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Steven Gerrard believes Liverpool's ruthless “demolition” of Arsenal ranks in the top three team performances of his illustrious Anfield career.

The Reds blew the Gunners away with a sensational first-half display in Saturday's 5-1 victory at Anfield.

Brendan Rodgers' side were 4-0 up inside 20 minutes with the skipper admitting the game plan was executed perfectly.

“That is right up there,” Gerrard said. “I am trying to think back of a performance – especially in the first half – that I can remember in the last 15 years.

“Maybe one or two in the Champions League got close but that was as explosive as it gets. That’s definitely in the top three performances I have been involved in.

“You are talking about a side that is top of the league with world-class players, ones who are worth £42million.

“Jack Wilshere, one of the country’s big hopes who we are looking to perform at a World Cup, and (Santi) Cazorla – a World Cup winner. We have absolutely demolished a top team there from start to finish.

“If you stand off Arsenal and give them too much respect, they will pass you to death. They beat us 2-0 last year when we showed them too much respect.

“Brendan is the type of manager that won’t just accept 4-0. He believes in 'death by football' and at half-time he wanted us to go out and kill them again in the second half.

“We never did that but that was impossible because of the amount of effort, tempo and work rate we put in for 45 minutes.

“It is impossible to do it for 90 minutes. The game was dead and buried at half-time.”

Liverpool's biggest win over Arsenal for half a century strengthened their grip on fourth place.

It also means they only trail new leaders Chelsea by six points with 13 games remaining.

Rodgers insisted last week that winning the title wasn't a realistic target for the Reds this term and Gerrard is backing his manager's judgement.

“According to Brendan we are not (in the title race),” he added.

“Listen, he said we are not so we are all behind Brendan. We listen to what our leader says and he says we are not in the title race so we go with that.

“We do what he says and he says we are not in the title race, so we carry on pushing for the top four and see where it takes us.”

Gerrard says the challenge facing the Reds is to replicate the quality of Saturday's performance between now and May.

They face a very different type of test against struggling Fulham at Craven Cottage on Wednesday night.

He said: “I think the thing after a performance like that is can we motivate ourselves to get close to producing something similar against Fulham?

“If we do, we will do the same to Fulham. But that is the dangerous thing. We performed fantastic against Everton and then slipped up against West Brom having taken the lead. We should have seen that game out.

“You can set markers and you can have one off games but it means nothing if you don’t continue to play well and get something from it at the end of the season.

“We aren’t going to look back at the end of the season and think 'how good were we against Arsenal?' if we never got the top four.

“We can enjoy this but we have got to move on quickly and try and get three points against Fulham.”