It's been 25 years without a league title, and the misery will only continue for Liverpool

Twenty-five years, moreover, during which their loathed rivals from down the M62 have picked up the Premier League championship 13 times and the club they like to mock as being without history is about to claim it for a fourth time. On Merseyside they no longer dare check in the rear view mirror: everything is closer than it once appeared to be.

Worse, after watching the latest bunch of failed successors to the glory teams of the past stumble to hapless defeat at Hull last night, many supporters will be fearing there is no imminent end to the purgatory. The wait does not look as though it is about to be over any time soon.

How different the mood around Anfield was a year ago. Back then the club appeared to be on course to progress its title-winning prospects. A close run in the league, beaten at the last by a much better funded operation, suggested this was a side that could properly compete. Moreover, they had a manager who seemed to have restored some of the values that had dissipated over the years of relative failure. Things were surely about to get better.

But then came the summer break. The sale of the best player seen at the club in a generation, plus the recruitment in his stead of some of the worst, completely hamstrung the recovery. While Luis Suarez is a football genius and the closest thing many a Liverpool fan had seen to Kenny Dalglish, the utter and complete uselessness of his direct replacement Mario Balotelli, less a team player than a walking (very rarely running) permanent distraction, is but a symptom of the pace of decline. As for Lazar Markovic , if he is the answer, you really do fear what the question was.

Never mind the glory days of the 70s and 80s, when titles came in threes and victory was stitched into the fabric of the place, so far have Liverpool slipped from last season’s fleeting optimism, now the thin consolation of Champions League qualification looks to have gone. Even if Manchester United were to continue their current form and lose all their remaining games, Liverpool would need to win a couple to get close to overtaking them, a prospect that appears ever more forlorn. For a club who were habitually in contention right until the end of the season (unless they had wrapped up the title early) this has been another year of being out of it long before the conclusion.

And so, far earlier than anticipated, comes the post-mortem. Who is to blame?

Clearly there are structural issues in the organisation. Though still a long way behind the principal Premier League challengers in terms of revenue, at least some of those issues are being addressed. Finally, nearly a decade after the preposterous chancers Hicks and Gillett said it would happen, the spades are in the ground on stadium enlargement. Soon the matchday takings will be closer to those of Chelsea, if not up there with Arsenal or Manchester United. That day can’t come soon enough.

Some supporters, however, are not inclined to wait. Phone ins and social media have been rammed with those claiming allegiance to Liverpool demanding that the manager be sacked, that he be immediately replaced by Rafa Benitez or Juergen Klopp. I say claiming allegiance, because it is not the proper Liverpool way publicly to undermine the boss. Even Roy Hodgson did not face open rebellion from the Kop.

Yet, though the loyalists remain steadfast, Brendan Rodgers must take some of the culpability for the decline. Sure, he is not to blame for Daniel Sturridge’s mysterious injury curse, or Jon Flanagan’s more identifiable knee problem, or Steve Gerrard’s ageing. But he cannot resolve himself from blame for some of the signings that have been made on his watch.

Balotelli may not have been at the top of his list to replace Suarez, but there is no way he would have been signed by the club if the manager had objected. Nor would Rickie Lambert or Dejan Lovren or Adam Lallana or any of the other failed newbies come to Anfield without his agreement. Nor is it the fault of the faceless back room transfer committee that the manager appears determined to play the one unequivocally successful new recruit in any position other than that to which he is best suited.

Rodgers might call Emre Can a Rolls Royce, but surely Can would be best deployed in midfield rather than right-back or centre-half. After all, nobody would use a Roller as a tractor. And Rodgers’s tinkering with formation makes Louis Van Gaal look steadfast in his tactical approach. Barely 10 minutes of the game at the KC had elapsed before the Liverpool boss was out in his technical area, semaphoring instructions to move to a diamond midfield, or maybe back to a holding three. Rarely, however, do any of his alterations bring about a rapid improvement in fortunes.

That said, Rodgers is clearly no fool. His ability was never for a moment under scrutiny last season, when he was being hailed as the future of the game. One bad term does not make him a bad manager. If he can learn from the errors he has overseen this year rather than simply seek to explain them away, then he will be stronger for it. He could still yet prove to be the manager he claims to be.

He will, however, have his work cut out. With a squad clearly not up to the challenge, he faces a massive summer overhaul job. To get anywhere close to a challenging positon, he needs a centre-forward, central midfielder, central defender and a couple of full-backs. Bringing in better than he has now won’t be an easy job, given that the very elite prefer to be engaged in the Champions League.

And all that is without mentioning the competition. Chelsea are not about to get any weaker, Manchester City’s owners will not allow any further slippage, Arsenal are well poised to start taking proper advantage of their gathering financial muscle, Van Gaal is showing he might make United challengers again, while even Roberto Martinez appears to have woken up down the road.

Plus the arrival in the division of the brilliant Eddie Howe will focus attention on the new young thing in management, someone destined for the very top, waiting to be mentioned in dispatches every time a boss at a leading club suffers from a wobble. At Anfield, 2015-16 could be a very tough season.

And the truth is, whether Rodgers stays or goes, that long, long wait does not look as though it is about to end at any time soon.