Liverpool 2, MU 1
Rafael Benitez today declared Liverpool's momentous victory over Manchester United as something the whole team can be proud of.
The Reds went down to a Carlos Tevez goal early on in the match but rallied to produce their best performance of the season and record a first league win over Alex Ferguson's side in over four years.
Benitez paid tribute to his players after the match and was happy with the amount of character his charges showed to come from behind and take the points.
"I think today is a game we can be really satisfied with because we were losing against a very good team," said Benitez. "But we showed character and played very well in the second half, so this was very positive.
"The team showed a lot of character after conceding an early goal. I was really disappointed when they scored so early because I wanted a high tempo from the start. They were passing the ball and keeping possession, so we needed to change a lot of things. I think it was really important to have chances and to improve a lot in the second half."
There were many stand-out performances during the match, but the Liverpool manager focused on the whole team and said: "Today you could see a lot of players working really hard, especially the strikers Dirk Kuyt and Robbie Keane, who were doing amazing work up front, and also Albert Riera in his first game played well – he is a lucky man.
"Physically he was not ready but we needed to use his ability. And after we used Steven Gerrard, he did well too. I can talk about a lot of players - Ryan Babel was really good too, but I think the overall play of the team was good."
Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson admitted that his team couldn't cope with Liverpool's tackling and harassing in midfield.
Benitez agreed, saying: "In the last two years, I can remember that they were happy waiting and just playing on the counter-attack until we make mistakes," added Benitez. "And today was more or less the same situation. When you have players with the quality of Berbatov, Tevez or Rooney in front, sometimes they just need to wait and if we make a mistake they will kill us off.
"We didn't make many mistakes today. We can always improve and do things better, but the team played well.
"One thing that we needed to improve was our results against the top sides so now we have three points and we are in a better position than last season. We now have more wins against the top four so hopefully it will be the same against Chelsea and Arsenal. Everton is also another difficult game for us."
