Liverpool boss Roy Hodgson insists their defeat at Manchester United is no catastrophe.
Hodgson accepts, however, that they need to improve their league form.
The manager was quizzed about his targets for the rest of the season and said: "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."
