On April 13, 2014, Liverpool beat Manchester City 3-2 in one of the all-time Premier League thrillers.

Riding a wave of emotion on the 25th anniversary of Hillsborough, they stormed ahead, were pegged back and then won it through Philippe Coutinho in front of an ecstatic Anfield.

A week later, Brendan Rodgers' red arrows - powered by the jet-fuelled Raheem Sterling and Luis Suarez - won by the same scoreline at Norwich to go five points clear of Chelsea and nine ahead of City. They'd won 11 league games in a row.

Firmly in the box seat, the red half of Merseyside dared to dream of a first league title since 1990. Not only that, there was a perception that Liverpool would be popular 'people's champions' after so long in the wilderness.

But, as we know, it didn't come to pass. It would take Jurgen Klopp to lift Liverpool's curse six years afterwards.

Steven Gerrard's fateful slip against Chelsea - 10 years ago today - killed Liverpool's title dream

Part of the reason was one of the Premier League's most cruelly seminal moments, which happened 10 years ago today - Steven Gerrard's slip.

The fact it came against Jose Mourinho's Chelsea - whose own title aspirations had faded but who were determined to wreck Liverpool's party - only added to the bitter taste.

Gerrard - for all his immense contribution to Liverpool over many years - has admitted the fateful moment which allowed Demba Ba in to score will never leave him.

It certainly won't be the moment that defines him but nor will it be easily forgotten by many.

'I park it up but it comes back, all the time. What triggers it? I don't know. TV, images, just me reflecting,' Gerrard said in 2020.

'I've had lots and lots of moments, some incredible moments, which I never dreamed of. But your career takes you to some lows as well.

'It would be easy if you lifted the carpet, pushed them under and you never thought about them again. But I don't think that's ever going to be the case.'

Gerrard's slip went down in infamy but it was far from the only sliding doors moment in a memorable season.

In the 2-1 loss at City on Boxing Day, Sterling saw a goal disallowed when he was visibly onside.

Kolo Toure gifted West Brom's Victor Anichebe an equaliser at The Hawthorns in early February, while Rodgers admitted Jordan Henderson's three-match ban for a red card in the City win was 'a huge miss for us'.

Then, of course, there was their inexplicable collapse from three goals up against Crystal Palace a week after the Gerrard slip as City reached full gallop to overtake them and win the title by two points.

Because City had two games in hand, ultimately it was the Chelsea loss - sealed by Willian's late second, which saw Mourinho gleefully riling up the Anfield crowd on the touchline - that took Liverpool's title fate out their hands.

Mourinho had guided Chelsea to the title a year earlier and relished playing the role of pantomime villain.

The match at Anfield came a few days after Chelsea had secured a goalless draw away to Atletico Madrid in the first leg of a Champions League semi-final.

With the return at Stamford Bridge on the Wednesday, Mourinho had begged the Premier League to move the Liverpool game forward - to no avail.

'For us it was about reaching the Champions League final, but I couldn't go and play Liverpool with our Under 18s,' Mourinho recalled to The Obi One Podcast last year.

'It wouldn't have been fair on Man City for us to go there even with our second team, so we wanted to do things in the right way.'

Mourinho did make some changes - including bringing in Tomas Kalas with John Terry out injured to perform a spoiling job on Suarez - and motivation clearly wasn't a problem.

'We were on the bus and the guys outside were selling shirts with 'Liverpool Champions' on, and you can't allow that as Chelsea,' Mourinho recalled.

'You have to keep the marketing and merchandise in a box.'

Of course it was a vintage Mourinho game plan. Liverpool enjoyed 73 per cent of possession and 26 shots, yet floundered before a blue wall with a five-man midfield designed to shield the back four.

From the first minute, Chelsea set out to wind up the Anfield crowd by taking their time over set-pieces. Frustration became irritation and then nail-biting tension as the minutes ticked by.

Tension turned into horror and disbelief in first-half injury time when Gerrard miscontrolled a pass by Mamadou Sakho and, when trying to recover his poise, slipped as the ball ran to Ba.

The Senegal forward's pace took him clear to a rare sight of the Liverpool goal, where he slotted past Simon Mignolet in front of a dumbfounded Kop.

Gerrard tried to compose himself and the fans chanted his name at half-time. While there was a further 45 minutes to respond, captain marvel couldn't summon a comeback.

It was Liverpool attack versus Chelsea's stubborn rearguard with every action by the visitors getting slower and slower.

At one point, Mourinho grabbed the ball to prevent Gerrard taking a quick throw-in, sparking a minor skirmish.

The game was settled in stoppage time, moments after Chelsea keeper Mark Schwarzer made a flying save to deny Suarez.

Fernando Torres broke away and teed up Willian for Chelsea's second, prompting Mourinho to perform a chest-beating touchline dash as Liverpool's fans vented at him.

'They parked two buses, rather than one,' Rodgers complained after the final whistle.

'Just putting 10 players right on your 18-yard box is not difficult to coach, but it is obviously much harder to try and break through it.

'Jose is happy to work that way and he will probably shove his CV in front of me and say it works, but that is not my way of working.'

Mourinho countered: 'The team that deserved it more won.'

The Special One doubled down on that last year, saying: 'Of course, Stevie G slipped, and he was the last person who deserved that to happen, but that's part of football and in reality we played so well.'

Beneficiary Ba said in 2021: 'What Steven Gerrard has done for the world of football is tremendous. But this is life, unfortunately. Not all stories can end in fairytales.'

Indeed. The slip meant Gerrard ended his playing days without winning the Premier League, a moment he seems doomed to be haunted by forever.