Rafael Benitez, the Liverpool manager, believes that his skipper Steven Gerrard produced the moment of magic that has turned their Champions League showdown with Arsenal in the Merseysiders' favour.

Liverpool bagged a crucial away goal at the Emirates stadium and hold the advantage going into the quarter final second leg at Anfield next week.

After going behind to an Emmanuel Adebayor goal, when Gerrard set off on a powerful run and cross for Dirk Kuyt to force home his sixth European goal of the campaign, and tenth of the season.

"When you have top class players, they make the difference," Benitez said. "Sometimes it is Torres, this time it was Gerrard.

"He is a player who can change a game on his own. And he certainly did that with his run into the box to create our goal. He changed the game. That goal we scored was the real difference for us, that one piece of quality, world class, that changed everything.

"Stevie can do such things. It was a run they could not stop. It could change the whole tie."

Now Benitez believes the famous atmosphere at Anfield can help propel Liverpool into their third Champions League semi-final in three seasons.

He said: "When you play against Arsenal it is always difficult, they are a team with quality and can always score goals against you. But for us to score an away goal and then to have the prospect of them having to play against our fans at Anfield next, is extremely important for us.

"Anfield will be the massive difference. We will have energy, but also there will be great energy from our supporters, they will be on top of Arsenal.

"Between us we will have the strength to win, Arsenal will be playing our fans too.

He added: "We know, though, that we need to score at Anfield because Arsenal are very capable of doing so.

"At 0-0 we would be happy, but Arsenal are a very, very offensive team and we know that if we are to beat them, we must score.

"The Emirates game was one of the hardest European games we have played. We knew that was going to be the case, you only have to look at the statistics to see that they had plenty of possession. But the idea is the create chances. We had one and we took our chance. They had two or three and they could not take them."