/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69256134/1316257328.0.jpg)
For a brief moment, it looked like Liverpool just might make a late charge for the last, coveted “Top 4” spot, thereby earning Champions League qualification. Then a couple of disappointing draws left the Merseyside club once again back in the pack, with their own fate out of their hands.
Realistically, Liverpool will have to win out in order to have a chance of finishing in the Top 4, and even then, other teams will have to slip up. It’s a challenge made all the more difficult because of the condensed schedule—thanks in part to the postponed Manchester United match—and the fact that the Reds have not won more than three matches on the trot all season.
Trent Alexander-Arnold, for one, thinks that this has to be the objective.
“Things have to go our way and it’s not really in our hands, but we need to put ourselves in a position where if other teams slip up then we’re ready to pounce,” Alexander-Arnold told the club’s official website.
“Looking at certain teams’ fixtures, you’d like to hope they’ll drop points around us and we’ll be ready to slip in there. But we can’t really rest on that, you’ve just got to go for it and hope that it works out.
“All we can do is try to get 15 points out of the five games, that’s what our objective is and that’s what we’ll be looking to do.”
Winning all the remaining matches would give Liverpool 69 points, which aside from being “nice,” would give the Reds an outside chance of catching Chelsea or Leicester City.
It would also all but ensure that Liverpool would still end up in the Europa League, and not the Europa Conference League. And sorry, after this year I just can’t with this new ECL shite. This is not the fight we wanted to have to end the season, but it’s where we’ve ended up.
“Even though we probably haven’t come out of it the way we wanted to and we haven’t reached the objectives we wanted to,” Trent continued, “We’ve been able to realize we can get through to the other side if we work together, if we battle through it together as a team, as a unit. And we’ll become better.
“They’re the lessons we’ll learn for next year, that we can do anything together and as a team we’re a really good team.”
Liverpool still have the foundations for a world-class team, capable of competing for any and all silverware in a normal season. This season was not normal, to say the least. Hopefully the Reds can return to some form of normality next year, and get back to their winning ways.
And hopefully those winning ways start tonight against Southampton.