Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez is unsettled over the club's reluctance to increase his summer transfer budget.

The Mirror says privately, the Liverpool boss is fuming after a secret meeting last week with MD Christian Purslow, where the Spaniard failed to get assurances he would be given the backing to rebuild his struggling squad.

American owner Tom Hicks had indicated earlier in the week that there would be money to spend in the transfer window, insisting that "there will be significant investment this summer."

Yet Benitez has told the people closest to him that the meeting was 'unproductive', and he expressed his extreme dissatisfaction at the board's lack of backing for his plans to radically overhaul his squad.