Liverpool’s Adam Lallana is taking questions from the floor on a visit to the city’s Bluecoat School, and his interlocutors are taking no prisoners. Perhaps they are all going to grow up to be forensic scientists or sports analysts, perhaps they are just keenly aware of the importance of the weekend’s fixture, for the Manchester United question is broached almost immediately.

Who do you think will finish in the top four, Mr Lallana? “Chelsea, City, us and Arsenal.” And what about this game on Sunday? “We didn’t like losing 3-0 at Old Trafford. This is payback time.”

Catching his breath later, Lallana admits the quick-fire questioning caught him a little off-guard. “There wasn’t a lot of time to think about the answers,” he says. “But I am confident we can finish in the top four, we just need to remain focused. The next game is obviously going to have a bearing on that but I don’t think it will necessarily prove decisive. There are still eight games left after Sunday, so there will be still be a lot of twists and turns. United have got Arsenal in their second to last game of the season, Southampton are at City. Anything can still happen. The top four battle involves seven teams this year. It’s great for the neutral.”

Gary Neville, famously neutral in these matters, said Liverpool would be worried had they watched Manchester United’s performance against Spurs last weekend. “We were travelling at the time, we saw bits of the game,” Lallana says. “We are not worried about the opposition. I think United will be worried about us. The rest of the league will be looking at us and the run of form we are in. We haven’t lost in the league since the defeat at Old Trafford, we have taken 33 points from 39 and kept six successive cleans sheets away from home. We have turned our season around. Even when we were poor the other night against Swansea, and we were really poor in the first half, we still had that grit and determination not to concede. Earlier in the season we would probably have come in two or three goals down. We were able to regroup for the second half and go out and get the win. That’s a great sign.”

Victory over United would take Liverpool into the top four at their rivals’ expense, a prospect Lallana admits appeared distant when he was hauled off at half-time in the mauling at Old Trafford in December.

“There were glimpses of what we might be able to achieve in that game, chances we could have taken, but we lost 3-0 so it was disappointing for us,” he says. “That result at United summed up where we were as a team. We had a difficult start to the season, it’s no secret we were struggling for form and confidence, but credit to the manager and everyone else at the club for sticking together and coming out the other side a lot stronger. When we went to United we hadn’t been playing well, and even though defensively we were open we still managed to create enough chances to get something. We came away thinking we could have got a draw or even won, but at that time it just wasn’t happening for us. The result was a reflection of our confidence back then, we were low as a team and defeat in that manner left a sour taste.”

Liverpool’s Adam Lallana in action during the game against West Bromwich Albion at Anfield in October. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

That low point turned out to be a turning point, although Lallana dates the recovery from the following game, a Capital One Cup tie at Bournemouth. “We went down there and not only won but played well, and since then we haven’t looked back,” he says. “Simon [Mignolet] came back in goal and he’s been brilliant, the new players suddenly started to click and the manager came up with a new system that suits us all.

“Confidence is sky high now but it hasn’t always been like that. This is my first season at Liverpool and I can’t help but remember the difficult times, the difficult conversations we had at the start. When we lost at Crystal Palace, for example, the media was full of stories that the new signings hadn’t worked, the manager’s job was under threat, and naturally because I was one of those new signings I was feeling extra pressure. It would have been great to come in and be on fire from the start, for all the new signings to start contributing right away, but that is not how it works.

“We had a big squad, there were a lot of games to play because of the Champions League, and we rarely kept the same team because we weren’t playing well. Now we are playing well, it shows the value of sticking together and working at something. You can overthink a lot of things when you are not playing well, worry too much about the decisions you are making, whereas now we are free. Going out on to the pitch and being mentally free is a massive thing. We’ve got that in abundance at the minute. There is no one we feel we can’t beat.”

Adam Lallana supports PlayStation’s partnership with the English Schools’ FA. Visit www.playstationschoolscup.com for more information