Steven Gerrard sets target of winning Premier League next season

Feb 28 2008 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

STEVEN GERRARD admits the time has come to stop talking and for Liverpool to begin realising their Premier League potential.

And the Liverpool captain concedes that winning the European Cup again will not atone for another season of underachievement in the top-flight.

Despite starting the season harbouring hopes of a genuine title challenge after splashing out close to £50million in the summer, Rafael Benitez’s side find themselves 17 points behind leaders Arsenal with 12 games still to play.

Instead of fighting for a 19th league crown, Liverpool are currently in fifth place and facing a scrap with Everton, Aston Villa and Manchester City for the final Champions League berth.

The closest Gerrard has come to lifting the championship at Anfield was in 2001-02 when Liverpool finished in second, seven points adrift of winners Arsenal.

And as another title campaign has long since floundered, a straight-talking Gerrard said: “I’m getting tired of saying the same thing over and over again. We can’t keep talking about next season all the time.

“There are only so many times you can say it and believe it. Sooner or later we have to make one season the season we make it happen and do the talking on the pitch.

“We need to make people believe it. I’m 27 now, I don’t want to be talking about ‘next season’ for Liverpool when I’m 32.

“We’ve got the stadium, the fans, the manager and the players to compete for the Premier League. But we have no chance of doing that if we

are always well out of it by the first week in January.

“And at the moment we have our work cut out fighting it out with Villa, Everton and Manchester City for fourth.”

The only silverware Liverpool can win this season is the Champions League, with Benitez’s side holding a 2-0 lead after the first leg of their first knockout round clash with Inter Milan last week.

“You don’t get any prizes in football for finishing in second place, never mind fourth,” added Gerrard. “In the position we find ourselves now, fourth is the least that is acceptable. But we have bigger ambitions than that.

“The only way we can fulfil those ambitions is in the Champions League. And I am not going to pretend that even winning that trophy – and we are a long way away from it at the moment – will make up for the disappointment of the league campaign.

“I’m pretty gutted every time I look at the table and see the gap between us and Arsenal at the top, and even the gap between us and second and third.

“We believed we had the players to challenge for the title, and we wanted that one more than any other trophy available to us. I still believe we have the squad to be a hell of a lot more competitive than we are right now.”

FOR the full Steven Gerrard interview, see this week’s Official LFC Magazine.