Liverpool FC Forum

Benny The Noon wrote:The Liverpool manager, Roy Hodgson, was pleased with his players despite another disappointing result at Goodison Park, where they lost this afternoon's Merseyside derby 2-0 to Everton.

He said: "The dream was we would come here on the back of new owners [New England Sports Ventures] and win the game but there is no point in attempting to analyse dreams. This would have been the ideal opportunity to turn things around on the back of the positive entry of the new owners and to get a result here would have been Utopia.

"We fell behind to a deflected block which fell kindly for [Tim] Cahill so I thought at half-time we were a bit unlucky to be a goal down because we had got back into the game well. In the second half we did everything the team could possibly do, we played well, created chances, we limited them to very few and put them on the back foot."

Mikel Arteta scored Everton's second goal after 50 minutes.

Hodgson said that Liverpool's star striker, the Spaniard Fernando Torres, was low on confidence.

He said: "I don't think he is physically unfit, I think he showed that today. He did plenty of work and we don't have any injury problems with him. He got battered during the World Cup and mentally he is probably a bit low and he needs a goal or two to get it back. Certainly today I would have no qualms about his performance."

Liverpool are in the Premier League relegation zone with one win in eight games but Hodgson is refusing to panic.

"I don't think it is a crisis. I thought the way we played today was not the level of a team in the bottom three but six points from eight games is a very poor return," he said. "We need to start winning to climb the table and until we do the word 'crisis' will continue to be bandied around."

Asked if his side had been outplayed by Everton, Hodgson said: "That's very unfair. We suffered at the hands of an early onslaught which you invariably do at Goodison but towards the end of the first half we started to even things out.

"From what I saw I thought we dominated the second half totally. I thought the shape of the team was good today, the quality of our passing and movement was good. We didn't score goals and Everton did but I refuse to accept that we were in any way outplayed or any way inferior.

"I watched the performance and the second half was as good as I saw a Liverpool team play under my management, that is for sure."

Liverpool have endured their worst start to a season since 1953, when they were relegated. They are 19th in the table.

Asked if the top four was out of reach, Hodgson said: "There are 30 games to go, 90 points to play for, so we'd have to start doing something special, I suppose. But I don't know I would write that off necessarily.

"What it would take is a really good run on the spin but I thought there were signs in the game today that the quality of football was there. Who knows, we could get those four or five wins on the spin – that is what it is going to take."

The Everton manager, David Moyes, was delighted with the win. "Their attitude was spot on and they got their reward," he said. "I thought we have played better in the majority of games than we did today but it was a derby and a different kind of game.

"Some of our performances [earlier in the season] were good but we did not get the result but today we did enough. We are getting away from the wrong end of the table. We are a good enough team to be at the top end."