The bookmakers may still only rate them as 4th favourites behind Barca, Manchester United and Chelsea but the Liverpool skipper believes they could be left with egg on their face.

Steven G Said: “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 are 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 had 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 have 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 Madrid, leaving him level with Bayern’s Miroslav Klose as joint Champions League leading scorers on seven.

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 have been playing for Liverpool. I don’t think we have 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 have 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 have 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.

Related Posts:

• Steven Gerrard: “Liverpool have to bounce back against Chelsea”
• Gerrard to scan his groin after Chelsea bt. Liverpool 3-1
• Gerrard and Drogba are All ready for the Champions League Clash
• Steven Gerrard Destroyed Real Madrid
• Steven Gerrard vs Frank Lampard – Who is best mid-fielder?