TOM HICKS is considering raising the stakes in the Liverpool power struggle by asking his co-owner George Gillett to place on record whether Rafael Benitez features in his long-term plans for Anfield.

The Liverpool manager has been in frequent email contact with the Americans since Hicks demanded the resignation of Rick Parry last week and revealed, to the alleged surprise of Benitez, that the chief executive had been present at a meeting with the manager's potential successor, the now Bayern Munich-bound Jurgen Klinsmann.

Benitez has sought an explanation of Parry's role at the meeting in New York last November and will decide on his own position at the culmination of the club's Champions League campaign.

Benitez and Parry attended a memorial service at Anfield yesterday to commemorate the 96 supporters who died at Hillsborough and, though the chief executive has declared his willingness to discuss the issue with the manager, the rival factions at Liverpool honoured an agreement not to detract from the 19th anniversary of the disaster with further public debate.

Hicks, however, intends to intensify efforts to oust Parry and secure majority control of Liverpool by pressuring Gillett to reveal his views on Benitez's continued presence at Anfield. The Spaniard, unsurprisingly, also wants clarification on the matter from the co-chairman before the ownership saga is resolved.

Thus far only Hicks has stated that Benitez will remain in charge should he gain control of Liverpool, and he is believed to be willing to give the manager the greater influence over transfers that he wants should his bid for control succeed.

Gillett, by contrast, has offered support only for Parry since Hicks asked him to resign less than 48 hours after the club's Champions League quarter-final defeat of Arsenal and has remained silent on the manager's position were he to purchase Hicks's stake in Liverpool.

Both Benitez and Hicks are acutely aware of the manager's popularity at Anfield and how divisive it would be to Gillett's bid for control, or attempt to sell his share to Dubai International Capital, should his support for Parry come at the expense of the Spaniard. Hicks could formally request Gillett's approval for the chief executive's departure at boardroom level and is also due to appear on television today to reiterate his opposition to Parry, although it is understood Hicks gave the interview earlier this week on the condition it would be aired after the anniversary of Hillsborough.

The club presented a united front and unity ruled, if only temporarily, at Anfield yesterday as Liverpool's staff and players, Benitez, Parry, and 3,000 supporters and families filed into the Kop stand to pay their quiet respects to the Liverpool fans, mostly young, who died in the Hillsborough disaster on April 15th, 1989.

In each of the 19 years since English football's most horrific day a memorial service has been held, at Liverpool's home, an afternoon of hymns, prayers, a minute's silence just after 3pm and, always, a dash of outrage from the bereaved families that nobody, in football, the police or other authority, was ever held properly to account for what happened on that fateful day.

At 2.56 the first candles were lit, one for each person who died watching Liverpool play Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-final that day. Lit in four groups of 20, with a final one of 16, it took an appallingly long time, long enough for hearts to break, again, in the silence.

The sight of an immaculate, otherwise empty Anfield, gleaming in the sunshine drove home a reminder that the disaster, so devastating for the families, was the watershed for English football, after which the stadiums were rebuilt and the game set on its way to rehabilitation, and riches.

The families' relationship with the club is not wholly straightforward; there have been one or two spats over the years and some of the mothers, particularly, were not football fans and their grief was deepened by a feeling of senselessness that their children died watching a game in a ground later discovered to be perilously unsafe.

The club and its staff, though, have maintained support for the families from the day of the disaster, making the ground available for meetings and the memorial service, and yesterday two of the readings were given by former players, Brian Hall and Gary Ablett. Anfield yesterday was a powerful reminder that beneath the war of words winging across the Atlantic, this is a club still considered by its fans to be an extended family, to which they belong, and for whose support 96 innocent people died on that sunny, terrible April day in 1989.