Liverpool may have beat Newcastle 2-1 to finish up their season, but the Reds had already let the Premier League title slip away. Sure enough, Manchester City’s win over Newcastle meant it was the Citizens throwing the championship party at close of business on Sunday.
But that’s not to say that Liverpool didn’t have a fantastic season. Consider this: last year Liverpool finished 7th, 14 points back of a Champions League position. Now they’re in second, are headed to Europe’s premier tournament and did it all while scoring 101 goals along the way.
It’s no wonder, then, that Steven Gerrard sounded rather optimistic when speaking after the match:
If someone had said to me that we would go into the last game with a slim chance of winning the league I’d have taken that at the start of the season. We have been unlucky – we gave it a great shot, but we fell a little bit short. But what do we do? We dust ourselves down and go again.
Liverpool know that they have some areas in which they need to improve – certainly the penultimate game, in which Palace came back, in the last fifteen minutes, from 3-0 down to draw 3-3, showed that was the case. Their defense away from home needs to be strengthened and lapses in concentration need to be reduced.
But that doesn’t stop the Liverpool captain from believing that, come next season, his side will be capable of proving themselves the best team in the league:
I believe the title is not too far away if we continue to produce performances like we have done this season. If we add to this team and the squad in the right areas we are capable of challenging. We are genuine title contenders before a ball is kicked next year, and we need to go and prove that we’re the top side in the league over 38 games, and not second.
