After eight goals in one week against possibly the most high profile opposition a team could face, Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has no worries ahead of the draw for the Champions League quarter-finals.

Liverpool beat Real Madrid 4-0 in their last European tie and added a 4-1 mauling of Manchester United at the weekend to underscore their current fine form.

They have faced Chelsea three times and Arsenal once in the previous three seasons in European competition.

With the London duo, plus Manchester United, also through to the last eight of the Champions League the chances are high of another all English-showdown when the draw is made on Friday.

“We are not running scared of anybody,” But Gerrard said. “We will take who we get, and believe that we are going to go through.

“If you are asking me about a fear factor in the Champions League, then I think it is the other seven teams in the draw who are going to have concerns about coming up against us after that Real Madrid result.

“The way I look at it, we are going to have to play them sooner or later, so it does not matter if it is now, the semi-finals or the final.”

The skipper admitted, though, if it was up to him they would select their opponents from the continent

“We are now looking forward to the draw later this week. If you could hand-pick an opponent then maybe we would want someone like Villarreal or Porto, but there are no easy draws at this stage,” he told the Liverpool FC magazine.

“Everyone who has got to this stage of the competition has done well. They will all believe in themselves.

“But we have shown - the players, the manager and the fans - that we are a force to be reckoned with when we pull it all together.

“So we will sit down on Friday and see who we get and take it from there.”

However, Spanish winger Albert Riera claims he would prefer to avoid Barcelona in the quarter-finals.

He said: “In these kind of matches you can never say that one team is the favourite.

“In the last round we played Real Madrid and a lot of people were saying that they were the best in the world because in their previous 10 games they had won eight or nine of them, and they had been playing really well also.

“But Liverpool played a really good match against them and were able to beat them.

“Barcelona are playing unbelievably well this year, their football is really good and I think people are expecting a lot from them and perhaps expecting them to win 5-0 in every game.

“It is not possible to keep this kind of level for a whole season though, but they are a team who I would prefer not to get in the Champions League draw.”

Boss Rafael Benitez has been boosted by the return of defender Daniel Agger to full training following a back problem that has sidelined the Dane for more than a month.

And Liverpool could have injured pair Yossi Benayoun and Xabi Alonso back for Sunday’s visit of Aston Villa to Anfield.

Benayoun and Alonso missed last weekend’s rout of Manchester United with hamstring and calf strains respectively, but both are responding well to treatment.

But full-back Alvaro Arbeloa, who suffered a recurrence of a recent hamstring injury during the warm-up at Old Trafford, will not be rushed back into action.