Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard is desperate to avoid an early return home from the World Cup.

He hopes that after qualification from Group C, the South African journey is long and jubilant for both players and fans alike.

Gerrard said: "As players we definitely don't want to go home. We want to stay here with the supporters and have a successful tournament.

"We will only do that if we improve on the performance against Algeria.

"And we need to get back to our form in qualifying for the World Cup. We then had a majority of the team firing on all cylinders. We need to recover the spirit very quickly and get back to the form we showed in qualifying.

"I also agree with what the manager said in the press conference. We need to find more spirit and we weren't aggressive enough.

"The boys never pressed the ball and won it back enough. We never showed enough urgency and we certainly weren't clinical enough around the box.

"We need to find some quick answers. We thought we would get the cobwebs out of the system in the first game so I was very surprised with the result against Algeria.

"I thought we prepared really well for the game. Going into it we felt good but unfortunately we just haven't delivered the right result."