Carragher, the Liverpool defender, believes that
the pressure is on United after the gap at the top was reduced to
one point.
Jamie Carragher, the Liverpool defender, has warned
Manchester United that they will have their work cut out trying to
retain the Barclays Premier League title for a second successive
season with the Merseyside club breathing down their
necks.
Liverpool will move two points clear of United at the top of the
table should they beat Fulham at Craven Cottage on Saturday week,
24 hours before the champions welcome Aston Villa to Old Trafford.
United still have a game in hand over Liverpool, but after having
their seven-point lead whittled away in the space of a week in the
wake of chastening defeats by their Merseyside rivals and Fulham,
Carragher believes that Sir Alex Ferguson’s team are starting to
feel the heat.
Liverpool’s 5-0 hammering of Villa at Anfield on Sunday followed
a 4-0 win at home to Real Madrid and a stunning 4-1 victory away to
United, and with his team trailing the leaders by only a point,
Carragher believes they are capable of pulling off one of the great
title comebacks. “The Villa result will have sent a message out to
United and Chelsea,” Carragher said. “Let’s not kid ourselves,
they’d have been watching the game.
“At the moment, we’re probably the form team in the league and
this is the best time of the season to be in form. There’s not long
to go now and hopefully we can keep it going.
“United will know now that we are in there. If we’d have dropped
points against Villa, then their defeat at Fulham wouldn’t have
made that much difference, but we’ve capitalised on it and now
United will realise they are in a fight for the league. They still
have an advantage — one point with a game in hand is a decent lead
at this stage of the season — but we’ve just got to stay on their
coat-tails and hopefully overtake them.
“The players haven’t really been talking about the title that
much. Maybe after the win at United, we were thinking, ‘Hey, maybe
it’s given us half a chance.’ But we were realistic that United had
a good lead. Now they have lost again and the gap has got closer,
so when we come back from the international break, maybe things
could be a little bit different.”
The pressure of the title race appeared to get the better of
Liverpool in November and December when successive draws at home to
Fulham, West Ham United and Hull City played into the hands of
United and Chelsea, and there were more signs of the tension
getting to Rafael Benítez’s team in January after consecutive draws
against Stoke City, Everton and Wigan Athletic. But Carragher
believes that Liverpool will not make the same mistakes again.
“It’s not normal for a lot of the results to go for you at the
top of the league, so with United and Chelsea losing, it put a bit
more pressure on us,” he said. “We’ve probably found it difficult a
few times this season to cope with that, so to run out 5-0 winners
was a great result.
“It was important we did capitalise this time. I think there’s
an improved mental strength throughout the team. Earlier on in the
season, we hadn’t been in that position at the top before and we
weren’t used to it, but we are maturing and getting used to the
demands of fighting for a title. Maybe we didn’t know how to deal
with it then, but this time the results went for us again and we
were a lot calmer.”