Jordan Henderson: We Need to Carry on Improving

An honest assessment from the captain on building on last year’s Champions League final defeat.

It’s been a journey in the year since Liverpool’s Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid in Kyiv.

Since then we’ve reached 97 points in the Premier League, but without winning the title. And now there’s merely the minor matter of another Champions League final to contend with. Jordan Henderson knows how much the players have been able to learn over this journey.

“It hurts what happened but if you use it the right way it can help and after the final last year,” Henderson told the Liverpool Echo. “I feel that we have managed to do that, though it is not easy.

“But this final isn’t all or nothing as far as the team’s progress is concerned. This team isn’t finished if we don’t win the Champions League.

“We need to carry on improving because we are a young enough team to stay together for quite a while. There will be ins and outs but, hopefully, the team will stay together and keep improving and keep challenging for trophies.

“We can take a lot from what has happened to this club before. It gives you motivation to be able to be part of that history.

“We want to go down in history for what we’ve done as a team. But as I keep saying, we want to have more opportunities. [Manchester] City have won three trophies this year, and that’s where we want to be.

“We have made great steps over the past few years, but it’s important that we keep doing it.

“It was an amazing night [in the win against Barcelona], amazing how the game plan worked, and that intensity needs to be all the time especially in a final against Spurs, who have that similar type of intensity.

“That’s how we like to play and we have to make sure we perform like we did not just in the semi-final against Barcelona but how we have done for large parts of the season.

“I wasn’t surprised Tottenham beat Man City in the quarters. But if we perform at our best, we know we’ve got a good chance of winning the Champions League.”

Henderson knows what it takes. Whether we will have enough will be found out very soon.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com