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Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez believes the club's amazing 2005 Champions League victory in Istanbul has worked against them.
"In some ways made things more difficult because the expectations became so high," Benitez says.
"Then we won the European Super Cup and FA Cup the following season and so suddenly everyone was saying, 'OK, the next step will be the Premier League title.' But then, when you don't win it, people say, 'Oh, you can't go to that next step,' when, maybe, we were operating at the next level up, but because the other teams around us were progressing as well, it didn't seem that way.
"In some respects, we were maybe our own worst enemies, but, of course, I'd prefer to have that problem, to be talking as a Champions League winner. People are talking now about us not having won the league for 18 years, but it was 21 years since this club had last won the European Cup."
"In some ways made things more difficult because the expectations became so high," Benitez says.
"Then we won the European Super Cup and FA Cup the following season and so suddenly everyone was saying, 'OK, the next step will be the Premier League title.' But then, when you don't win it, people say, 'Oh, you can't go to that next step,' when, maybe, we were operating at the next level up, but because the other teams around us were progressing as well, it didn't seem that way.
"In some respects, we were maybe our own worst enemies, but, of course, I'd prefer to have that problem, to be talking as a Champions League winner. People are talking now about us not having won the league for 18 years, but it was 21 years since this club had last won the European Cup."
