Tim Sherwood has warned Liverpool that their season could unravel if they fail to cope with the pressure of pushing for the Premier League title. The Tottenham Hotspur manager will take his team to Anfield on Sunday and believes the outcome of that match, and the title race, will depend largely on Liverpool's ability to fend off the jitters that are already creeping into Brendan Rodgers' team as they attempt to end the club's 24-year wait for another English crown.

Sherwood has won the title at Anfield more recently than any Liverpool player, having captained the Blackburn Rovers side that lifted the trophy there in 1995 despite losing their final game of the season, 2-1 to Liverpool. Blackburn, in fact, lost three of their final six matches in that season as the tension of the title chase constrained what had been a free-flowing side until then. Sherwood says Liverpool could suffer from a similar bout of nerves.

"It just boils down to whether Liverpool can cope in the run-in because it is nothing like anything else," he said. "Whatever has gone before, now the media have been talking about them in terms of winning the title it makes a hell of a lot of difference when you're warming up and you're going out there and the expectancy is on you. I know that myself from doing it. At one stage [Blackburn] were 12 points clear with a game in hand when we won the title. We managed to scrape through at the last. We were shot, we were shot and we managed to get over the line."

Liverpool looked anxious in Wednesday's game with Sunderland, eventually being grateful to emerge 2-1 winners, and Sherwood reckons they could be even less prepared to handle the run-in than Blackburn were, as Rodgers's side did not expect to be so close to glory at this stage. "People started talking about us as title winners and that is coming from a side who had finished fourth and then second, not going from seventh to first [as Liverpool are trying to do this year].

"It will be very interesting to see how they cope with it. Now they have to believe that they've got something there that might fall through their grasp and might slip away, and believe me that's a really bad feeling to have, because perhaps you don't play with the freedom that you normally played with earlier on in the season."

Liverpool destroyed Tottenham 5-0 at White Hart Lane in December, a defeat so emphatic that André Villas-Boas was dismissed as manager. Sherwood says his team will try to avoid a repetition of that humiliation by showing more defensive solidity and retaining the counterattacking threat that would give them the victory they need to keep up their improbable pursuit of a top-four finish. The manager is "confident" that Emmanuel Adebayor will have recovered from a groin injury in time to take part.

Sherwood is also making plans for next season despite constant speculation that he will no longer be in charge by then. There is speculation that Tottenham will appoint a more experienced manager in the summer but instead of replacing him, Sherwood believes the club would be better served by allowing him to remodel the side. He has given the chairman, Daniel Levy, a list of "four or five" players he would like the club to sign in the summer. "You need to start looking, this is the time," the manager said.