The Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has been opening up his opinions to the press this weekend on the going's on at Anfield in recent weeks.

Discussing his potential move away from Anfield this summer to Chelski he said:

"It was basically down to the last couple of seasons at Liverpool. They weren't good enough, for me personally or for the club. I was frustrated, being out of the title race by January or February. That's not what the club want to be involved in and not what I want to be involved in. Everyone linked me with Chelsea and assumed that was where I was going but to be honest there were three or four good clubs knocking on my agent's door. It wasn't a case of definitely going to Chelsea if I did leave, it was a case of sitting down and discussing the possibility of me moving to a different club."

Moving on to discuss the new boss Rafael Benitez he declared:

"I've worked with him now for about six weeks and I've been very impressed. Tactically, he's very good. I'm starting to realise why he has been so successful at Valencia, with not too much money to spend. Given a little bit of time he can have this Liverpool side maybe not playing like Valencia, because it's a completely different team, but I think we will be a team that's going to be hard to beat. I think he will definitely improve things. That was the main factor on me deciding to stay. He thinks this team are playing to 60 per cent [of their capacity] and he thinks he can take the team up a lot more. I agree with him.

"We've got to take the challenge on. We've got to improve by that 30 or 40 per cent the manager's talking about and see where that takes us. It's down to us to improve and get among them. That's our aim for the season. I don't think this manager's going to wait around, take things slowly and try to make this team better over, say, two years. He wants improvement now. He wants to start winning football matches now. That's good enough for me."

And finally discussing the transfer of Michael Owen away from Anfield he said:

"I'll be honest with you, I was disappointed when Michael left. He's a great friend of mine, I love playing with him. I know his runs inside-out and I've had a good relationship with him at Liverpool and with England for years. When I heard he was going I was shocked. I was the same as any Liverpool fan - really gutted. But I do understand the situation the club were in, with Michael only having a year left on his contract. Everyone knows what happened with Steve McManaman and the club don't want situations like that to happen again. I pick the papers up now and see him in the Real Madrid kit and think: 'No, that's not right. What's he doing? When's he coming back?'"

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