Rodgers: We have even greater belief now

Brendan Rodgers is convinced Liverpool can go one better next season and win the Premier League.

And the manager – who believes his team “recovered the soul of the club” this season — has no fears that the players will suffer from the agony of coming so close only to lose out to Manchester City in the title race.

“I think the psychological impact is only a positive one,” he said after watching a largely developmental Liverpool side beat Shamrock Rovers 4-0 in a friendly at the Aviva Stadium yesterday.

“We will enter into next season with a belief that we can win the title. And what has given me greater belief is that, while people talk about the pressure of the run-in, out of 14 games we won 12. We claimed 37 points out of 42 – a remarkable statistic for a very young team.

“The Chelsea game was a disappointment. People will focus on those games but I look more to the games that we won that actually cost us in the end. The games where we won 5-3. You can’t score five goals and concede three. Where we won 6-3 away. Those goals we conceded added up.

“I think we’ve gone remarkably close this year but we expect next year — and we’ll have the belief — to go one better.”

Enlarging on the subject of strengthening at Anfield, Rodgers said he will look at all areas of the pitch and not just that leaky defence. And while reiterating his admiration for Southampton’s Adam Lallana he declined to confirm that Liverpool are in active pursuit of the England player.

The Liverpool manager also said he will exert no pressure on Steven Gerrard to put club before country but added he does expect his captain will assess his international future after the World Cup in Brazil.

“He’ll arrive in the World Cup at 34,” he said. “He’s been a brilliant captain for me, great leader, brilliant man. Many thought maybe he was on the way down but he’ll arrive into the Champions League next season as one of the playmakers of the tournament. His condition is terrific. I think it (his international future) is a decision he has to make. He’ll go and concentrate on England now and we’ll see what happens after that.”

On the subject of the paucity of young Irish talent breaking through to the English top-flight, the Antrim man said: “It’s obviously a lot more difficult. I think back then [when there were more,] the game was a lot more British-based but now the Premier League is the most competitive league in the world and over 63% are foreign players.

“I think what you get with a lot of Irish boys is they come over, they struggle, they miss home and then they come back early. A lot of them start their apprenticeship at 16 but even then it’s too late. A lot of the boys across the water are beginning at the age of 8 and by the time they get to 16 they’ve been trained technically, tactically, physically and mentally, and then they’re ready to step into full-time football.”

Earlier, despite the vocal efforts of the minority Shamrock Rovers support at the Lansdowne Road end, the Aviva Stadium had largely been a Steven Gerrard/Demba Ba-free zone as Liverpool ‘B’, eye-catching in their new all-yellow away strip, lapped up the acclaim and consolation of Irish Reds at the end of a bittersweet season at Anfield.

Lucas Leiva, Joe Allen, Fabio Borini and Martin Kelly were the closest things to household names in the visitors’ squad but that didn’t stop the vast majority of the 42,517 attendance giving the pre-match ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ the full Kop treatment, drowning out the boos of the nominal home support.

Revolution was in the air, however, as in the skies above Dublin 4, a small plane suddenly materialised trailing a self-explanatory banner reading, ‘Giggs 13 Gerrard 0 MUFC 20 times’. Those other Reds haven’t gone away, you know. Down on the pitch, Iago Aspas gave the visitors the lead in the seventh minute but Rovers almost equalised just before the break, asuperb Ryan Brennan header striking the inside of the post but somehow failing to cross the line.

A minute after the restart, Liverpool doubled their lead through Borini — back after loan at Sunderland and tipped by his manager to have a role to play at Anfield next season — before the otherwise impressive Jordon Ibe offered a late contender for miss of the season when, having rounded Rovers’ keeper Barry Murphy, he then managed to lift what should have been a routine finish over the empty goal.

Martin Kelly did make it three for Liverpool in the 74th minute, and Jack Dunn added a fourth with eight minutes left but, by then, the crowd were looking well beyond this stroll in the park, rising to their feet to celebrate in song their club’s return to the Champions League at the end of a season which had, until very recently, promised an even greater reward.