“But we can’t change that now. We have to think about the next competition, the Europa League, we have to try and do our best.”

Liverpool must now pick themselves up with the small matter of the Goodison derby to come on Sunday afternoon.

And Benitez believes there were reasons for encouragement last night, and said: “The positive is that we have won and we created a lot of chances, and the fans could see the players were working really hard.

“We have to win against Everton, it is a massive game on Sunday and that’s our priority now. If we can do it then we can start thinking about winning games in a row.

“Gerrard can now play more or less 90 minutes and Aurelio is back, so we have players coming back from injury and that has to be good for the rest of the season.”

Gerrard has already trained his thoughts on winning the Europa League, with Liverpool parachuted into the last 32 of the competition where they could yet be joined by their neighbours. The skipper said: “Of course it’s disappointing, we played fantastically well tonight and despite getting three points we don’t progress.

“We’ll be in the Europa League now so we’ll try to win that.

“The main prize has gone and to be playing in the Europa League is disappointing but we have to accept that, move on and try to win that competition.

“The only consolation in this is if we go on and win the secondary one.”