power.

But falling out of that elite — in many ways it is the sporting equivalent of a leading business tumbling out of the FTSE 100 index — would greatly affect their lustre.

It is estimated that during Benítez’s five-year reign at Anfield, Liverpool’s success in the Champions League — they have reached the knockout stages in each of the previous five seasons — has swelled the club’s coffers by more than £100 million, a figure in excess of the Spaniard’s net spending on transfers since 2004.

Despite this, last summer Benítez was forced to balance the books and his net spend was zero, excluding the outlay on contract extensions for present players, and the fear will be that any hopes he might have had of being given money to spend in the January transfer window will have been dashed by last night’s events in Lyons.

It is not as if Liverpool could expect to make up the shortfall domestically. Not when their annual income — last year £159 million, £100 million below Manchester United’s — makes them the poor relations of the “big four”, largely because of a stadium that does not produce as much revenue as those of their rivals.

Other clubs, those who are not as financially fragile as Liverpool, would be able to absorb the monetary setback of failing to reach the Champions League first knockout round comfortably.

But this is the Liverpool of Hicks and Gillett, a club so brittle they fracture at regular intervals, and the only certainty is that their immediate future will continue to be plagued by yet more uncertainty.

Failure may not have been an option for Liverpool, but it has become a very real and stark possibility.

Best of the web: ‘The quality is there in the side, but we haven’t been good enough’

Liverpool fans online took the 1-1 draw against Lyons reasonably well last night, even though it probably means that their side will go out of the Champions League. Criticism of Rafael Benítez was muted.

“Solid result. Not sure why some of you are so disappointed, Lyons are the best team in France and one of the best in Europe, a point at their place is a good result if you ask me.”

Liverpool Way

“Could we do a Leeds? I know it’s only November, but I can’t help but think that we’ve a long season ahead of us. Too many injuries, low on confidence, poor performances, players not good enough to wear the red shirt and no money. Finding it hard not to think the worst at the moment.”

Red all Over the Land (RAOTL)

“I won’t join the chorus of fans wanting Rafa out but he’d better do something about this squad quick.”

Times Online “If Rafa leaves the club it’ll be easy to get a ticket. We’ll be down competing with the Hulls and Boltons, who are already outspending us and then with the Readings and the Prestons. We won’t need a new stadium then.”

RAOTL “In Rafa we trust . . . not to lead us to a nineteenth league title. Not to make it to the final 16 of the Champions League. To sell our best midfielder, thus disrupting the creative spark of the whole team. What a guy.”

BBC 606 “I can’t criticise that performance. We went for everything and were unlucky at Torres and Voronin’s misses. Hell of a save from Lucas, too. Aquilani could have come on but for who? I agreed with the subs and never thought he’d come on. I’m going to get slaughtered for this but the CL doesn’t excite me anyway.

Through The Wind and Rain “The truth is, with the way we’ve played in our four games, we don’t deserve to be better than third [in the group]. We even struggled to beat Debrecen at home. The quality is there in the side, but we haven’t been good enough.”

Red and White Kop “Hands up if you have just been on to check the date of the Europa Cup final in Hamburg?”

RAOTL