Jamie Carragher

Liverpool Jamie Carragher, who skippered the team in place of substitute Steven Gerrard against Barnsley, stressed the importance of getting a good result against Inter in the Champions League.

He said: “We’re devastated, obviously. It’s a major blow to go out of the competition to a lower league team at Anfield. We realise that’s not good enough.

“We’ve got a massive game coming up against Inter, so we are going to have to get over this quickly because the Champions League is massive for us now, it’s the only thing we have left that we can win.

“We realise how poor we were against Barnsley, but we have got to get over it. This clearly wasn’t the best preparation for Tuesday.

“But we had the same situation last season, when we lost to Arsenal twice in the cups and people were saying we were finished before we’d even played Barcelona. We got through on that occasion.”

On the poor form, Carragher said: “I wouldn’t call this just a bad spell, it’s been a lot longer than that. We realise we aren’t playing well enough.

“It’s not a matter of putting your finger on one reason, simply we’ve not been good enough. We have to make sure we are in the Champions League next season.”