Liverpool 'bottled' the Premier League title race in 2013-14

Any conversation surrounding the 2013-14 Premier League title race revives the notion that Liverpool bottled that campaign’s race, with Manchester City reigning supreme under Manuel Pellegrini.

Brendan Rodgers’ team were chasing the Reds’ first topflight title in 24 years but fell short at the death.

Liverpool ended the year on 84 points, two adrift of the Cityzens, whose superior goal difference meant the Reds pushed the panic button in the run-in.

Two games stand out for Liverpool in their late-season dip: a 2-0 Anfield defeat by Chelsea and a 3-3 tie against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

The Reds were favoured for the win against Jose Mourinho’s side, but the Portuguese threw a spanner in the works to the Merseyside club’s title challenge when a draw would have sufficed for Liverpool.

With Manchester City having played a game fewer than the Reds, a draw would have kept Pellegrini’s troops a point adrift of Rodgers’ mean if they defeated Aston Villa.

Their penultimate game came at Selhurst Park, where the Reds blew a three-goal lead to draw 3-3.

At 3-0 up, Liverpool were six goals shy of the Manchester outfit, and they naively sought more to move closer to the Cityzens. 

It ultimately blew up in their faces, with Luis Suarez inconsolable at the final whistle.

Admittedly, it was an opportunity lost to win that year’s league title, but Liverpool cannot be tagged “bottle jobs” for not claiming their first Premier League crown.

To ‘bottle’ a match or tournament could be used in several contexts, but the universally recognised one is throwing away a game or tournament from a seemingly unassailable position.

Several precedents were highlighted in a previous edition of ‘Mythbuster’ a few months back when analysing Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur spell.

The conclusion was that his Spurs team had not bottled the Premier League titles in 2015-16 or the following season, and that same notion rings true for Liverpool’s 2013-14 iteration.

Neither did Liverpool, despite the perception that they did. Rodgers took charge of a Reds team that ended the 2011-12 season in eighth place with 52 points, finishing 17 adrift of fourth-placed Tottenham.

The following campaign brought about a minimal improvement, with the Reds 11 points back of Arsenal in fourth, ending one place higher in seventh.

There was little talk about title contention for Rodgers’ men before the commencement of the 13-14 season, and they never held a seemingly unassailable advantage over Pellegrini’s City.

However, it was a year that felt like an opportunity lost, with Liverpool carried away with the emotion of a first title in over two decades. They failed at game management not once but twice, resulting in the title loss at the season’s denouement.

Mourinho claimed his Chelsea side were “little horses” in that year’s league tussle - but the Reds were not given a prayer before the season began, with Champions League qualification the Merseyside club’s ambition.

They found themselves in unfamiliar territory challenging eventual winners City and the West London club. Rodgers’ troops were fourth for most gameweeks in the second half of the season than they were first, further disproving it was their Premier League title to lose in 2014.

Hardly was it a bottle job. It is a perception that followed the former Liverpool boss, who divided opinion until his subsequent success with Celtic and Leicester City in 2021, even if the club’s inability to seal Champions League qualification in consecutive campaigns was disappointing.

For a side that punched above their weight in that 2013-14 campaign, it is a shame Liverpool's season may be remembered differently.