Liverpool winning the title has put to rest a few demons for me, admits Steven Gerrard
Steven Gerrard won eleven honors with Liverpool before leaving in 2015
|Getty
Steven Gerrard has confessed that Liverpool breaking their 30-year top flight title drought has buried a few demons for him, namely the 2013/14 season. The Jurgen Klopp led side stormed to the Premier League title as they became the fastest team in English top flight history to lift the title.
While Liverpool may have lifted the 2019/20 Premier League title, the closest they came before that happened to the 2013/14 season which many claimed was the Reds’ best chance of ending their first-tier league title drought. Before that, it was their two second-place finishes in 2002 and 2009 which meant that at the end of his Liverpool career, club legend Steven Gerrard had failed to lift only the Premier League title, having won the Champions League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup, Europa League (UEFA CUP) and UEFA Supercup.
The Englishman did play a key role in that 2013/14 season under Brendan Rodgers with the now infamous slip against Chelsea the only memory that many have from that season. And Gerrard revealed, in an interview recently, that while Liverpool winning the title has filled him with joy, it has also helped “bury a few demons”. The Rangers manager also added that for him personally, it’s a mixed feeling watching this Reds side lift the title because of his own experiences.
“First and foremost, for me it was fantastic to bury a few demons; not all the demons but obviously from it was certainly a big relief. Being a Liverpool fan and ex-player I’ve known the big, long wait and I’m still in touch with a lot of the players that are in that dressing room so a lot of them shared that pain with me,” Gerrard told Match of the Day: Top 10 podcast.
"It was fantastic for everyone connected to the club but it was mixed emotions in many ways because of my own experiences, being a fan and ex-player and a lot of my family are Liverpool fans as well. To be honest with you, I’m still on a really big high watching all of the TV coverage and seeing all of the emotions flying about."
The Liverpool legend was also a part of England’s golden generation with the likes of David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney, and countless others all playing for the Three Lions. Yet despite that, they failed to win any major honor and even failed to qualify for the Euro 2008, only the second time that had happened to England in over 20 years. However, Gerard admitted that the team needed a stronger manager to lead them and someone who could have kept the players under control.
“Looking back, we needed a manager who was bigger than all of those individual players. There was managers available at the time, for example Rafa BenĂtez, but he might not wanted to have been an international manager at that time. I look at managers now that are bigger than the team: Klopp, Mourinho and Guardiola. I think someone like that who was above the golden generation who was prepared to make the tough decisions would have got more out of that group of players,” he added.
