Liverpool midfielder James Milner has revealed what he saw on the final day of last season that was the worst thing about the Reds failing to win the Premier League title.
Jurgen Klopp’s side were agonisingly pipped to the post by Manchester City on the last day of the campaign, and Milner has shed more light on the team’s failure.
“Playing in a Champions League final is always special,” he told BT Sport’s What I Wore. “Made more special, I think, by the year before, obviously losing [and] getting 97 points in the Premier League and not getting over the line.
“The hardest bit of that was driving out the ground, and under the ground they had the podium where, if we’d won the league, we would have been stood on. And they were moving that away, and you were driving past that.”
OPINION
You can see why Milner found this particular moment so difficult. Obviously when two teams are in with a chance of winning the league on the final day they have to set up the celebrations at both grounds. Therefore they’d obviously ensured that they had a title-winning podium ready at Anfield for if City slipped up and Liverpool managed to do the unthinkable. Unfortunately for everyone of a red persuasion, though, that didn’t happen. And so Milner and the rest of the Liverpool players had to make their way out of the ground while the podium was still being moved away and dissembled – a harsh reminder of what the team missed out on. As Milner says, though, the Reds’ failure in the Premier League only spurred them on in the Champions League final and made the moment they won that competition even more special. Hopefully, though, he won’t have to do that same depressing drive this time round.
