Ngog has been under-fire ever since he won Liverpool a contentious penalty in the recent 2-2 draw with Birmingham.

The young Frenchman went down in the box under Lee Carsley's challenge to win a penalty much to the fury of the Birmingham players and coaching staff.

However Benitez has defended Ngog, insisting the 20-year-old is an honest player and that it would be wrong to brand him a cheat forever.

"I haven't seen Ngog having any problems in any training session, in any game, diving," said Benitez. "He is a very honest player, a young player with quality and a good mentality. I could name 20 players who have these problems but not Ngog.

"I think it will be a massive mistake [if he is labelled a diver now]. There are bad tackles every week which are more dangerous for the integrity of the players than this situation. It is a situation you can see in a lot of games.

Benitez added: "Ngog knows it was a bad situation."But he was running and trying to score and he could see a player going to the ground, he needed to jump.

"To try that tackle is a foul with the rules. After we can see the replays and talk about video technology but at that moment everyone thought it was a penalty.

"After watching the replay I could see a player going to ground, trying to tackle one of our players and our player jumping, diving, but at the time it was a penalty."