Column: The Reds rekindled '80s spirit

Every aspect of the Reds' transition from a side that finished seventh to one in contention for the Barclays Premier League title was scrutinised meticulously over the course of a ground-breaking campaign.

Nowhere more so than in the national media, where the club's return to the Champions League for the first time in five years, prompted by a stunning 11-game run of victories, filled endless column inches and provided plenty of back-page headlines.

Continuing our series, Liverpoolfc.com will review an unforgettable season with a handful of the country's leading journalists - and today we get the thoughts of The Independent's Liverpool FC correspondent, Ian Herbert, who tells us how Rodgers moulded his Reds to defy all expectations around the country...

Even the Premier League carnival can develop its predictabilities - the dominance of the established top four, the power of the billionaire benefactor clubs - but the 2013-14 season will always be the one in which Liverpool appeared out of the wild blue yonder and created a new and incredible narrative.

I had them marked down for fourth in pre-season, just like I always have these past three years or more. I was driving through teeming rain on the M4, on the way to see David Moyes start his own unhappy journey at Swansea City, as I heard the radio despatches from the narrow opening day win against Stoke City. This did not sound like a side about to have the nation entranced.

But as they did, we were treated to some days which will lodge in the memory for all time. The incredibly compelling 3-3 at Goodison Park, the match of the season for me, as the ambitious styles of Brendan Rodgers and Roberto Martinez went up against each other. The Arsenal annihilation: a speechless press box at 4-0, 20 minutes in, with its chroniclers of football wondering how words could possibly do justice to all of this.

There were the Brendan Rodgers press conferences, too. He is as eloquent as they get but was articulating the kind of surging belief which made you see why players would - and were - running through walls for him. I especially remember his words before the Manchester City victory which, as things ran out, would be the high tide mark of those title hopes: "For us and for me, it's exciting. It's the joy of going and playing. This is why we work! It's nothing to be frightened of. Nothing to be frightened of."

Rodgers spoke of Hillsborough that day, too, and the 25th anniversary year - the one when the re-opened inquests set the club and the city on a road to understanding what happened on that spring day in 1989 - provided a framework to the way the club was beginning to grow in the old 'Liverpool way'. The biographical portraits of the 96 were being read out, day by day, at Warrington, as the title push gathered pace, teaching us about the dreams and aspirations which died that day. The match report privately typed out by Victoria Hicks, the aspiring teenage journalist who never came home from South Yorkshire, was brought by Tony Barrett to The Times on April 15. It broke your heart. "Hillsborough drives us on every day," said Rodgers.

Even then you sensed there was more to come. The Gerrard slip, the Palace comeback, the desolation of Luis Suarez - a player reborn and recast, against every expectation, by Rodgers.

The manager said he will imbue his players with better ways to get through sides wanting to stifle Liverpool, who will be more abundant in number next season. A title is within the realms of expectation again. But whenever and however that prize might come, it will be some job matching the spirit of 2013-14 - the beautiful football season in which, against every expectation, Liverpool rediscovered all that they possessed in the glorious 1980s and used it to set the nation on fire.