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Rafa Benitez hailed the battling qualities of his Liverpool players as they came back from the brink of defeat to reach their third Champions League semi-final in four years with tonight’s 4-2 (5-3 aggregate) victory over Arsenal at Anfield.

‘I was delighted with the belief of my players, particularly in the second half,’ he said. ‘We had been so poor before the break, but so much better in the second period.

‘It was a tremendous game for our fans, there were six goals and we played so well.

‘I hear Steven Gerrard has said it was a poor game by him, but I was satisfied. He scored a crucially important penalty for us when it really mattered, that was positive from him to take it so well.

‘Now we have Chelsea again in the semi-final. Again it will be a very, very tough game against an excellent side. But like tonight, we have enough experience of such matches and clearly the belief to succeed again.

‘And when we went to 2-2 so near the end, my players showed tremendous character and desire to get up off the ground to win the tie.’

Meanwhile Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was understandably disappointed by the defeat and said poor refereeing and defensive errors had cost them dearly.

“We have a feeling of disappointment and injustice. At the moment it is difficult because the whole dressing room is down,” Wenger said.

“The game is over for us. It was down to a dodgy decision, I believe, from the referee. Over the two games it was difficult to swallow. It was a double disappointment because all the big decisions went against us.

“We have to live with that. Sometimes you have to swallow the unswallowable. It is difficult to understand for me. It was never a penalty. I have watched it clearly again, but last week it was definitely a penalty.

“We had so much control but we were naive and we lacked a bit defensively.

“The defeat was not down to mental strength though, it was down to a lack of experience defensively. We made big mistakes and we conceded a goal from a corner and on the second goal we gave Fernando Torres too much room.

“The team is sick. We feel everything is going against us. We lacked that extra bit of confidence because week after week there is more disappointment.”