"Fourth place is the priority, it always is at this club. For financial reasons and because all the top players want to play in the Champions League."
If those words had been said by Spurs skipper Robbie Keane, Aston Villa counterpart Stiliyan Petrov, even Manchester City captain Kolo Toure, they would have been more than acceptable.
After all, if anybody breaks through the glass ceiling this season to smash up the cosy cartel at the top of the game, it will be an achievement, irrespective of the money they have spent on doing so.
But none of that trio were speaking.
They were the closing lines of Steven Gerrard's interview after Liverpool's miserable Champions League campaign ended, almost inevitably, with the concession of a last minute goal and defeat by a distinctly average Fiorentina.
And they were words that, whether by accident or design, summed up the parlous state of a club that began the campaign targeting their first title for 20 years and are now merely playing for respectability.
That there is no crowd more patient than Anfield was brought home once again last night.
The response to Alberto Gilardino's winner was not boos and jeers - they left that to the Chelsea supporters who lost it at their own players after they had drawn at home to APOEL, ending a run of 12 successive Stamford Bridge wins - but a chorus of "You'll never walk alone".
That is loyalty, with a capital L, the mark of a club that, even in difficult times, can count on the utter commitment and backing of its fans.
And yet, for all the fixed gaze that Rafa Benitez did not lift publicly from the instant he took his seat in the dug-out before kick-off to the end of his post-match interviews, it is hard to say the club deserves it now.
This season, by the standards Liverpool seek to set, has been little short of dreadful.
The full playing record is: P23 W10 D4 L9. If calculated in Premier League terms, 34 points out of 69, mid-table mediocrity.
But if you take the aggregate parts, it looks even worse.
In the Champions league, two wins against the weakest team in Europe, and one point out of 12 from the games with Lyons (not the force they were and currently fourth in France, behind those European giants Montpellier and Valenciennes) and Fiorentina (fifth in Serie A but only one point further clear of the relegation zone than they are adrift of the leaders).
And at home, 24 points out of 45 and actually closer to Wolves, in 18th, than they are to Carlo Ancelotti's table-toppers.
As Gerrard added about the European flop: "It's not good enough from our point of view."
For those Liverpool fans trudging back through the puddles that adorned the Kemlyn Road and the streets around Stanley Park, that was an understatement.
It was not supposed to be like this, not after coming so close last term that, when Yossi Benayoun popped up on the last gasps of injury time at Craven Cottage, many thought that it was their destiny to finally win the crown.
Fast forward eight months from that early April evening, and a cloud of gloom is hanging over the red half of Merseyside.
Should Arsene Wenger's rested Arsenal - you don't seriously expect to see Tom Cruise, Kyle Bartley or Fran Merida again outside an FA Cup fourth round trip to Accrington or Gillingham, do you? - plunder all three points on Sunday, even Gerrard's re-calculated ambition may start to look unlikely, with all the financial repercussions that would bring.
Admittedly, even if Liverpool were still six points behind Spurs at Christmas, you'd back them to overhaul Harry Redknapp's side over the following 20 games.
But Villa and City are also very much in the mix, looking to capitalise on the weaknesses and with every point dropped, the pressure will rise, not just on Benitez, but his players too.
As a consequence of what has happened already this season, Benitez has unwittingly turned Alberto Aquilani into the focus of the entire season, his capture to balance the sale of Xabi Alonso looking like the fatal flaw in the Spaniard's argument.
Aquilani looked tidy and neat against Fiorentina, but way short of being the inspiration he suddenly needs to blossom into despite still feeling his way back from injury, while it would be understandable should Gerrard and Fernando Torres begin to think more about South Africa with their countries next summer, than the Europa League and a fight to the death for fourth.
Benitez has always prided himself on the ability to bring a squad together in the teeth of adversity. This, however, is increasingly becoming his toughest task since leaving Valencia.
