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• It will be different when the pressure is on, says midfielder
• ‘With a few more additions they will be pushing for the top four’

Danny Murphy has backed his former club Liverpool to reassert their Champions League credentials next season but believes it is premature to expect their transformation under Kenny Dalglish to bring about an immediate challenge for the Premier League title.

The Fulham captain was on the wrong end of another impressive Liverpool display on Monday night as Luis Suárez and Maxi Rodríguez inspired a 5-2 win for the visitors at Craven Cottage. Liverpool have risen from 12th to fifth in the Premier League since Dalglish replaced Roy Hodgson in January, collecting 33 points from a possible 48, and with Fenway Sports Group, the club’s owner, expected to follow the permanent appointment of Dalglish as manager with heavy investment in the summer there is renewed optimism around Anfield.

Murphy was full of admiration for Liverpool’s performance on Monday. “Some of Liverpool’s play was top quality,” he said. “Suárez was electric, he caused us all sorts of problems, and although you can be critical of our players, you also have to admire quality when you see it. Some of their one-touch football was the Liverpool of old.”

However, while the Fulham midfielder envisages a return to the top four for Liverpool next term, he believes Dalglish’s team have been able to play with a freedom that will be absent when the new campaign commences. Murphy explained: “It’s hard to say [whether Liverpool can challenge for the title] because they have been playing under very little pressure. They haven’t needed to go out and win games, and everything they get now is a bonus.

“It will be a different ask for those players to play under pressure every week if they are near the top, but with Kenny in charge and a few more additions they will be pushing for the top four again. I’m surprised they aren’t up there this season but we know they didn’t get a good start. If you look at the positives for them, the young lads are coming through, the local lads. I thought the young full-back [John] Flanagan was terrific again tonight, [Jay] Spearing’s a good player, and if you mix that up with Stevie G [Gerrard] coming back and some more investment from the Americans, they will be pushing for the top four.”

Liverpool’s confidence and style under Dalglish is unrecognisable from performances during Hodgson’s ill-starred reign, even though Suárez was the only member of the team that defeated Fulham who was unavailable to the former manager. And Murphy admits the unity produced at Anfield by Dalglish’s appointment has been instrumental in the team’s rapid recovery.

He added: “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. When Roy Hodgson got the job I thought it was the right thing to do, and I said so publicly, but things didn’t work out for him. Football can change quickly, and when the new season comes round they will have to start well to fight for a Champions League spot – and the pressure will be on if he doesn’t get a few results. But the one thing you have got with Kenny is that the supporters back him: when the fans are with you, and they love Kenny so much, you can feel they are behind the players as well.

“Earlier this season, you could sense the players were under pressure every time they gave the ball away because the fans were on their back, but now they are playing with confidence because they know the fans are behind them. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are as a player, if you have that support it makes a big difference, and with Kenny being there in the dugout it get the fans onside which, in turn, leads to better performances on the pitch.”

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The best images from Anfield where Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool host Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United

Liverpool’s returning manager showed strength of character in substituting the Spaniard after he went awol again for Liverpool

The same is true whether the Liverpool manager is a figure for idolatry or ridicule: unless Fernando Torres is coaxed back to the form that made him one of the world’s finest strikers in an increasingly distant past, their finest chance of resurrecting a torturous season will instead develop into their greatest source of frustration.

As events at Old Trafford proved, and in contrast to the mood at Anfield, the transformation will not occur overnight. With 13 minutes remaining and Liverpool’s last hope of domestic silverware slipping away against Manchester United, the club’s record signing was withdrawn for the £1.5m forward David Ngog.

The substitution distinguished Kenny Dalglish from his predecessor Roy Hodgson who, no matter how starved of service or disillusioned Torres has been this term, always appeared conscious of reputation and was incredibly patient in his handling of the Spain international.

Yet Dalglish’s decision was not about showing who is boss. It was taken out of necessity with Torres failing to make an impact even while Liverpool had 11 men on the pitch and drifting to the margins of a showpiece FA Cup tie by the time his number came up. Getting inside the Spaniard’s head is a matter of urgency for the old/new Liverpool manager, and that process had begun before the Kenny coat made its return after a 20-year absence today.

Hodgson erred in his treatment of Torres, both in terms of isolating the striker with a long-ball game lacking direction earlier in the season and then frequently revealing that he thought the forward’s lack of confidence was his team’s major hindrance. That is not to absolve the player himself from responsibility for how this season has been allowed to drift with his form.

Dalglish turned his regular Sunday newspaper column today into a psychological exercise, stressing how he still regards the number nine as one of the finest in Europe and claiming Torres would be salivating at the prospect of tormenting Nemanja Vidic at Old Trafford once again. But Vidic was absent and so, to all intents and purposes, was Torres.

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