Former Liverpool and Wales forward Craig Bellamy believes Liverpool will miss out on a top-four finish again this season and, therefore, won’t secure Champions League qualification.
Brendan Rodgers has strengthened his squad this summer, bringing in players such as two-time Premier League winner James Milner, £32.5m man Christain Benteke and Brazilian Roberto Firmino.
Furthermore, the club have shipped out Fabio Borini, Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert, and there was also the sale of Raheem Sterling.
But Bellamy still doesn’t believe the Reds have done enough to break into the top four.
He told the Daily Mail:
I’d love to say they can qualify for the Champions League but I feel they will fall a little bit short of that again this year.
Bellamy, who scored 18 goals in 79 appearances for Liverpool across two spells at the club, is a fan of Liverpool’s newest striker Benteke, and thinks that he, Philippe Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge are the key men for the Reds this season:
“I think Benteke is a brilliant signing – he’s definitely a player who is going to do well. They’re desperate for Sturridge to have an injury-free season as he holds a lot of the keys as to how Liverpool will do.
For me though, the star man at the moment is Philippe Coutinho – everything goes through him at the moment. For Benteke and Sturridge to have good seasons, a lot is going to have come from Coutinho. There will be a lot on him but he is one of the stars of the Premier League.
“I don’t see it being a season like it was two years ago and I don’t think they will be too far away from the Champions League either but I think unfortunately they will just miss out on this season.”
The ex-Liverpool, Manchester City and Cardiff City man also believes that a route to Europe’s elite competition through the Europa League is unachievable for the Merseyside club.
“The Europa League is difficult, it really is to try and compete in that and then play Premier League football on a Sunday,” he added.
‘You try and get to the quarter-finals as well as you can with your league form intact, while changing as much as possible, but it gets serious around about the knockout stage.
Time will tell if Liverpool can make a serious challenge to secure Champions League football next season.
Results had been positive for Brendan Rodgers’ men at the beginning of the season, but a humiliating 3-0 home defeat by West Ham certainly put a dampener on fan expectations.
