Rafael Benitez brushed off the disappointment of Saturday's derby defeat and insisted: "We'll be in the top four at the end of the season."
As Rafa prepares his team for tonight's 'game in hand' against Portsmouth at Anfield, he refuses to be downbeat following the loss at Goodison and insists his team will become a stronger force in the second half of the campaign.
He said: "I've said it many times before but I have a lot of confidence in the team and we will be in the top four by the end of the season. Why? We have a good squad, good players who are training hard and who understand the situation, and it only takes two or three games to change everything.
"We have got a high level at home. The main thing now is to see what we can do differently away.
"But we have played most of the teams at the top of the table away from home already so in the second half of the season most of our away games, with the exception of Arsenal, will be against teams in the bottom half of the table. All the top teams, except Arsenal, have got to come to Anfield and we can beat anybody at home.
"I don't like to see the gap between my team and the rest but I am very confident we will close it and if we can take three points off the top teams it can change very quickly.
"In the next two months we don't have Champions League football and so that is the team when I want to see the real level of the squad.
"The most important thing now is the mentality of the players for the next game. We were very disappointed by Saturday's result but I said to the players in the dressing room afterwards, 'You have one day to be disappointed, then you must start thinking about the future'. We cannot think about the last game now. We must think about the next game and the three points."
