• ‘No chance 11 Liverpool players will be thinking about United’
• Lampard praises Ancelotti’s laid-back attitude during title race

Frank Lampard insists Chelsea will be subjected to an awkward afternoon at Anfield on Sunday, despite the reality that a victory for Liverpool could thrust Manchester United nearer to a record 19th league title.

While much has been made of Liverpool’s underlying desperation not to see their tally of championship successes eclipsed by their bitter rivals, Lampard believes Rafael Benítez’s side’s professionalism and desire to remain a top-four club will dictate their approach to the collision.

Chelsea travel to the north-west with a one-point advantage over United and knowing victory in their final two games, at Liverpool and at home to Wigan, will secure their first title since 2006.

“There is no chance that 11 Liverpool players could go out thinking about Manchester United winning the championship on the back of what happens in that game,” Lampard said. “They will go out to win the game. Their manager’s professional, their players are professional. There’s no way they will think about anything other than winning the game, regardless of whether it gets them into the Champions League next year or not. Even if they were out of it, they’d give everything. There’s no doubt about that.

“It’s a difficult game for us, but there’s no point worrying about it. We are all aware what is at stake. Playing at Anfield is difficult at any stage of the season – we know what’s coming, and we know what’s there for us [if we win]. We just have to try and win the match. It’s quite a simple formula for us – win two games and we win the league. If we don’t then we might have to rely on goal difference, depending on the Manchester United result [at Sunderland on Sunday evening]. But if we don’t turn up and start slowly, or don’t play with the intensity that we did against Stoke, then we will lose at Anfield. It’s as simple as that.”

Lampard and Chelsea have experienced wildly contrasting fortunes on Merseyside. They have triumphed there under Claudio Ranieri, in the first match of the Roman Abramovich era, and José Mourinho, and last season under Guus Hiddink in the quarter-final of the European Cup. Yet they have also endured some of their darkest moments at Anfield, most notably in successive Champions League semi-finals and, last season, under Luiz Felipe Scolari, where a 2-0 defeat in the Premier League saw Lampard sent off and the Brazilian’s reign terminally undermined.

There is an acceptance within the Chelsea squad that any repeat of the sloppiness evident in their defeat to Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane this month could end up costing the club the title. “We have to go there and take the game to them,” Salomon Kalou said. “We let Tottenham play. We let them get comfortable on the ball, so we have to go to Liverpool and play differently: keep the ball, play our own game and not let Liverpool take control. They are still a strong team, even without Fernando Torres, and it will be tough.

“They have that spirit at home and their fans will push them all the way. We will have to be focused and try and impose ourselves on them. We will have to win. There is no other way of doing it – if we want to keep our destiny in our own hands, we have to go out and win both matches, and that’s what we intend to do. We know that United won’t back down, so we have to keep focusing on ourselves. If we win our match, we don’t have to worry about what United do against Sunderland after us.”

The league leaders are braced for more mind games from Sir Alex Ferguson in the build-up to the penultimate round of matches following the United manager’s assertion last week that the pressure was all on Chelsea, with the title “theirs to lose”.

“The talk doesn’t matter,” Lampard said. “All that matters is the concentration in the camp, both in training and in the games. We have to approach the games in the right way and ensure we get the right result. We’re getting to the stage of the season where the talk … well, all it does is generate column inches. What really matters is getting out there and playing.

“It helps that the manager is laid-back and fairly calm. He doesn’t take his eye off the ball, or his targets. When he speaks, he speaks with authority. After the Stoke game he just told us there are three games to go [two in the Premier League and the FA Cup final] and we have to concentrate and give every ounce in every minute of every game we’ve got left. We can prepare in these long weeks we have now, with no midweek games, but if we work hard in training we can be fairly light-hearted around the place. We’ve been like that all season.

“He’s been in this situation before when he has won the Champions League and Serie A. He understands what it is like as a player and as a manager to achieve that. He knows he mustn’t show tension at this particular time. But, at the same time, he has got the focus we need.”

ChelseaLiverpoolPremier LeagueDominic Fifieldguardian.co.uk