“There is a long way to go with a lot of football to be played, we just have to keep improving the way we are.

“It is good to have Fabio Aurelio back and ready to come in, and Alberto Aquilani looks a very exciting player and it will be nice to have him as an option, but he is still a way off playing yet.”

Defender Jamie Carragher said: “This group is not easy, the sides like Debrecen will pose a problem.

“But if we perform as well as we can we will get through to the next stage.

“But I expect the fans will see an improvement on this performance from us.

“We have had a bit of a dodgy start, losing two games isn’t a total disaster while winning three games doesn’t mean we are back on fire.

“This is still the beginning of the season and only when we have put together a run of say 10 or 15 games unbeaten we will feel we are on a good run.

“We have had three clean sheets on the trot, which is encouraging.

“We did not have too much problem in general play, it is just that at set-pieces it has not always gone well.

“But we feel that we have rectified that over the last few games, we’ll just have to keep working on that.”