Liverpool must have felt they had one hand on the Premier League trophy when they defeated Manchester City 3-2 at Anfield last season. It was the 10th successive victory in a sequence that began with a demolition of Arsenal and included handsome wins over Manchester United, Southampton and Spurs, and by mid-April even the most hardened sceptic had to admit that Liverpool were looking worthy champions.
The stakes are not quite so high this time round, with City five points off Chelsea’s pace and Liverpool just one of a number of teams hoping for a possible fourth place, although Brendan Rodgers insists that qualifying for the Champions League this season would surpass everything that was achieved last year.
“Our backs were against the wall at the start of the season,” the Liverpool manager said. “We weren’t playing very well and when you don’t win games you get criticism. If we arrive in the top four this season, with everything we have been through, it will be a greater achievement than last year, absolutely.
“What we did last year was an incredible story, but we were basically only playing one game a week.
“This season we have been playing in Europe, with virtually a new team and a new system. We took time to adapt to a lot of new players coming in, particularly as many of them were young players. It wasn’t a group that stayed together and just made a couple of additions, like Chelsea, for us it was near enough a new team again.
“It was difficult at times, we knew we were not working as well as we wanted to, but the job of the manager and coach is to find solutions and that’s what we did. You have to give a huge amount of credit to the players, because switching to 3-4-3 was quite a radical change, but I think we are over the transitional period now, we are full of confidence and hoping to finish the season strongly.”
Rodgers must also hope his players are over the arduous trip to Istanbul on Thursday evening, complete with extra-time, penalties and a 4.30am arrival back in England on Friday morning. No team should be asked to kick off at noon the following Sunday in such circumstances – even Manuel Pellegrini sympathised with Liverpool’s situation – and although there was no room to change the kick-off time, owing to the Capital One Cup final, the fact is that Thursday night football almost invariably gives one team or the other an unfair advantage at the weekend and Uefa should not really be promoting it.
“I accept we have an advantage,” the City manager said. “I have been involved in the Europa League and playing on Thursday is always difficult. Players need at least 48 hours to recover from a game, it is impossible to prepare properly for the next one.”
Pellegrini has his own European disappointment to get over in time for Anfield, although at least City were beaten by Barcelona on Tuesday evening and there is still a return leg to look forward to with hope if not optimism. City did not look like a side capable of storming Camp Nou in their latest encounter with Lionel Messi and co, though, taking the positive view, their away form this season has been excellent. “The most important thing when you are away is having the personality to go for the game from the beginning as you would do at home,” Pellegrini said. “It doesn’t matter who you play you have to have the character to go out for a win.”
Pellegrini does not believe English football should be too hard on itself after the disappointing results in Europe, and still insists the Premier League is the greatest in the world. “I have worked in Europe for 10 years, and believe me, England is different,” he explained. “The way the team prepare, the way they play, it is all different. There are a lot of different styles in the Premier League, a lot of teams who can surprise you. I don’t think standards are any lower just because of worse results in Europe. Winning in Europe is very hard, there are some strong teams about, teams with a lot of power.”
Rodgers can vouch for that, although the Liverpool manager also makes the point that the Premier League is harder than most, especially near the top. “A lot of the top teams around Europe have a virtual pass into the Champions League, the big names are quite set each year, whereas in this country there is a fight between massive clubs to get in there,” he said.
“It looks like a big club, a so-called top-four club is going to have to miss out this year, there’s certainly big pressure in Manchester United and Arsenal at the moment, but that is what England is like. You have to earn your right to be in the elite. Foreign players at this club keep telling me how strange they find it that a club near the bottom of the table like Leicester can play so well and fight so hard. Any team in this league can hurt you, and you don’t always get that abroad.”
It was Chelsea that ended up hurting Liverpool most last season, not City, but Rodgers and his players are over it now. “We were close, but in the end you have to give City credit,” he said. “We didn’t get the result we wanted against Chelsea, they won five games on the spin when they knew they had to. They had the experience, they were efficient, they got the job done, but going through all that has definitely made us stronger.”
