5 Things Learned from Liverpool's 2014/15 Premier League Season

"There's been a lot of learning this season, for both myself and the players," said Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers last month, per Ian Doyle of the Liverpool Echo.

"Now we have to finish the season as strongly as we possibly can and take that into next season," he said.

Eight points from the final nine games is certainly not a strong finish to what has been a woefully poor season at Anfield.

"We went close to one of our aims, which was to win a trophy, and the other is to finish top four," said the Liverpool boss after his side lost the FA Cup semi-final at Aston Villa in April, per Chris Bascombe of the Telegraph.

That top-four finish derailed after Rodgers proclaimed in March that his side could even finish second—defeats to Manchester United and Arsenal in the next two games dented those ambitions, while failing to beat West Bromwich Albion and Hull City ended the top-four chances.

Liverpool's three targets for the season were to win a trophy, finish in the top four and progress to the knockout stages of the Champions League. They achieved none of them.

Here are five things we learned in the 2014/15 season, with heavy focus on Rodgers' managerial decisions.

Great Players Make Others Around Them Better

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It's hardly something learned, but it was certainly demonstrated by how much Liverpool missed Luis Suarez after his departure to Barcelona.

For anyone doubting Suarez's qualities before the 2014/15 season, they only need to look at how Liverpool plummeted without him.

Great players make others around them better—Suarez proved this with Liverpool last season. Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling, Philippe Coutinho, Jordan Henderson and Steven Gerrard all thrived with the Uruguayan in the side.

Liverpool missed Suarez, but that was always going to be the case—their naivety in failing to adequately replace him is the biggest error and the major reason for 2014/15's failings.

Quite how you go from wanting Alexis Sanchez to replace Suarez to ending up with a player of a completely different makeup, Mario Balotelli, is bewildering and shows a lack of strategy.

To then place so much reliance on Sturridge staying fit only added to Liverpool's naivety.

Dejan Lovren Is Not Jamie Carragher's Replacement

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"He is exactly what I've been looking for since Jamie Carragher left," praised Rodgers about Dejan Lovren after his first appearance for the club in a pre-season friendly against Borussia Dortmund last August, as quoted by Bascombe.

"He is a dominant, No. 1 centre-half who reads the game well, offers good guidance to the back four and the rest of the team—and shows his qualities of range of passing too."

Rodgers had somehow determined that Lovren was a better left-sided centre-back option than Mamadou Sakho and that the Croatian was worth spending £20 million on.

While that performance against Dortmund promised much, Lovren's first season provided few positives.

Far from the dominant leader that Rodgers had hoped, he has instead looked decidedly unsettled on the ball and shown extremely fragile confidence.

Strikers such as Bobby Zamora, Dwight Gayle and Yannick Bolasie have made Lovren look far from a £20 million defender.

Indeed, Rodgers was fortunate that Lovren picked up an injury against Bournemouth in December, which allowed Sakho a chance to reclaim his place in the side. While the Frenchman may not be everyone's cup of tea, he is a far better option than Lovren and provided somebody actually capable of playing the ball out of defence.

Lovren's first season at Anfield will be remembered by his penalty miss in Istanbul against Besiktas and the image of Rodgers with his hands over his eyes in the final home game of the season against Crystal Palace as Lovren tumbles to the floor having been outmuscled by Bolasie.

Rodgers wasn't the only one to get it wrong on Lovren, though. Even Carragher himself talked him up as his replacement, even telling the Liverpool Echo he could replace Steven Gerrard as captain.

Brendan Rodgers Is out of His Depth in Europe

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Liverpool's return to the Champions League after five years away was much anticipated going into 2014/15, and the favourable group draw had Reds fans hoping it would be a welcome return to Europe's elite.

Instead, Rodgers' side bowed out of the Champions League and Europa League each at the first opportunity.

In eight games in Europe, Liverpool won twice—both at Anfield and courtesy of late penalties against Ludogorets Razgrad and FC Basel.

It was a miserable return to European competition, and Rodgers, rather than embracing being back where Liverpool belong, bemoaned the lack of coaching time it allowed him.

That excuse doesn't quite explain why Liverpool went on to take just eight points from their final nine games of the season, when Rodgers had a week to prepare for each game.

With Liverpool having qualified for the Europa League next season, surely the owners will be asking the question of how Rodgers plans to cope with European football again.

Mario Balotelli Isn't a Lone Forward

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Mario Balotelli's life at Liverpool started well enough on his debut at Tottenham back in August. The sun shone, Rodgers was smiling and laughing, Liverpool won 3-0 (still their best performance of the season) and Liverpool fans sang Balotelli's name.

Then Daniel Sturridge got injured.

Rodgers played Balotelli up front on his own in a 4-2-3-1 system, and Liverpool were absolutely turgid, typified by the 0-0 home draws with Sunderland and Hull City.

Yet Rodgers persisted with that system and that use of Balotelli for months. It wasn't until mid-December that the system changed, and prior to that, only injury to Balotelli in November saw him finally out of the side.

Quite why Rodgers then returned to that system and that use of Balotelli for the 0-0 draw and 1-0 defeat at West Bromwich Albion and Hull in April will remain a mystery.

Balotelli was poor, but he was used wrong and often scapegoated for the team's failings.

Rodgers Cannot Coach Defending

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While much of the attention this season has been placed upon Liverpool's reduced goalscoring output without Suarez and Sturridge, their defence has been just as bad as last season despite bringing in three new defenders last summer.

The previous season, Liverpool's attacking exploits covered for the 50 goals conceded at the other end. Without those goals for, Liverpool continued to leak goals—48.

Last season, after Chelsea's 2-0 win at Anfield curtailed title dreams, Rodgers claimed it is "not difficult to coach to play defensive," per Bascombe.

Then in October, with his side floundering in the league and defensively poor, Rodgers ruled out the club appointing a defensive coach.

After a series of clean sheets over winter, Rodgers bullishly Sam Wallace of the Independent it was down to "the new defensive coach we brought in which everyone thought we needed. That did the trick."

Rodgers may have thought he had fixed his side's defensive problems, but conceding four at Arsenal in a manner befitting of a Sunday league side showed otherwise.

Not to mention conceding nine goals to two mid-table sides in the final two games of the season.

Quite why the Liverpool boss has used Emre Can as a right-back despite the German's clear failings in that role is just another in a series of baffling moves this season, especially with Javier Manquillo not starting a league game in 2015.

Alberto Moreno started life at Liverpool well but looks like a full-back who needs to be coached how to defend properly.

Meanwhile, Martin Skrtel remains the one constant in Liverpool's constantly fragile defence.

The failure to sign a right centre-back last summer, or a defensive midfielder who can cover for the full-backs as they attack high up the pitch, leaves you wondering if Rodgers will ever have a solid defensive unit.