'Sometimes the result is the most important thing'
Liverpool should take great confidence from the manner of their victories over Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion as they push for a top-four finish, according to former Reds boss Roy Evans.
Jürgen Klopp's team were required to show a grittier side over the course of their last two Premier League outings - tricky away trips to the bet365 Stadium and The Hawthorns.
On both occasions they emerged from a physically testing 90 minutes with three precious points, and that bodes just as well as a win earned in stylish fashion, Evans believes.
Reflecting on those results, the Boot Room stalwart told Liverpoolfc.com: "I think it's something you've always got to have as a football team because you can't always play great football.
"Sometimes you've got to graft and work through it. We've been guilty of that over a few years really, of letting the so-called smaller teams beat us in games we should have won, but I thought we showed a great attitude in both of those games.
"They weren't great performances but sometimes the result is the most important thing, and to get six points out of Stoke and West Brom, although it might look easier on paper, it's great that we actually did it."
Watch again: Reds earn victory at The Hawthorns
The Reds went some way to easing concerns over their record against the Premier League's so-called lesser teams with six points from their last two games.
Evans knows more criticism will be forthcoming should future results go against Klopp and co, but he believes the manager will be pleased with the way his team have learned lessons from their struggles earlier in the season.
He added: "It's never put to bed because if it happens again people will always come up and make it part of their conversation and fans do that.
"Fans would obviously love to win every game but sometimes things go wrong and of course as a manager you take the praise sometimes when you do well and sometimes you have to take the flak that goes with a poor result.
"At least we have ended up with a Plan B and we have done some things slightly differently against these teams and ended up with good results.
"Jürgen will have been very pleased with how it has gone, certainly after the January we had, which was difficult."
Evans also called for the Reds to ignore whatever their rivals for Champions League qualification are doing, with five wins from the five remaining games enough to make that an irrelevance.
"We are up there, we've got a real fighting chance and we've got to make sure we keep on getting great results until the end of the season," he continued.
"I think that's really important to get us on the next ladder to success, not only from the point of view of being in the Champions League but the motivation of being able to bring in other players.
"The other players will only come to you if you are in the Champions League so you've got an extra five or six players you can have a look at.
"At the end of the day we can only do what we can do. We can control our games, so if we can win all of our games between now and the end of the season then we will be in the Champions League slot, that's for sure."