“If they keep going like that I am sure they will do well and hopefully we can take the title race to the last game, because it won’t be easy for United to go there just as it wasn’t for us at Hull.”

Liverpool have won six of their last seven league games, including a 4-1 win at Old Trafford, and are clinging on to a United side who have won four of their last six. But those games have seen them having to fight back to overcome deficits in three of those matches, and that has continued to give Liverpool faint hopes the European champions could crack.

Carragher added: “We’ve shown all season that we are prepared to fight and I think that’s one of the main reasons why we have only lost two league games up to now.

“Obviously people will point to the fact that we have had a few more draws than some of the other teams around us, but to only have two defeats at this stage of the season is testament to the team and its character.”

Liverpool are currently the division’s top scorers and are three wins away from their best ever Premier League points haul.

And their defiance in the face of some remarkable United comebacks of late, suggest this could be the closest they will be to the eventual title winners in the Premier League’s 17-season history.

In fact, in that time Liverpool have only finished in the top three on six occasions and been runners-up just once.

To underline this season’s relative improvement, the points gap between Liverpool and the eventual champions in the last six seasons has been 11, 21, nine, 37, 30 and 19.

So whatever happens in the last month of the campaign, boss Rafael Benitez will be searching for the positives.

He said: “The team and the squad, have shown that they are better than before. This is a fantastic experience for them because we are in a position now that we have not been in previously, for me that is the positive thing.

“Always you can talk about trophies but in England there are so many strong sides, it is not easy. At least you have to be there, you have to be contending, then you see what happens.

“We have four games now to finish the season and we are still in the title race so it’s very positive.

“The team has done very well, especially without Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres for a lot of games.

“I have confidence that we can fight until the end. After that, it’s very good experience because we have been in a position the club has not been in for a long time.

“I have confidence United will drop points. So we need to keep going, keep doing our job, put them under pressure and then we will see.”