Current Liverpool Side Better Than 2008-09 Team, Says Dirk Kuyt

Dirk Kuyt believes Liverpool's current side has what it takes to go one step further than his 2008-09 team did and win the Premier League.

Kuyt spent six seasons at Liverpool between 2006 and 2012, and the closest he came to winning the English top flight was in 2008-09, when the Reds finished second, four points behind champions Manchester United.

Jurgen Klopp's side went even closer last term, when they finished one point behind Manchester City in a record-breaking season:

After eight wins from eight matches at the beginning of 2019-20, Liverpool have a perfect record and an eight-point league at the top of the table:

Kuyt believes the current side are better equipped than the one he was part of to finally break Liverpool's title duck, per Glenn Price on the club's official website:

"We were very close to success. We just missed a small detail to go one step further. With the likes of Stevie [Gerrard] and [Jamie] Carragher, [Javier] Mascherano, [Fernando] Torres and many other very good players, we just missed a little something. 

"If you see the buildup of the team of Klopp, you see it progressing every time, and it looks like it's now coming to success also in the Premier League. We were a particular team like that, only we couldn't go one step further at that time. Hopefully this team will do it because, in my opinion, this team now on the pitch is even better than ours."

The Reds have been without a league title since 1990, and in the interim, they have been eclipsed as England's most successful side by United.

The Red Devils, who have won 13 league titles since Liverpool last triumphed, now have 20 titles overall, compared to the Reds' 18.

Since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, though, the balance of power between United and Liverpool has emphatically switched.

The Merseyside outfit visit Old Trafford on Sunday flying high as European champions and Premier League front-runners, and they are being widely backed to beat a United side floundering after a run of just two wins in their last 13 English top-flight matches.

Other than when they play them home and away, United will not be a concern of Liverpool's as they aim to win the title this season, as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side will, at best, be fighting for a top-four spot.

In fact, the only side that look capable of stopping Liverpool this season are City, and they have already shown vulnerabilities in the early weeks of the campaign that were not apparent in 2018-19.