Roy Hodgson was full of praise for the battling performance of his Liverpool players - but admitted to being left frustrated by the manner of the 1-1 draw with Arsenal at Anfield.
With the scoreline still goalless, Joe Cole was sent off on his league debut for the Reds on the stroke of half-time after a challenge on visiting centre-back Laurent Koscielny, who himself was later dismissed for a second bookable offence.
Nonetheless, David Ngog fired the hosts into an early second-half lead - but Pepe Reina's 90th-minute own goal rescued a point for the Gunners.
Hodgson told a post-match press conference: "It was a fantastic effort but points are hard to come by in the Premier League and when you get so close, you can't avoid the feeling of disappointment.
"Maybe that second-half performance deserved all three points and not just one, albeit if at half-time someone had said we'd get a 0-0 or 1-1 draw I probably would have accepted that.
"But to concede so close to the end to a rather scrappy goal was tough on us. The boys did everything they could do and it was an excellent game of football. I hope the fans enjoyed the spectacle.
"It was a wonderful goal (by Ngog). It was a good piece of pressurising between Glen Johnson and Dirk Kuyt to set him up and David took the chance superbly. We had a couple of other chances in second half as well. Both goalkeepers were called into action and there were goal-mouth incidents at both ends.
"We were playing with nine men for a short period of time towards the end after Danny (Agger) had to go off with concussion and unfortunately the game lasted just four or five minutes too long for us."
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