I don't think this season every got going did it LFC legend. Where we ever seriously in for 4th spot. I think Arsenal killed it off but truth was it was over way before that.
Arsenal was the last straw, not the beginning of the end. We didn't suddenly start performing poorly at the turn of the year - we've been dropping points all season in games we deserved to win comfortably. There are a lot of excuses, many valid, most interestingly the "Liverpool is a statistical outlier" point (which essentially means that whatever stats one chooses to view for the club will show us to be the exception rather than the rule), but the bottom line is that our results never matched our endeavour. The Spurs draw for me was the sign we wouldn't make it, that we simply had no way of of breaking the vicious cycle of poor performance leading to increased pressure leading to poor performance.... It was only then that I started to question Dalglish, even though his tactics already had me scratching my brow for months, because this was the test of his man management - a test that, bluntly put, he failed.
Were we ever in the hunt for 4th? Absolutely. But mainly because our rivals were just as bad as we. The difference is that they largely overcame their problems by either finding solutions within their squads (Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs) or hit the jackpot with clutch bets in January (Newcastle, Everton). We simply continued to muddle along, apparently no wiser for the games played.
There is something fundamentally wrong with this squad and this management. Whether that is the result of 20 years of mismanagement is debatable given that Rafa had largely righted the sinking ship before the owners' greed got the better of him. This season's disappointing results can honestly only be put at the feet of the people who achieved them - the players and the staff. Who is ultimately responsible is unknown, but the sacking of Commolli, Brukner, the GK coach, and the likely "retirement" of Dalglish is simply heavy-handed surgery, and there is no certainty that the knife has been set aside yet. The players need to look at themselves too - they're the ones missing from inside the 6 yard box every week, or falling over at minimal contact instead of playing on. This season our every mistake has caused critical harm, both on and off the field, and the long knives of the media have been keenest of all when slandering Liverpool - but one can't expect that to continue once everyone takes a step back from the coalface in the summer, and this season fades into memory.
