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El Hadji Diouf Claims Liverpool 'Bottled' The Premier League Title Last Season

El Hadji Diouf Claims Liverpool 'Bottled' The Premier League Title Last Season

The former Liverpool forward doesn't really have a good history with the Anfield club and his opinion is sure to rattle some.

Ryan Sidle

Ryan Sidle

El Hadji Diouf isn't going to be winning any Liverpool fans' favourite polls and their former striker will make himself even more unpopular by claiming the Reds 'bottled' the league title race last season.

Most people believe that Liverpool were pretty unlucky not to win the league last season, in the sense they just came up against a ridiculous side who made their 97 points not enough for the title, although it would have been in every other season bar the last two.

However former Reds' striker Diouf, who isn't exactly well remembered there, thinks his former team messed up. Talking to FourFourTwo the former Senegal international said, "I don't see them doing as well as they did last season. They had the chance to win the league title; they had it in their hands and then let it slip.

£They were seven points ahead around Christmas - how Manchester City got it in the end beats my mind. As they say in England, I think they bottled it.

"If you have only one defeat in a whole season, surely you can't say that you didn't win the league - so it's hard for me to imagine them having such a similar season and coming out as champions.

"Manchester City will be the team to beat once again."

Fair to say Diouf and Gerrard aren't on each other's Christmas card lists. Image: PA Images
Fair to say Diouf and Gerrard aren't on each other's Christmas card lists. Image: PA Images

You'd struggle to convince someone that the use of 'slip' isn't very much done on purpose considering his past with fellow former players at the club like Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher.

Speaking earlier this year the 38-year-old claimed Carragher wouldn't have played for the club if he wasn't from Merseyside, saying, "He was a right-footed player with two left feet,"

"If he wasn't a Scouser, a son of Liverpool, he would never have had the career he did.

"I can say today that the shirt that I regret wearing the most was Liverpool's.

"Because if I were to do that part of my career again, I would have gone to FC Barcelona or Manchester United."

In an interview last year the former Auxerre player claimed that during his spell in France he was offered a move to Real Madrid, by then player Zinedine Zidane, saying, "In my final year at Auxerre, I had already signed a pre-contract with Liverpool. And in 2002, during the Japan & South Korea World Cup, I get settled in my room with Sylvain (Wiltord). I am in my room all alone at this point, and I hear a knock on the door. It is Zizou (Zidane) and I am like "oh no, what have I done, I am 20, I have only just arrived, why me."

"He says 'sit down I need to speak with you.' Zizou says that at Real Madrid we are interested in you, that we want you to come and play for us. I look at him, I say honestly, 'I don't know how to say no to you, but I have already signed a pre-contract... and even in training (at Real Madrid) I wouldn't be good enough to be in the squad, look who was playing then.'"

Call me mad, but I'm not 100% convinced...

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Topics: Manchester City, Liverpool, Football News, Pep Guardiola, Premier League, Jurgen Klopp