Andy Robertson admits he feared a return to Premier League action might not be possible and he is now determined to end Liverpool's 30-year title wait.
Jurgen Klopp's men opened up a 25-point lead at the top of the table before football was brought to a halt in early March due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Premier League is on course to restart in mid-to-late June after clubs voted on Wednesday for a return to full-contact training.
Liverpool needs just two victories from its remaining nine games to win the title and Robertson is delighted a restart is now in sight, albeit with fans not permitted to attend games.
"It's been 30 long years for this club and the fans probably couldn't have imagined we'd have to wait nine weeks when we were so close to going into games where we hopefully could have won to seal the Premier League title," he told Liverpool's official website.
'Light at the end of the tunnel'
"But we'll get back to it, we'll get going again, we'll get our rhythm again and hopefully we can win the games we need to win and that's what our aim is now. The light at the end of the tunnel was just getting back into training, to be honest. At times, there were some days you didn't think that would have been possible, but now we're back here, we can look forward and look to the next step.
"Then, like I said, hopefully with the games we've got ahead of us, we can get back to it. Would we like to play in front of 55,000 people at Anfield? Of course we would.
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"Winning games or whatever without the fans won't feel the same, but it's something we know we need to go through and it's something we know that in their houses and stuff they will be supporting us like mad and we'll feel that support.
"Hopefully we can celebrate a title if we get the job done - and there will be time to celebrate it when the time is right.
"But for now we need to keep focused, we know whatever games are coming up and whenever they start, we need to get them won and get that trophy for this club."
Back to training
Robertson and his Liverpool team-mates returned to their Melwood training base last week for the first time in two months to partake in small group sessions. And the Scotland international says he is like an excited schoolboy after reuniting with his colleagues, who remained in close contact during lockdown in the United Kingdom.
"We made sure we kept in contact with each other a lot, we made sure we were all in a big WhatsApp group where we could talk things through, and we were all on Zoom calls – I think it was every three days and you could see each other," he said.
"But the first day back at Melwood it was like a kid leaving school for holidays probably, to be honest. I bounced out the front door; it's probably the first time I've smiled at home about football in a while.
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"I couldn't wait to get in and I'm sure all the lads were like that. Everyone was talking in their cars in the car park from a distance on the first day. It was just nice to catch up.
'The new normal'
"This is the new normal, we need to get used to the protocols we're following but it's something I think we've all got used to quite quickly. Being able to see the lads and being able to be in this training ground again most days, it's a special place and we like being here.
"We went through it all together. From the very start the staff in the WhatsApp group were saying if anyone is struggling with anything, put it in here because if you’re struggling with something, someone else might be struggling with the exact same thing and we can all get to somewhere better."
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