Rafael Benitez has claimed former owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett destroyed Liverpool’s hopes of winning a first Premier League title, reports ESPN.

Benitez came closer than anyone to ending Liverpool’s wait for a first league title since 1990, finishing second in 2009 only losing two Premier League matches in the process.

The Spaniard believes the addition of three key players in the summer that followed would have seen Liverpool end their title wait.

In his new book ‘Champions League Dreams’ , Benitez blames Hicks and Gillett for wrecking Liverpool’s best chance to secure that elusive title by failing to back him in the transfer market and forcing him to be “a bank manager”.

Liverpool made the drop from second to seventh that season, and Benitez was duly sacked the following summer.

"For five years I had been a football manager at Liverpool. By the start of my sixth, it was clear I had become something else entirely. I was suddenly supposed to be a bank manager," he wrote.

"Decisions were being made to appease the banks, not the fans. That is how serious the situation with the owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, had become.

"Attempting to work in the transfer market that summer was almost impossible.

We knew we would need cover and support for Fernando Torres, as David Ngog was still developing, and we had raised the cash to find it. The player we identified to fill that role was Stevan Jovetic, a young Montenegro forward playing for Fiorentina in Italy.

"The funds we thought we had available would also have stretched to another central defender, to provide cover for Jamie Carragher, Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger.

"The two players we had identified were Sylvain Distin, then with Portsmouth, and West Ham's Matthew Upson, both boasting abundant Premier League experience. Signing one of those two, plus the tall, powerful, intelligent Jovetic, would have given Liverpool the squad we needed to build on the previous year's title challenge.

"Liverpool, though, was no longer a football club. It was a business. The money, which we wanted to use to take Liverpool on to the next level, was all gone."

Benitez wrote that Liverpool "would be punished for the disappearance of that money - and our failure to sign Jovetic - again and again that season".

Benitez belived the 2009-2010 season was supposed to be "our year"  but following the failure to land his targets instead turned into a "long, hard campaign, a battle from start to finish".