Manchester United's Paul Scholes believes the recent World Cup break has put Saturday's clash at Liverpool on a knife edge.

The former England star was among only a handful of United players left at the club's Carrington training headquarters, as the likes of Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov all turned out for their respective countries.

With United's eaglerly anticipated clash at Anfield following on closely from the World Cup qualifiers, Scholes is adamant that United's preparations have been far from ideal ahead of Saturday's morning start on Merseyside.

"There have been four or five of us training and that does disrupt it massively - especially when we have an early kick-off on Saturday," Scholes told United's official television channel MUTV.

"The whole group will get an hour of training probably on Friday. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't. We will just have to wait and see on Saturday."

Scholes, capped 66 times by England, was however quick to point out that despite the magnitude of the Liverpool match, United must simply get on with trying to claim three points.

"It's the same for every team," he said.

"Liverpool will have a lot of players out; Chelsea will have every player out as well. These are historically tough games and whenever you play them it isn't any different.

"You need to play these games at some stage during the season."

The 33-year-old looks set to feature at the heart of United's midfield against Rafa Benitez's side, a position in which, despite the plethora of young midfielders at United, he is still earning rave reviews.

"It's good having the youngsters in because they can do all the running for you," he said.

"You can just sit and pass the ball to them and off they go. You try to give a little bit of advice to them, but not too much.

"They don't need much talking to. I just say to them to do exactly what has got them here. The manager has seen something in them that has got them to this stage, so why stop that?"