Liverpool Regret costly slip: Gerrard’s blunder allowed Man City to succeed United

LONDON

(AFP) Manchester United’s dramatic disintegration during the 2013-14 Premier League season created a power vacuum producing one of the most fascinating English title races in recent memory.

While United toiled under Alex Ferguson’s ill-fated successor David Moyes, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool took it in turns to lead the table, before Manchester City galloped up on the rails to outflank them all.

Man City also won the League Cup and manager Manuel Pellegrini said: “The players believed what I told them, how I wanted to play and how football should be.” The title was just reward for a team whose cavalier attack plundered 102 goals and dealt crushing defeats to United, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur — among others — but it took Liverpool to collapse for City to triumph.

With three games remaining, Liverpool led the table and had a first title since 1990 in their sights, after a scintillating run of 11 straight wins that captured the imagination of the football fans.

Liverpool’s spring surge coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough stadium disaster, in which 96 of the club’s

upporters died, but the tide of emotion could only carry them so far.

Instead, an untimely slip by captain Steven Gerrard enabled Demba Ba to score summed their misfortunes. When Liverpool then blew a 3-0 lead in a 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace, the game was up.

It was a bitter blow for 33-year-old Gerrard, who, with cruel irony, had been caught on camera rallying his team-mates after their 3-2 win over City in April by crying: “This does not slip now!”

For all manager Brendan Rodgers’s protestations that it was “a mistake that can happen to anyone”, the sight of Gerrard vainly scrambling to his feet as Ba raced away from him will be the image that defines the season.

Chelsea’s victory at Anfield confirmed that manager Jose Mourinho remains the game’s arch tactical counter-puncher, but he had to settle for a third-place finish in his first season back at Stamford Bridge.

Arsenal, meanwhile, qualified for the Champions League for the 17th season running and can end a nine-year trophy drought by beating Hull City in Saturday’s FA Cup final.

endurance test

The first half of the season had promised even more, however, as a side stimulated by the club-record acquisition of Mesut Ozil and inspired by the sensational form of Aaron Ramsey surged to the top of the table, only to fall away.

Only three points separated fifth-place Everton and sixth-place Tottenham at the season’s end, but their supporters’ emotions were worlds apart.

But nowhere was there more turmoil than at Old Trafford, where the post-Ferguson era proved to be one of acute trauma. Beaten 12 times in the league — seven times at home — defending champions United finished the season in seventh place, which was their lowest placing since 1990 and means that they will not play in Europe next term.

Down the table, Cardiff City, Fulham and Norwich City all succumbed to relegation after firing their managers, with Fulham going through no fewer than three head coaches in Martin Jol, Rene Meulensteen and Felix Magath.

While 31-goal Liverpool striker Luis Suarez put a troubled previous campaign behind him to become the season’s outstanding player, Nicolas Anelka and Alan Pardew emerged as the villains of 2013-14.