Liverpool beaten at Anfield by resurgent Aston Villa

Liverpool 1 Aston Villa 3. Liverpool's season was thrown into disarray last night after they suffered their first home league defeat in almost two years against Aston Villa. It was Rafa Benitez's second defeat out of three games this season, and handed Martin O'Neill's men their first points of the campaign.

The home side started strongly, and fans would have been forgiven for thinking that last week's 4-0 win over Stoke would be repeated as Fernando Torres sent a beautifully weighted chip over the Villa defence to Yossi Benayoun, whose header went inches wide.

There was little respite for Villa for the next half hour, as Liverpool probed against the visitors' uncertain back line. But then Kop hate-figure Brazilian defender Lucas Leiva first gave away an unnecessary free kick with a push on Stiliyan Petrov, then compounded the error by heading the resulting Ashley Young set piece past Jose Reina.

Villa doubled their advantage on the stroke of half time from another dead ball situation, when defender Curtis Davies snuck in behind the defence to nod in Nicky Shorey's corner kick. Liverpool came out all guns blazing in the second period, with the Kop roaring them on, and captain Steven Gerrard and Dirk Kuyt both went close to scoring.

Eventually, with less than 20 minutes to play, Torres poked home from close range, but within minutes Gerrard had brought down Nigel Reo-Coker in the Liverpool box and Anfield watched aghast as Ashley Young stroked a confident penalty past Reina to restore the two-goal cushion.

O'Neill will be happy to have finally got the Midlanders season kickstarted, following defeats in the Premier and Europa Leagues, but for Benitez the future is looking bleak. Already viewed by many in the media as living on borrowed time after five seasons at Anfield without a League trophy, the Spaniard is further hampered by having no money being made available to him by his warring board. ·