Benitez is confident that, with time and hard work, he can mould Liverpool into a force that will be feared domestically and in Europe once again.
He said: "I like to see the Liverpool team which beat Olympiacos, Arsenal, Charlton and Leverkusen. That's my idea of Liverpool Football Club. But we are very inconsistent.
"Sometimes we haven't had the right mentality in some games, or we've lost concentration early. We need to work on that, to be stronger mentally.
"You need a strong team in defence, compact, but with an attacking mentality. It's not always necessary to be charging forward, or to be sitting deep. You need to adapt to the other team.
"At Valencia, we'd change our game plan to combat our opponents. That's something we still need to learn here. At the moment, with these inconsistencies, we're still far away from achieving that here but, in football, you can change things by working harder.
"I have been thinking about the inconsistencies all the time. I go home and talk into my pillow all night. I wonder how I can change things - working properly, analysing games.
"I've experienced this before. The first season in Valencia we won the league, but the second season we finished fifth. People thought we were gone but we won the league and UEFA Cup the following year. We analysed things calmly and it worked."