Premier League iconic moments: Steven Gerrard slip costs Liverpool the title On This Day April 27 2014

“It felt different that year. There was a belief and the way the fans were acting and stuff that it was our year.”

Even Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard, as he told Gary Neville in a TV interview, thought that the time had come, that the 24 years of Anfield hurt were about to be swept away by Brendan Rodgers’ exuberant side.

A slip can happen to anyone, at any time, but this was an extraordinary way for the football gods to emphatically exclaim that Gerrard was never going to be a Premier League champion.

For Gerrard’s slip to happen, at this time, in this game, in this stadium, even at the Kop end, and even more annoyingly for it to happen against this opponent, was almost too much to bare.

A 2-0 defeat to Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea sent the Portuguese in full-on smug celebratory mode – pounding his Chelsea-emblazoned chest down the Anfield touchline. What a way for a thrilling title charge to end.

The Reds had swept to the Premier League summit with a pulsating, emotionally draining 3-2 win over title rivals Man City at Anfield just a fortnight earlier.

A game awash with emotion came in the week of the 25th anniversary of Hillsborough and overcome with it all, Gerrard’s emotionally charged on-field huddle with his team-mates produced his now infamous “don’t let this slip now” team talk. Thousands of memes of the incident would follow.

They almost let it slip in the next game against Norwich, when another 3-2 highlighted how Rodgers’ side had been flying by the seat of their pants during their 16-game unbeaten run.

11 straight wins down the stretch is hugely impressive, not to mention the 39 goals in those games, powered by Sturridge and Suarez, but the loss against Chelsea proved pivotal.

Going into the game the Reds needed 10 points from four remaining games to clinch a first league title since 1990 – a point would’ve done against Mourinho’s stubborn Blues – sent out to frustrate and annoy as much as to win, perhaps even more so.

The following 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace is largely irrelevant, Man City were near enough home and dry by then thanks to their lofty goal difference.

Liverpool’s, and Rodgers’, inexperience shone through there when 3-0 up as they kept chasing goal after goal to at least give City something to think about.

But it’s the “the slip” that this failed title bid will be remembered for, the slip that fuelled a thousand more memes, GIFs, chants – there was even a horse named after it!

A title race is a nine-month, 38-game slog filled with twists and turns, seemingly meaningless goals, decisions, strokes of fortune all add up to produce the final result.

Most of those are forgotten for 2013/14 though after the cruellest of all slips became the campaign’s defining moment.

Perhaps the moment is best summed up by the man himself - explaining to Neville, of all people, the magnitude of what happened to him - Liverpool's captain and leader for so long.

“I think it was very cruel," added Gerrard. "I still struggle to get my head around that one.

“Certainly me I was very anxious about it, I wasn’t sleeping right, probably watching a little more than I should have been and I just got a feeling off Mourinho that he was going to do something wildly different - and I don’t think we prepared for that. Because of the form we were in, it was almost like ‘bring anyone on’.

“That affected me right through the summer. Still to this day, it has an effect now. It still dwindles. It makes me more hungry and driven from a manager point of view, for sure. But away from the manager side of it, I still have moments to this day. I think I’ll have them for the rest of my life.”

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