COMETH the hour, cometh the man – I thought Steven Gerrard was tremendous against Manchester United on Saturday.

What a return to the side for the skipper and it was a great moment when he struck that free-kick into the net in front of the Kop.

I didn’t expect Gerrard to play the full 90 minutes but he was still going strong near the end. He’s such a special player and seeing him back out there makes you realise just how much we’ve missed him.

He doesn’t give the ball away, he’s tigerish in his challenges and he uses possession so intelligently. He’s come back from a serious injury and Saturday proved he’s still got so much left to give.

Gerrard is the first name on the teamsheet every week now and having him back firing on all cylinders is a huge bonus for Liverpool with some of the games we’ve got coming up.

Our next three league games are against Norwich, West Brom and Swansea and we need to pick up maximum points from all of them.

It will be interesting to see how we line up against Norwich at Anfield on Saturday as a result of Lucas’ one-match ban.

A lot of people have been waiting to see Gerrard partner Charlie Adam in central midfield and we should get that chance this weekend. Adam had his best game for us on Saturday and caused United plenty of problems.

Gerrard and Adam can both defend and they both love to get forward. It will be interesting to see the two of them as a partnership.

One will sit while the other gets into the box. That’s the way it used to be with Steve McMahon and Ronnie Whelan working in tandem.

With Lucas missing, I expect Andy Carroll to come back into the side to lead the line with Luis Suarez.

We must give Norwich great respect. They’ve done well so far this season. They pushed Manchester United all the way recently and created a lot of chances against them.

But we’re at home and the way the league is this is a game we simply have to win if we’re going to get back in the top four.

We should be going into it on the back of beating United.

The first half was very scrappy and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Liverpool and United give the ball away so much. A lot of that was down to tension and nerves. But the second half was much better and we created plenty of opportunities.

We should have had a penalty when Dirk Kuyt’s header struck Jonny Evans on the arm. And Rio Ferdinand should have been sent off for a second yellow when he brought down Adam.

Lady luck didn’t go our way but we didn’t help ourselves by backing off after we scored.

We allowed United to have possession and they managed to force a couple of corners and from one of them they equalised. Conceding from a corner like that will hurt. It was really bad defending – as a coach and as a player it doesn’t make pleasant watching.

You’ve got to attack the ball at set-pieces but the marking was really poor and we let ourselves down.

If we had kept the same tempo up after we scored we would have won the game comfortably.

To be fair, our response after they scored was excellent and only some fine saves from their keeper denied us a winner. It was frustrating but four points from two tough games against Everton and Manchester United is a decent return.