Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Hyypia: 'Liverpool FC Still Believe The Title Can Be Ours'

Sami Hyypia believes Liverpool would have thrown in the towel if they didn’t believe they could still win the title.

The Anfield outfit breathed new life into the championship race with their emphatic 4-1 win at leaders Manchester United over the weekend.

Despite the defeat, United hold a healthy four-point advantage over both second-placed Chelsea and Liverpool with a game in hand.

With Rafael Benitez’s side having only nine Premier League games left, time is running out to overhaul the champions. But Hyypia is convinced nobody in the Liverpool squad will surrender their title dream until it is mathematically impossible.

“We needed to win this game and we did,” said the 35-year-old. “Everyone is happy with the result and I’m sure a few of the other teams will be happy too.

“But United are still four points ahead with a game in hand. It’s going to be difficult to think about the title but we’ll keep fighting until the end and see what happens.

“We can’t control how they do so we just need to concentrate on ourselves and hope they drop some points.

“If we didn’t believe then we might as well stop the season now. You have to believe you still have a chance. We have to do our best and win our games, and maybe Man United will drop points in some of their games and we can take advantage.”

Hyypia was a star performer on Saturday despite revealing he had just 60 seconds to prepare for Liverpool’s biggest game of the season.

An injury to Alvaro Arbeloa in the warm-up at Old Trafford has prompted Benitez into an emergency reshuffle with Jamie Carragher moving across to right-back and Hyypia coming in to partner Martin Skrtel at centre-back.

And Hyypia added: “Five minutes before kick-off I did not know that I would be playing but the manager made the decision that I would start one minute before we came out because Arbeloa had a problem with his hamstring.

“He felt it in the warm up and they said to me to be ready because maybe I would have to go on but I hadn’t really done a good warm up and I was wondering how the first few minutes would go.

“But I got into the game quite quickly and it was okay after that.”

Liverpool’s historic win at Old Trafford – their biggest win at United since 1936 – came just four days after Real Madrid were thrashed 4-0 in the Champions League.

And Hyypia admits he has not experienced as enjoyable a week since the FA Cup and Uefa Cup were won eight years ago.

“It’s been a good week,” said the veteran, who arrived at Anfield in 1999. “I can’t think of a week like this since in 2001 when we won a few cups in one week.”

Arbeloa and Xabi Alonso, whose calf problem ruled him out at the weekend, are both expected to be available for Sunday’s visit of Aston Villa.

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