Liverpool FC: Is Cup Double but No Champions League a Success for Reds?

Liverpool's preparations for this weekend's Carling Cup final geared up nicely after they won their FA Cup fifth-round tie against Brighton & Hove Albion 6-1 at Anfield.

Although that handsome victory was facilitated in part by three own goals from the visitors, such a comprehensive win over Championship opposition stands Liverpool in good stead for when they travel to Wembley on Sunday to face Cardiff City, who are also currently plying their trade in the second tier of English football.

The Reds are heavy favourites to win the competition for an eighth time, which would extend the record number of occasions they have lifted the trophy.

With many of the country's biggest teams already knocked out of the FA Cup, Liverpool are also among the top outfits left in the competition, and as such a second trip to the national stadium this season is a distinct possibility.

However, they currently lie seventh in the Premier League, four points off a Champions League place currently held by Arsenal on goal difference from Chelsea.

Would winning one, or even two trophies this season make up for the Reds missing out on a place in Europe's top competition next season?

It is now a little longer than a decade since Liverpool won three major trophies in one season under Gerard Houllier.

The haul of the FA Cup, League Cup and the old UEFA Cup may have been derided in some quarters as the "Plastic Treble"—especially by Manchester United supporters, whose team won the league, FA Cup and Champions League two seasons previously—but it was a great achievement nonetheless. Since then we have seen the standing of all three once fine competitions take something of a battering. 

The League Cup, through its various rebrandings and the big teams often fielding second-string sides, has long since had much of its lustre diminished.

The FA Cup is in serious danger of going the same way, with the final being played while the regular season is still ongoing for a second season in a row hardly helping matters.

As for the defunct UEFA Cup—now the monolith to mediocrity and compromise that is the Europa League—it is a competition which any of the continent's grandest clubs participating are expected to win by their fans, and failure to do so is more of an inconvenient embarrassment than a heartbreaking moment in their history.

Would Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool's American owners, prize the shiny and tangible rewards of actual silverware over the financial ones of Champions League football?

The financial backing that manager Kenny Dalglish has been given since his return to the dugout in January 2011 is significant, a statement of intent that one of the giants of the world game expects to be back where it belongs sooner rather than later. 

It remains to be seen how much deeper FWS's pockets are, but there is no doubt that they will want to start seeing a return on the investment of an asset they fought all the way to the High Court to procure. The cache of lifting domestic trophies would not deliver anything like the cash on offer in Europe.

Questions are being asked about Dalglish's second reign at Anfield. His win percentage in the Premier League has only been marginally better than that of Roy Hodgson, whose name is still very much a dirty word for many of those on the red half of Merseyside.

Dalglish's public pronouncements during the unpleasant and drawn-out affair involving Luis Suarez have also damaged his once impeccable reputation.

Speaking of Suarez, the Uruguayan striker has endured a torrid time during his year in England. The majority of his woes may have been self-inflicted, but he may be left wondering whether his move to the Premier League was worth all the hassle if it does not enable him to display his considerable talents on the greatest club stage of all.

Liverpool's star performer over the past 12 months would surely have plenty of offers from Europe's other big leagues should he decide to cut and run this summer if his own expectations are not met. 

But then, just because football has become such an obsessively money-driven enterprise, we should not let that diminish the pure sporting joy of winning trophies.

It is a sad sign of the times that finishing fourth in the league should be held up as some kind of achievement, and that it should be the gateway into a competition named after something which the vast majority of its participants are not: champions.

No one ever got a medal for finishing fourth. Not without one or more of those placed above them being later disqualified at any rate.

While fans of any club would jump at the chance of seeing their team playing at the very top level in Europe, most would also rather a trip to Wembley for the chance to see their heroes win a title rather than travel to watch a regulation group-stage win away over BATE Borisov (no disrespect intended to the current five-time Belarusian champions).

Liverpool are a club whose grand history is as much built on its domestic cup successes as it is on league titles and European Cups. They also have a fantastic history of winning multiple trophies in the same season: on no less than nine occasions they have ended a campaign having won more than one competition.

Sadly, the plaudits for the sort of prizes they remain in contention for this season will not be nearly as widespread as they would have been the last time they pulled off such a trick.

As Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said on Sunday after his team was eliminated from the FA Cup: "The first trophy is to finish in the top four."