Andy Robertson is aware that Liverpool’s top four fate is no longer in their hands but insists he and his teammates have given themselves a chance of sneaking into the top four.
Having won seven straight games the Reds currently find themselves a point behind fourth placed Manchester United who have a game in hand and four points behind Newcastle in third.
Although the Scotland captain has admitted it would be ‘disappointing’ to miss out on the Champions League he believes that performances in recent weeks means there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic ahead of next season.
“It’s in their hands and for them it’s in their hands and if they win their games then we can’t do anything about it,” Robertson told Liverpoolfc.com. “I’d much rather be in that position. We’ve spoke about it in seasons gone by in terms of when we were chasing Man City for titles, I think always when you’re the team with more points and things like that, it’s always a better position to be in. I don’t think anyone saw six weeks ago that we would even be in with a chance of Champions League football, people were talking that we might not even make Europe. So the fact that we’ve secured European football was the first task we wanted to do because it meant we’d won more games than not in that small period.
“But we’ve given ourselves a chance and all we can do is keep winning our games. And at the end of the day that might not be enough, which will be disappointing – disappointing as a squad, disappointing as a club and we know the fans will be disappointed. Unfortunately it’s out of our hands; we’ve got two games left and the other teams have got three. It’s out of our hands and we can’t do much about it, we have to win our two games and hope that that’s enough. And if it’s not we have to deal with the consequences. But, like I said, I think the last six to eight weeks have given us a building block to move on from next season, to have different formations, to have different ways of playing and being able to put a good run together like that can stand us in good stead for next season to achieve what we want to achieve.”
At the start of the campaign we had hopes of once again competing on all four fronts and picking up more silverware.
It’s clear that the season hasn’t gone to plan and our struggle for consistency for the majority of the campaign has cost us dearly.
And although our recent upturn in form may still see us fall just short of securing a Champions League spot Robertson is right in saying the performances appear to be setting us in good stead ahead of next season.
Our No. 26 has admitted that he’s had to make ‘sacrifices’ to his game recently as a result of Trent Alexander-Arnold undertaking a new inverted role in the side but as long as his side are picking up three points he’s happy to do a job for the team.
If we can complete some decent business in the transfer market this season there’s no reason why we can’t have a brilliant campaign next time around.