Jamie Carragher is ‘confident’ that Liverpool will live up to their billing of pre-match favourites against Manchester United on Sunday, but he warned that history has shown this fixture doesn’t always correspond with the teams’ respective league positions.
The Reds start the weekend top of the Premier League, five places and 10 points clear of their arch-rivals, while also boasting a perfect record at Anfield this season.
In contrast to the buoyant mood on Merseyside, Erik ten Hag’s team crashed out of Europe in midweek and were humbled 0-3 at home by Bournemouth in their previous league clash, losing 12 times in all competitions already this term.
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Carragher was previewing the game with ex-United defender Gary Neville on Sky Sports on Friday night when he said: “There’s been shocks in the past when we used to play against you. You were always the big favourites but now and again we’d go to Old Trafford and win games when we were up against it.
“I think it’ll be very tough [for United], of course. The confidence must be really low [and there’s] injury problems.
“You can’t really see how United get something, but games like this, when there’s a real feeling that Liverpool could give Manchester United a good hammering, from a Liverpool point of view sometimes you may go into those games a little bit fearful that something’s waiting for you on the other end.”
Despite that warning, Carragher signed off by saying: “I’m pretty confident Liverpool will win, which I’m sure most people are.”
The form book and league table would certainly point towards another three points at Anfield for Jurgen Klopp’s team, but as the former Reds defender highlighted, there’s been times in the past where we were lagging well behind United in the table but would produce a big performance to turn them over.
LFC must ensure it doesn’t happen to them tomorrow, but if we play to our best, our superior quality should prevail.
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