Rafael BenÍtez has frequently looked to Europe for salvation during his reign at Liverpool but, after a grim FA Cup fifth-round defeat at home to Barnsley, it is doubtful whether even a stirring Liverpool victory over Inter Milan tomorrow en route to a third Champions League final in four years could revive the Spaniard’s increasingly troubled regime at Anfield.

BenÍtez has been on the thinnest of ice since a very public fallout with Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, Liverpool’s American owners, in the autumn and, while they went against their initial judgment and retained him in the interests of stability, his prospects of surviving beyond the end of the season are slimmer than ever after Saturday’s 2-1 defeat.

While some of the club’s supporters might be looking to Dubai International Capital (DIC) to wrestle the club from the ownership of the unpopular American tycoons, the Arab investment group is expected to review the manager’s position if it assumes control.

It leaves BenÍtez in a desperate position as he prepares for tomorrow’s first leg tie against Inter, the runaway leaders of Serie A, at Anfield, with the Champions League representing Liverpool’s last hope of silverware this season. The manager did his best to put on a brave face after the Cup defeat by the Coca-Cola Championship side, attributing the result to little more than bad luck and errant finishing, but Jamie Carragher indicated that the rot goes deeper. “I wouldn’t call this just a bad spell,” Carragher said. “It’s been a lot longer than that. We realise we are not playing well enough. It’s not a matter of putting your finger on one reason. It’s simply because we have not been good enough. We’ve still got the Champions League to play for and we have to fight for that fourth place [in the Premier League], so every league game is going to be important. We have to make sure we are in the Champions League next season.

“At every club there are ups and downs, but we realise we are going to get a lot of criticism in the next few days and rightly so. We’ve got a massive game coming up against Inter, so we’re going to have to get over this because the Champions League is massive for us now. It’s the only thing we have left that we can win.”

A successful end to the season might also prove crucial to Hicks and Gillett as they hope to sell the club at a significant profit. Contrary to Hicks’s claims, talks are continuing behind the scenes about a deal to sell the club to DIC, but there have been indications that the sale price, thought likely to be in the region of £400 million, might be lowered by failure to generate significant profits from this season’s Champions League campaign or, more seriously, failure to qualify for next season’s competition. “That would certainly affect the price,” one source said.

The supporters continue to rally against Hicks and Gillett, with a protest taking place inside Anfield after Saturday’s defeat. At a meeting before the match, the newly formed Liverpool Supporters Union called for a boycott of club merchandise and floated the idea of boycotting a match, while the “Share Liverpool” venture, aimed at raising the funds for the supporters to buy the club, has already received pledges of £85 million.

The protests seem to have made negligible impact so far on Hicks, whose apparent willingness to sell is based more on a realisation that things simply are not working, although there has been uncertainty at the club about whether the Texan will attend tomorrow’s game, as he initially planned after the Champions League draw was made in December.