Liverpool supporters desperate to be at Anfield for Sunday's game against Manchester City are being asked to pay almost £5,000 a pair by online ticket vendors.

With Brendan Rodgers's team two points clear at the top of the Premier League table, the demand for tickets was always going to rocket for what has been termed by the Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho as the club's "biggest game in 24 years".

But as of Wednesday afternoon the website livefootballtickets.com was selling tickets for a seat in the Centenary Stand at an extortionate £2,453 per seat but they need to be bought in pairs. A face value ticket for the same section costs £52.

There are other options available on the website including tickets for the Kop, where the cheapest seat is being offered for £795 – £85 more than a season ticket for a place directly behind the goal.

Prices for the away end start at £430 but a face value ticket cost £44.

The cheapest tickets on a Spanish-based website, ticketbis.net, for Liverpool's final game of the season at home to Newcastle United on 11 May start at £2,548.70 with a place in an Anfield executive area costing £5,428.40.

Both websites allow those in possession of tickets to place an advert on the site with their own nominated price. Ticketbis.net "provides a mediation service to their users" according to the site's terms and conditions, while livefootballtickets.com say "availability and prices of tickets are driven by market demand [and] are not determined by LiveFootballTickets".

A spokesperson for the Liverpool supporters' group, Spirit of Shankly, told the Liverpool Echo that the prices were disgraceful and called on the club to take action.

"Fans are being charged well over the odds for a ticket and it's disgraceful. Supporters want to go along and support both sides and it should never be a question of only those who can afford it.

"We call on Liverpool Football Club to try to take action on this. Those who charge such extortionate amounts should be found and challenged.

"These aren't just touts outside the ground, these are on websites. Why can't the authorities, or Liverpool, buy one and find out who it originally belongs to? If they're going to tackle it properly, they need to take action and get to the bottom of this."

This is not the first instance of Liverpool supporters being scammed by touts in recent weeks. In February, free passes for next week's Hillsborough memorial were masked as tickets for the fixture against Swansea and sold for £100.

At the time, a Liverpool spokesperson said "supporters should only buy tickets through official channels and we regularly remind fans about the dangers of purchasing from touts and others.

"The technology deployed at our turnstiles will refuse entry to anyone without an official ticket."