Liverpool know they must be close to perfect next season if they want to challenge Manchester City for the Premier League title.
City overcame a stubborn challenge from Arsenal in 2022/23 to win their third-successive Premier League title, as regular rivals Liverpool fell away to finish fifth.
In the end, Liverpool were 22 points behind City as they suffered with injury problems and misfiring forwards, but have signed Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai to strengthen their squad.
According to Trent Alexander-Arnold, they know what must be improved next season, with the England man acknowledging that there is little room for error if they want to be challenging City again.
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Over the summer, Alexander-Arnold admitted that City are favourites for every competition they enter, and has now told Sky Sports that he fully expects the Blues to be Liverpool's main obstacle for the title once again.
"We do respect every competition we play in but if you'd asked us this time last year, would you want to finish fifth, we'd have all said no and same again now," he said.
"Would we want to finish fifth next season? No. We want to be winning the league, we want to be challenging and being in title races and in Champions League football so to not be in that next season is disappointing.
"We know how to win the league, we know how to challenge City and go toe to toe with them and you need to be near-perfect throughout the season so for us that's where our heads are at."
Deployed more in midfield towards the end of the campaign, Alexander-Arnold could be given more freedom in the centre to help Liverpool be more creative. However, he points to consistency, rather than creativity, as the main area for improvement on Merseyside.
"It's consistency," he explained. "Throughout the season we had good results against the big teams but we dropped points and sloppy points away from home especially, so these are the things that we've all naturally thought about that we need to correct."
