Javier Mascherano admits feeling let down by Liverpool's failure to win a trophy this season.

The Argentina midfielder said: "We wanted to win the league and we were very close, but we accept that Manchester United did very well also.

"It is difficult to take, because if you look at the table and you see Liverpool with 86 points, that's enough to win the league in many previous seasons.

"Previous champions have had less points than we had this season. But we have to improve, and we will be ready for next season after what has been a good campaign and better than the last four or five seasons beforehand."

He added: "It is not easy knowing you have really good players and you finish only second, it is difficult to understand.

"We will have to see what happens now. We have the squad to compete in the league, but maybe if some new players came to improve the team it would be great for us next season. It does not need improving too much, maybe a little bit.

"We need to improve at home. We dropped a lot of points at home because we didn't have that experience to finish the games, but next season we will have the experience and maybe it will be better for us.

"You can see against the top sides we almost beat all of them. But at home we dropped a lot of points against Hull, Manchester City and Fulham.

"Winning those points could have won us the league."