Liverpool star urges improvement

Liverpool rock Jamie Carragher has told his team-mates to pick up their average performances if they expect to seriously challenge for silverware this season.

Carragher said: "The boss has talked to us about our performances this season, and I have been saying the same thing myself - a lot of the players, including myself, have not been performing as well as we have the last few seasons.

"That has made it difficult for the new players to ask them to settle in quickly. The players who have been here a while have maybe not helped them to settle in by producing performances up to our own standards.

"We have got to look to ourselves, to find our own best levels, and now we have achieved a good away win at last I hope that everyone will see us back playing at our best, collectively and individually.

"We have been average, at best, and we are not even halfway towards our true form. We are probably only a quarter of the way there at the moment."

On the slow start the club have made to the new campaign he added: "Teams like Manchester United and Chelsea are pulling away so it is going to be very difficult. We got a good start in Europe and the Community Shield, but it did not continue like that.

"We knew that we had to get back to that form, it has not been what we would have wanted.

"United are flying at the moment and it is massive for us to go there and get something. People will start saying that if we lose we are out of it, that's maybe too early for that.

"But all we want to do is (take) one step at a time, collectively. It's a long way to go but the win in Bordeaux was a step in the right direction."

He continued: "We have missed players. There was no Stevie in Bordeaux and we only had Momo Sissoko for a while. Bolo and Xabi did fine, but we do miss Stevie and Momo. They are top players, and it was great to see Momo come on and do so well.

"It was always going to be difficult to do what we did last season, that run at the end of the campaign was outstanding. We always want to reach that standard, but we would have liked to have done a bit better than we have been doing.

"We need more clean sheets, and there's nowhere better to go and produce a top performance than at Manchester United."

He added: "This season we have not done so well away, and we knew that we had to put that right in Europe before we went to Manchester United.

"We always accept that playing United is massive, so we needed a boost to our confidence before going there."