Former Liverpool goalkeeper David James believes the psychological and physical effects of last season are two key factors behind his old club’s 'strange' campaign.
Liverpool were close to claiming an unprecedented quadruple last season, but fast forward nine months, and Jurgen Klopp’s side now face a battle to finish in this season’s top four.
The Reds are already out of the title race and have been dumped from the League Cup and FA Cup. Klopp’s side face Real Madrid in the last-16 of the Champions League later this month.
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However, the form of Liverpool is chalk and cheese from what supporters witnessed last season. Questions have been raised about the Reds’ drop off this campaign, with some blaming the lack of transfer activity in the summer and most recently in January.
But James believes the psychological and physical effects of their draining 63-game campaign last time around is what is really hurting his old club this season.
“It has been a strange one. I think the injuries at the beginning of the season have once again had a massive impact,” James told the ECHO. “If you don’t start well you always leave yourself with a massive ground to make up.
“Following on from last season, I think playing a maximum amount of games, two firsts and two seconds it is like let's try and improve on that, but that is not going to happen now.”
Before he added: “When you look at last season's maximum number of games. Two first and two seconds. Half-an-hour away from possibly winning the Premier League and we all know what happened in the Champions League final.
“When you look at what stopped the quadruple, there wasn’t a lot in it. Then the tendency is that if we improve that little bit more we will theoretically win everything.
“But everyone else improves and there is a legacy as well - a psychological and physical legacy of having to play all those games last season. The fact as well that there were so many muscle injuries at the start of the season, which comprised the start.
“There are a number of different factors and I suppose the irony is that when you are just a little bit away from ultimate success, a little bit the other way and you are midtable and not in the position you want to be.
“The psychology of it is that people are expecting success when you are failing. I think from last season it was pretty much one and a half weeks when you come second in the league and get beat in the Champions League final.
“From nine months all of a sudden you have got two massive negative hits in a short period of time and that is a lot of psychological negativity to get your head around.”
Last weekend’s 3-0 capitulation against Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux was so insipid Klopp decided to give his players two days off this week. Things have been going from bad to worse since the Premier League resumed on Boxing Day.
Klopp called his side's 3-0 defeat at Brighton last month the worst loss of his managerial career. Next up for the Reds is the small matter of the Merseyside derby as Everton make the trip across Stanley Park to Anfield.
“It is funny actually because my first one, which I think was 1993, we won 2-1 and the thing that got me was when I was doing my warm-up in front of the Kop I looked around there was this big block of blue,” James recalls when asked for his derby memories.
“I was thinking this is going to kick off, but obviously it never did, but for me I couldn’t get my head around it. You have two rivals, but somehow they can mingle and what not. Following that though, relatively little success in derby matches.
“You look at a derby and think I can’t lose this one. Andrei Kanchelskis and whoever else ended up scoring goals. It wasn’t a prosperous fixture for me.
“It was really frustrating because I had loads of Evertron friends as well. All my friends were either Everton or Liverpool so you always knew someone with a vested interest in the game.”
David James was speaking to the Liverpool ECHO at the launch of the William Hill’s new shop in Liverpool Central.
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