Hamann: Vieira should have gone

'I don't know why he went down like that, but he knew I had not touched him. He can consider himself a bit lucky to have stayed on.' Hamann also revealed the careful planning that went into nullifying Arsenal's formidable attacking threat and left them with just one win from six games, their worst sequence in four years.

'The manager (Rafael Benitez) thought long and hard about the best way to combat them, and it couldn't have worked much better,' said the German. 'They can be so dangerous if you give them time on the ball, so we made a point of pressing them as high up the pitch as possible and not allowing them a moment to settle.

'As a result, they hardly had a sight of our goal up until their equaliser. With such class in so many areas, there is always a possibility of a goal out of nothing, but otherwise Chris Kirkland hardly had a save to make.

'We kept them well away from our goal, and that is crucial against a side with so much attacking flair. We didn't allow them to play their normal game. It's not for me to say whether it will work for others, but it was perfect for us.'

However, Thierry Henry last night leapt to the defence of his fellow Frenchman Vieira.

'The thing people don't realise is that Patrick has been playing for a long time with an ankle injury, certainly the last four or five games. The guy is putting his body on the line,' said Henry.

'And I have been playing since the beginning of the season with an achilles problem. But Patrick and I don't jump off the boat - we stand and fight.'

Despite his injury problems, Henry has still scored 14 goals this season and provided nine assists.

He added: 'Everyone thought I wouldn ' t even play against Liverpool. Usually when a team does not go well a striker may say he has a thigh problem or a knee problem. I'm not like that.

'We may not be playing too well at the moment but we are all playing, not hiding away.

'That's where the commitment is at with this team and our good form is going to come back. When you have bad moments, you need a full squad to rely on and, at the moment, we don't have that. We don't have a large squad.'