Wayne Rooney has warned Premier League leaders Chelsea that Manchester United are capable of winning the title this season.
United stretched their winning run to six matches on Sunday with an emphatic 3-0 victory over bitter rivals Liverpool at Old Trafford.
Despite struggling in the opening stages of what was expected to be a season of transition under new manager Louis van Gaal, United have risen to third in the table and they are only eight points adrift of Chelsea heading into the hectic Christmas programme.
So far this season Chelsea have looked the class of the league, but that does not faze Rooney.
The striker was part of the United team that won the league six seasons ago despite trailing Liverpool by eight points in January and he also remembers their last triumph in 2013, when they won the title by 11 points despite rarely blowing sides away.
"I think we have to believe we can win the title," Rooney said.
"We are eight points behind and coming into a busy period.
"If we can win our games and the others have one bad result then there is nothing there.
"We have to keep winning our games and hopefully get back to the top and you never know.
"We won the league two years ago and we weren't great in a lot of those games but we got the results.
"We have shown a great resilience this season. Some of the games haven't gone the way we would like but we are winning them and that is a great quality to have.
"We have been here before but we have a lot of new players and this is where the experience of myself, Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher can rub off on the other players."
Source: AFP