The highest ever Premier league points total, a sustained title challenge that lasted till mid-May, significant wins at both Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge: as this season comes to a close there seems to be much to celebrate.Only that’s not the case. Barring any convoluted results Liverpool should finish second next Sunday which, for all the undoubted improvement, still isn’t good enough for this club. As Bill Shankly once famously said, “first is first, second is nothing.”Which is not to say that there’s a need to feel downcast. Clearly this has been a positive year that has witnessed just five defeats across all competitions, one where the team finally matured and started expressing the kind of football that Benitez has been aiming for all along.Yet that by itself isn’t enough to make it a successful season. In a few years’ time people will look at the record books and see that Liverpool won nothing. And that is the real marker for success.So no, when the league season comes to a close on Sunday I don’t want to celebrate and much less do I wish to see any of the players looking satisfied with their achievements.Indeed, I want them to spend the summer months agonising over what went wrong, mulling over the awful feeling that they could have won the league this time round.That way they’ll return to Anfield eager to kick-off the new season and, more pertinently, determined avoid having to spend such a depressing few weeks. Something that they’ll only achieve by going out and winning the league.For the only way that the current season will ever be considered as having been a truly positive one is if everyone – players and coaching staff – learn to avoid the mistakes that have been made and build on the good that has come out of these past ten months.