Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A QUAD? IT’S NOT BEYOND REACH...
LIVERPOOL have the chance today to reach the semi-finals of the FA Cup.
And if they do, with the favourable Champions League draw against Benfica, then the talk will REALLY crank up about a potential Quadruple.
I can understand why, absolutely. Their next Premier League game offers them the chance, with victory over Watford, to go top of the Premier League, and they have a pathway to both finals in the cups.
But I know from experience how difficult it will actually be. When we won the Treble of the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup with Liverpool in 2001, the fixture list became so relentless, it was almost a joke.
People often ask me about the glory of that feat, but few ask what the hardest part was. Well, the answer is the games coming virtually on top of each other. In the final month of the season, we played 12 games!
That’s a game every three days or less… incredible really, when you think about. We were fighting on four fronts because, while we could never win the league that season after a
poor November, we had to make the Champions League.
We were fifth at the end of April, but won six of the last seven to get in it.
Had we not drawn the second to last game against Chelsea, we would have been second behind Manchester United, who we did the double over.
Back then, I hated not playing, it used to send me loopy.
Yet looking back now, I can see we had to rotate to have any chance of getting through that fixture list.
These days, it is even more intense, the pace of the game is even more insane and without a huge, talented squad it would be impossible to win anything, let alone multiple trophies.
Can Liverpool win a Quadruple? On paper, absolutely. They are in the position to do it. But the reality is, they can barely afford to drop a point in the Premier League if they are to finish above Manchester City.
With 17 games to fit in between now and May, if they are to win the lot, then the pressure of that would be virtually impossible.
It won’t stop them – and me – dreaming though.