They were counting the cost of Liverpool's meek elimination from the FA Cup from Dingle to Dorset yesterday, yet it was at the club's Melwood training ground where dismay was felt keenest. As the backlash rumbled outside, the suspicion nagged that Rafael Benitez had committed a major faux pas with his under-strength selection at Burnley.

There is sympathy from those on the outside looking in at the restraints, whether financial or in terms of the squad at his disposal, with which the Spaniard is working. Yet, in the wake of what seemed an all too obvious choke at Turf Moor, there is now also suspicion.

"The manager didn't realise how important the FA Cup is to the ordinary fan," said former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland midfielder Ronnie Whelan.

The significance of being knocked out will not have escaped Benitez. In the long-term, managers are judged on their league credentials, but no Liverpool manager has risked as much as the Spaniard by retaining only three players from his English Premiership line-up for Tuesday's third-round tie. This was an invitation for disaster which, when taken up, ensured that doubts have crept into the locals' faith in Merseyside's Rafalution for the first time.

To argue that the Spaniard is used to the Copa del Rey - in which only Athletic Bilbao of the Spanish top-flight clubs have fielded a full-strength line-up - is too simplistic. This, after all, is a man who admits to waking his wife, Montserrat, in the middle of the night with his sleep dogged by nightmarish images of his new team slipping to ignominious defeat. When awake, he is obsessed as much with Liverpool's past as their future.

"I spend 10 hours or more every day in Melwood and, when I come back to my house, I still think about football," he said. "I am on the sofa watching a video, maybe an old one from great Anfield nights in the 1970s, or a scouting video. Or one taken of our next opponents.

"Then I talk to my wife about my day and all the things that are still unresolved in my head. I fight hard to find some time for my daughters, but the rest - it's football."

Yet Benitez has defined his challenge as "to find and inspire the old Liverpool spirit, the mentality, the philosophy of respect". With that in mind, he clearly misjudged the relevance of England's premier domestic cup competition.

Liverpool are in no position to pick and choose which trophies to pursue. Would elimination in the knockout stage of the Champions League be considered as much a failure as exiting the FA Cup at the first hurdle? Given Steven Gerrard's desperation to plunder silverware if he is to remain at Anfield, this smacks of warped priorities.

"People must have told Benitez that the Carling Cup's regarded as a lesser competition, so he should have realised what the FA Cup means," said the Burnley midfielder Tony Grant. "We all know it would take a miracle for them to win the Champions League. If they're honest they know they haven't got the team for that, but Benitez must have known what could happen because he played a stronger team against Watford last week and they struggled."

The second leg of that tie, with the Premiership side holding a 1-0 lead, is next week and suddenly assumes greater relevance. The Bournemouth directors, whom Liverpool would have faced in the fourth round, will presumably not be tuning in. The Dorset club need to raise £500,000 to see them through the rest of the season, with a £250,000 influx denied them by the Merseysiders' elimination.

"I am hugely disappointed with the way Liverpool approached the game," said the Bournemouth chairman Peter Phillips. "They were arrogant and disrespectful to a very important competition."

The League One club's frustrations are not Liverpool's immediate concerns, though recovering their poise is. Benitez's squad system was famed at Valencia, carrying his team to two league championships and the UEFA Cup with players rotated regularly.

But the Spaniard does not have the personnel to duplicate his Valencia system, particularly given the current injury list at Anfield. If only privately, Benitez may just have woken up to the fact that Djimi Traore's was not the only own goal shipped at Turf Moor.