Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers said his side had stalled this season in the absence of last season’s Premier League player of the year Luis Suarez.
The Uruguayan scored 31 goals as Liverpool came within three points of winning their first league title in 14 years before joining Barcelona in July for a reported £75 million (Dh444.6m).
“I signed a three-year contract with the objective of fighting for the league and we almost won it in our second year,” Rodgers told Madrid sports daily AS on Monday ahead of his side’s Uefa Champions League meeting with Real Madrid on Wednesday.
“But the team’s natural progression has stalled this summer with the departure of Luis Suarez and the arrival of new players.”
Liverpool have only won four of their opening eight Premier League games and were lucky to emerge victorious on Sunday against bottom club Queens Park Rangers, who scored two own goals in a 3-2 defeat.
Rodgers remains bullish that he can restore the club to its former glories but also hinted he, too, could be lured to Spain.
“Hopefully I can work one day in Spain. I speak and I have studied Spanish, but I need to improve. I speak it with my Spanish players,” he said.
“I am just 41 and there are many things I want to achieve at Liverpool, where I want to be for another 20 years or more. But one day I would like to experience Spain, it’s a marvellous culture and magnificent clubs.”
Meanwhile, Suarez said he feared he had destroyed his career and that Barcelona would not want to sign him following his four-month ban for biting at the World Cup.
He signed for Barca from Liverpool despite the ban for biting Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini when playing in Brazil. He will be available to make his much-awaited debut on Saturday in the clasico against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu.
“I thought that I had ruined my career. At the start I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I hid away behind my family, although later I thought about it, I said sorry and I felt relief as a result,” Suarez said on Spanish television.
“When the talks began with Barcelona and when [his agent] Pere Guardiola phoned me to say that it was all done, I started to cry due to the situation that I was in and for the support that Barcelona were offering me.
“I had been worried that Barca would decide against it due to all the repercussions from the situation.”
Suarez said he is keeping his fingers crossed that Barca coach Luis Enrique will play him against Real
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