Jamie Carragher: I'd have loved to have won the title at Liverpool but there was always someone better than us

Posted Sunday, September 16, 2012 by Dailymail

Jamie Carragher: I'd have loved to have won the title at Liverpool but there was always someone better than us
Part of the furniture: Carragher joined Liverpool's youth team in 1990

‘No I’m not,’ he responds immediately. ‘Because this could be my last season and we’re not going to win the league this year. I couldn’t see it happening next year either. That’s not being defeatist — I don’t want that to be the headline! But realistically our target is the top four.’

He will, of course, always have Istanbul, the never-to-be-forgotten night in 2005 when he and Steven Gerrard led the team to Champions League glory. And there are FA Cup, Carling Cup, UEFA Cup, UEFA Super Cup winners’ medals and 38 England caps as well. But it is 22 years and counting since Liverpool’s last league title, which has been the obsession of the club throughout Carragher’s career. So does he approach retirement with regrets?

‘Yes and no,’ he says. ‘I’d love to have won the league for Liverpool as it’s been so long. But were we ever really good enough? We never threw it away. There was always someone better than us.

‘These players who say, “Oh, I’ve won the league three times.” They’ve been at Chelsea or United but they’re not a regular. They play all over the place, they come in, they go out. I could do that. I could do that for Chelsea or United, not a problem.

‘But I’ve been one of the main players for Liverpool, winning the European Cup, winning the Cup treble. OK, I’m probably jealous of Giggs and Scholes and their titles and European Cups. But I played for my team my whole life and I’ve been one of the main players in what we’ve done. I could have won the league going somewhere else and just playing 25 games. I’m good enough to have won the league. I’m not trying to sound big-headed but more often than not we’ve had one of the best defensive records each season.’

Carragher went closest to the title in the 2008-09 season, when Liverpool chased United all the way and were just four points behind United with a better goal difference at the end of the campaign. Three years and three managers later, the gap between the clubs looks more like a chasm. Liverpool’s second place has given way to finishes of seventh, sixth and eighth.

Given the dysfunctional nature of the club under the previous ownership of Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett, it seems extraordinary that they ever got as close to the title as runners-up, although Carragher partially disagrees.

‘We had a good team then,’ he says. ‘When they (Hicks and Gillett) were there, we bought some good players. Torres came in, we got Mascherano and Skrtel in there. Obviously towards the end the owners wanted to go. The supporters were against them and rightly so, because no one at Liverpool likes to be kidded along. When you see what they said about the stadium and putting the debt on the club, that was the worst thing for me.’

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