"Benitez is intelligent but he and I know that we do not have a centre forward who is two metres tall.
"When we cross into the box we only win one or two of the high balls. I do not want this, we need to play, not put the ball into the box every time."
It is true that Chelsea are so unaccustomed to defeat that, the longer the game went on, the more unimaginative they became.
Instead of playing to their strengths and playing through the normally influential midfield talent of players such as Frank Lampard, they reverted to launching hopeful crosses into the Liverpool box where, in the absence of Didier Drogba, the Liverpool defence held sway.
Benitez had certainly prepared his team well. He knew Scolari likes to utilise his full-backs, Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa, so he employed the industrious Dirk Kuyt on the right and Albert Riera on the opposite flank to deny them space.
In the middle, Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso, who scored the only goal of the game after ten minutes, pushed up on Lampard and Deco while, in the continued absence of hamstring victim Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard played a free role up front.
The tactics worked a treat but the real accolades should go to the Liverpool players, who executed the Benitez master plan to perfection.
When Chelsea pressed forward, first with urgency and then increasing desperation, Liverpool funnelled back as a unit and then, when they won the ball, broke forward with purpose.
It all added up to an intruiging match, a high level contest between two top-class teams.
Too often the Premier League is over-hyped, overblown, but not this time. This was by no means a spectacular affair but as a tactical battle between two heavyweight title contenders, it was thoroughly compulsive watching.
The winning goal though, early in the match, was slightly fortunate, Alonso's shot taking a deflection off Bosingwa and beating Petr Cech.
Gerrard went close midway through the half, his shot from long range being tipped over by the Chelsea goalkeeper while Deco almost equalised nine minutes before half time with a shot that went a yard wide.
Scolari brought on Juliano Belletti and Franco Di Santo for the disappointing Florent Malouda and Salomon Kalou 12 minutes into the second half but it was Liverpool who still provided the greater threat while the visitors' defence, superbly marshalled by Jamie Carragher, held the Blues at bay.
So what now for these two heavyweights?
As Benitez said quite rightly: "You may have a good plan but it depends on the players and credit to my team because they worked so hard."
As for Scolari, this defeat will give him cause for some quiet reflection.
The rest of the Premier League and more specifically Arsenal and Manchester United will have seen that Chelsea's Plan A failed to work against Liverpool. What Chelsea, and Scolari, need now, is a Plan B.
