Carragher sends title warning to United
-
Jamie Carragher sends title warning to Manchester United
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.”