"It’s a wonderful feeling,” he said after full-time. “It’s such a relief, really, because I thought over the course of the 90 minutes we deserved to win the game – especially with the first-half performance which I enjoyed and was so good.
“As the game wears on, we conceded a very good goal to them and you can see the game petering out at 1-1. I honestly believe today, with everything we did on the field and the stats back it up, we deserved to win it.
“But I know it’s very hard on Brendan [Rodgers] and his team to concede a goal in extra time especially with virtually the last kick of the game.”
Hodgson had called for a response from his side to their poor form in 2023, and was delighted by the start the players made.
“I thought the attacking intent from team – and I’m even talking about the full-backs and the centre-backs – was very good,” he said. “It is quite incredible to havee that amount of shots, that amount of shots on target and that amount of corners.
“It really did show how intent we were to play the game in their half and when we got to final third to profit and capitalise on that when we got ball into final third.
“The energy was fantastic. We knew the crowd would be nervous of course, like we were ourselves, but we also knew they would be 100 percent behind us and 100 percent wanting us to play in that way.
“It was a win-win situation today because we gave the fans what they wanted to see and it proved that we have the ability to pin teams back and create goal chances.
“I think today we could have scored more than the one goal we had until the last minute of the game.”