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Over the past week the Reds have dished out four-goal
drubbings to both Real Madrid and United. Now skipper Gerro reckons
the Kop have Europe’s big guns running scared ahead of the
Champions League quarter-final draw in Nyon.
The first half of their 4-0 hiding of Real in
particular — the Galacticos’ highest-ever Champions League defeat —
sent shockwaves across the entire game. And Gerrard is convinced
the one team their rivals will be desperately hoping to avoid in
the draw is the Anfield outfit.
The bookmakers may still only rate them as fourth
favourites behind Barca, holders United and Chelsea but the
Liverpool skipper believes they could be left with egg on their
face come May 27.
He roared: “If you ask me about a fear factor in the
Champions League, I think the other seven are the ones who are
going to have concerns about coming up against us, don’t you? The
way I look at it is that we’re going to have to play them sooner of
later so it doesn’t matter if it’s now, the semi-finals or the
final.
“We’re not running scared of anyone. We’ll take whoever
we get and believe that we are going to go through. “If we could
hand-pick an opponent then maybe we’d want someone like Villarreal
or Porto but, at this stage of the competition, there are no easy
games. It may be a cliche but it’s true.
“Everyone who’s got to this stage has done well and
believes in themselves. But we’ve shown — the players, manager and
fans — we’re a force to be reckoned with when we pull it all
together.”
Gerrard marked his 100th Euro appearance with a double
against Real, leaving him level with Bayern’s Miroslav Klose as
joint Champions League leading scorers on seven. Yet it was
Liverpool’s first-half display against the Spanish giants which
really left the Kop captain purring, regardless of his own personal
milestone.
And he believes the opening 45 minutes, which blew
Madrid out of the water as the Spaniards chased a 1-0 first-leg
deficit, was the most complete in his Anfield career.
Gerrard added: “I honestly can’t remember us playing as
well as we did in the first half of the Real game. “I don’t just
mean in the Champions League or in Europe — I mean in any
competition in all of the time I’ve been playing for
Liverpool.
“I don’t think we’ve controlled a game like that from
the very first minute, dictated it and bossed it that way before or
for so long. “Playing like that, I don’t think there is a side in
Europe that could have lived with us. We’ve played well against
Arsenal, Juventus, Inter, Chelsea and whoever else, but that
first-half performance against Madrid was better than them
all.
“Maybe the results of some of those games were more
important, like Milan in Istanbul, but in terms of pure control
that was the best by a distance. “People are talking of Real being
a bad team but they weren’t saying that the week before.
“The run of games they’ve been on in La Liga tells us
they are a good team. “If they looked poor at Anfield it’s because
that is how we made them look. We destroyed them and made them look
ordinary and we deserve credit for that rather than looking for
other reasons.”
Things are certainly looking rosier for the Reds than
at any stage of the season, with Fernando Torres also hitting peak
form after a hamstring-dogged campaign.
Torres gave United centre back pair Rio Ferdinand and —
especially — Nemanja Vidic an absolute nightmare on Saturday to
rekindle Anfield dreams of a first Premier League crown. But
rattling up eight goals in a week — and leaving two of Europe’s
true giants on their knees — also left Gerrard with regrets over
what might have been, with the Reds still four points off the
summit having played a game more than United.
He admitted: “There’s got to be a slight disappointment
— for me anyway — when I see how well we have played. “If we had
played like that every week we’d be five or six points clear at the
top of the Premier League. “Real couldn’t live with us playing like
that and I don’t think we’d have dropped half the points we have if
we played like it — there’s a lesson there for us all.”
