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Benitez KO warning to players

Published by fiz on December 7, 2007

Rafael Benítez has ordered his Liverpool players to spend the early hours of Sunday in bed instead of watching Ricky Hatton’s fight with Floyd Mayweather live from Las Vegas.

A critical week in Liverpool’s season, one with potentially major implications for their manager’s future, opens at Reading tomorrow evening, involves a morning flight to Marseille on Monday for a Champions League group decider the following night and concludes with Manchester United’s visit to Anfield next Sunday.

Benítez is demanding complete rest between the trips to the Madejski Stadium and the Stade Vélodrome and has told the fight fans in his squad - Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Peter Crouch - to forget about watching Hatton’s title contest at 4am on Sunday.

“It’s really important to rest, especially in this situation where we are playing late away and then away again in the Champions League so soon after,” the Liverpool manager said. “We try to control these things and so after the game the players will have dinner together. Some players need more time to recover than others but I don’t think any of the players will be staying up to watch the fight. They all have DVDs these days, they can watch it later.”

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