Defender Dejan Lovren hailed another victory for Liverpool as they kept their title ambitions on track with 1-0 victory at Everton in the Merseyside derby.

"There are a lot of games in front of us and it will change many times, but games like this you need to win if you want to stay in the race for the title," said Lovren.

"We are in second so we can say yes (we are title contenders).

"It is about the team's defensive qualities. We have been working very hard together and just now we are in good form and we need to keep going like that.

"We missed something in the first half, but we had a good quality talk from the manager at half-time and he was asking us to play more direct football.

"If you want to win you need to be more offensive and ask for the ball. In the second half we showed our real face and deserved it."