Historic Liverpool season statistic shows how unlucky they were not to win Premier League

It's not just the sheer number of points they racked up that underlines how good Liverpool were this season

So that's it then. We're done for another year. The end. Finished. Fin. And while we witness another stunning displayed by Manchester City, as they beat Brighton 4-1 away from home to wrap up the title, it's undeniable that Liverpool's effort this season was almost as good at the champions. Liverpool's points total of 97 bettered 116 of the previous 119 champions of England's top tier as they posted their best defensive record in the Premier League era. The Merseysiders also went unbeaten at home for a second successive top-flight term for the first time since 1979-80. But if any stat overlines their sheer dominance over every club other than City, it is how Liverpool today became the first in English top division history to lose as few as a single league game and not win the title. In any other season, faced with any other opposition, it is likely Henderson would have been lifting the Premier League trophy aloft. https://twitter.com/SkySportsStatto/status/1127601759327854592 For Liverpool, as disappointing as the failure to claim the top spot may be, they can at least look ahead to their Champions League final showdown with Tottenham at the beginning of June. As Jurgen Klopp put it after the game: "Congratulations to Manchester City. We tried everything to make it as difficult as possible but not difficult enough. I couldn’t be more proud of the boys. "It’s incredible what they did all season and today was a strange situation. We were really good until 1-0, what happened then was clear. You can’t tell the people to calm down. "At that moment [when Liverpool fans celebrated Brighton's goal] it was a shock for everyone and Wolves were there. We had to fight. In the end we scored two and kept a clean sheet. It’s nice but not how we wanted it. "It’s clear we had to work hard and City too. Our target during the week was to get 97 points, we got that – that’s special. "We want to write our own history and we did. Today feels not so good but we have plenty of time to prepare for an important game in three weeks."