Roy Hodgson was left to lament a lapse in concentration after Liverpool's superb fightback was thwarted by Dimitar Berbatov's match-winning treble in the 3-2 defeat at Manchester United.
The Reds boss felt his side showed great character to pull level after a quick-fire Steven Gerrard brace had cancelled out the Bulgarian's first two efforts.
However, the United No.9 claimed his hat-trick six minutes from time and although Alex Ferguson suggested the hosts should have won by a greater margin of victory in a post-match TV interview, the boss was disappointed to return home empty-handed.
Hodgson told his post-match press conference: "I think we deserved a draw. United played very well but to undermine our performance that much is a bit harsh.
"I respect what other managers say and their feelings on the game but don't want to get involved.
"We've had a very hard start, but our performance today was clearly much better than against WBA and Birmingham. We were playing against a top class team. We can take a lot of credit by the way we went about our business and got back into the game from 2-0 down to 2-2. We can take credit for the way we played in the second half and I thought the quality of our football was quite good.
"Our aim is to get better. Our aim is still to try and get to the Champions League, maybe that's where I need to have my focus.
"We need to get better and be more incisive. Even in the first half after a good spell from United, when we started to calm down and pass the ball, we got into good areas. But we weren't incisive enough with the final pass, although we were much better in the second half."
Liverpool's hopes of taking something from the game looked all but over when Berbatov followed up his first-half header with an acrobatic finish on the hour mark.
However, a Gerrard penalty reduced the arrears before the skipper dragged his team level with a clever free-kick.
The incident leading up to the second goal saw John O'Shea haul down Fernando Torres when clear on goal, leaving many to question whether the United man should have received his marching orders.
Hodgson refused to be drawn on the matter and was more concerned by the poor defending that saw Berbatov claim both his hat-trick and the points late on.
He said: "We defended poorly, on a cross six minutes from the end which I thought we should have done much better with.
"It would be churlish to talk about whether a player should be sent off because our downfall in terms of not getting the point was due to the fact that we should have defended better for the third goal.
"I don't have too much of problem with the first two. The first was a wonderful corner kick and header, while the second was a bit of genius that is hard to defend against.
"But the third was far too routine and having done so well to get back to 2-2, I thought we should have kept it."
Asked about Alex Ferguson's comments in which the United boss suggested Torres was looking to get O'Shea sent off, he said: "I'm not going to comment on that, I prefer to talk about the game and issues that interest me. I don't think I should get involved in discussion with other people.
"Sir Alex is entitled to his opinion. I'm not going to come in here and say I agree or disagree because it's a statement you are informing me about and it doesn't have any interest to me in terms of points to discuss.
"I thought the referee officiated the game very well. I have a very ambivalent attitude to those type of things, as I'm not a great lover of red cards for petty offences. I didn't see it as a particularly vicious challenge, whether it was a foul or not, well to be honest I would have to study the video. Alex is a lot closer to it. My first thought was it was a foul, but I must say I didn't have the thought that the player should be sent off. Some of my staff thought so but I had a much calmer attitude to it.
"As it turned out, we got the goal anyway and it should have given us a good base and perhaps a deserved point from the game."
The boss was also quizzed about his targets for the rest of the season and added: "We are certainly in a transitional period.
"I don't think it needs to be negative, sometimes they can be very good for a club. Certainly the task has been complicated by the fact I didn't get a chance to work with the players because of the World Cup and with the Europa qualifiers starting so early, we were thrown into the deep end of competitive football.
"In the Europa League we've done well, but in the league we've lost two matches - to Man City and Man United away. Perhaps we need to say at the moment that's going to happen to us and we need to get better so it doesn't happen to us in the future.
"Our goal at the start of the season was to compete for a Champions League place, but perhaps that means you are automatically going to compete for the league because quite often the difference between first and fourth place isn't a vast number of points.
"If we are good enough to get into the top four, who knows, maybe we can get closer to the number one position.
"I won't say we can't do it, nor will I say we can do it."
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