The trouble with believing in miracles is that you come to rely on them.

As the giant clock at the Stade Gerland signified that last night’s game had entered its 90th minute, Liverpool thought they had just been saved by yet another, a wonder goal by Ryan Babel, but then came the injection of bitter reality, an equaliser that left Rafael Benítez and his players down and quite probably out of the Champions League.

This was almost a great night for Liverpool, who, with Steven Gerrard and others missing through injury and Fernando Torres struggling to play through the pain barrier, came close to recording a victory that would have enhanced their reputation as the great escapalogists of European football. But Lisandro López’s goal changed all that as the light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished.

Instead, Benítez’s team were plunged into the darkness that has engulfed them since they fell to defeat away to Fiorentina five weeks ago, the start of a wretched eight-match sequence that has yielded one win.

Liverpool are in a bad place right now. Babel’s spectacular goal in the 83rd minute, after he had been sent on in place of the hapless Andriy Voronin, seemed to signal the start of a revival at a time when Benítez’s resources are depleted by injuries, but they could not hold on.

Michel Bastos, having been in an offside position in the build-up, headed the ball into the penalty area and, with Sotiris Kyrgiakos and Daniel Agger out of position, López kept his composure to secure Lyons’ place in the knockout stages with two matches to spare. For the second time in as many meetings, Lyons had hit Liverpool with a sucker punch. Had they stood firm at Anfield a fortnight ago and last night, they would have been three points better off and Lyons would have been three worse off.

Group E would be incredibly tight, with Liverpool in control of their destiny, rather than reliant on results going their way when Lyons, with only first place to play for and a home match against Debrecen to follow, go to Fiorentina in three weeks’ time.

As the net bulged, Benítez retained his usual equanimity but on the pitch, Pepe Reina screamed in vain at the match officials while Jamie Carragher and Javier Mascherano thrashed their arms in anger. All around them, heads dropped and you can only begin to wonder how López’s goal was greeted by Gerrard, back home nursing his groin injury. As for Torres, clearly struggling with his hernia problem during his 87 minutes on the pitch, neither he nor anyone else will be questioning his substitution this time.

Victory here, with a starting line-up that included the pony-tailed and, far more to the point, entirely uninspiring figures of Kyrgiakos and Voronin, would have been a superb result for Liverpool. But perhaps the late lapse of concentration and the earlier profligacy in front of goal, with Voronin and Lucas Leiva missing their best chances, were more reflective of a group of players whose loss of confidence of late is impossible to ignore.

This, Benitez hoped, would be the first of three “cup finals” for Liverpool in group E, a situation that mirrored that of two seasons ago, when, needing to win their three final games to avoid elimination and, at the time, to keep his job, they responded by beating Besiktas 8-0 and Porto 4-1 at Anfield before completing a remarkable comeback with a resounding 4-0 victory over Marseilles.

On that occasion, they were 2-0 up within 11 minutes through Gerrard and Torres, but by the same stage last night they were on the ropes, forced deep into their own territory by Lyons. It was ten minutes before Torres received the ball to feet. He turned sharply, only to run into the brick wall of Cris, the Lyons captain.

The Liverpool forward wore a pained expression, but slowly his team found a foothold. The clearest chance of the first half fell to Liverpool and, as a blond-haired figure ran clear of the offside trap on the half-hour, on to Mascherano’s pass, Benítez must have felt that this was would be their moment. Alas, it was Voronin, not Torres, and the Ukraine forward, clean through, shot weakly at the feet of Lloris.

That miss will cement Voronin’s status as the butt of derision among Liverpool’s fans, for whom a winning goal on his debut, also on French soil against Toulouse in August 2007, is a distant memory.

Nor is Babel exactly a rival to Torres when it comes to the affections of the Kop, having failed to make the most of his infuriating talent over the two years since his £11 million transfer from Ajax, but, receiving the ball from Yossi Benayoun 25 yards from goal, the forward unleashed a quite unstoppable shot that flew past Lloris.

That should have been that, with Torres taken off to protect his hernia problem for all of four minutes, but, as stoppage time loomed, Bastos headed the ball into the area and Kyrgiakos, at full stretch, failed to stop it reaching López. The forward clipped the ball beyond Reina, the net bulged and Liverpool, not for the first time, were in need of a miracle.

Lyons (4-3-3): H Lloris — A Revéillère (sub: L Gassama, 18min), Cris, J Toulalan, A Cissokho — M Pjanic (sub: Ederson, 40), J Makoun, K Källström — M Bastos, B Gomis (sub: S Govou, 73), L López. Substitutes not used: R Vercoutre, M Gonalons, C Delgado, Y Taer. Booked: López.

Liverpool (4-2-3-1): J M Reina — J Carragher, S Kyrgiakos, D Agger, E Insúa — J Mascherano, Lucas Leiva — D Kuyt, A Voronin (sub: R Babel, 67), Y Benayoun — F Torres (sub: D Ngog, 87). Substitutes not used: D Cavalieri, S Darby, D Ayala, J Spearing, A Aquilani. Booked: Agger.

Referee: F de Bleeckere (Belgium).