“The dream is over. The romance is dead. The glory will have to wait.  Liverpool’s season is not mathematically at an end, of course, but the nature of their spectacular collapse will have drained the impetus from their title challenge with as much speed as it has animated Manchester City, once thought adrift from the summit of the Premier League table.  Given the 25 years of heartache linked to the Hillsborough disaster, the souring of a dream which captured considerable public sympathy is especially hard to take. There is been more than a hint of misty-eyed destiny in the accomplished way that Steven Gerrard has carried his teammates to the pinnacle but, in purely sporting terms, their fall is not completely surprising. If Liverpool’s intense, fast-paced attacking style provided us all with some kind of illicit high in recent months, then their disregard for the game’s core principles surely represents the wicked comedown.” backpagefootball