I dont think that their history has been their selling point to the world, GDM. Their USP had been 'the miracle' of Istanbul and the cult (for the lack of a better word) of Gerrard and unfortunately, Hillsborough (but to be fair, they haven't pursued it as much as the other two. Hillsborough is only used as a talking point by the fans themselves). In my corner of the world, I've not met a single Liverpool supporter who supported them before 'that night in Istanbul'; there may be some of them that did but I doubt they're more than a small handful. If you ask the question, "why do you support Liverpool?" out here, the answer to it would be a toss up between Istanbul and Gerrard with a some of them maybe even saying that its because of Gerrard at Istanbul. Nobody would tell you its because of the club's history.
What they have lost is a marketable player which has a unique quality. Gerrard was marketed on the back of his 'loyalty'; no one was bothered enough to check why refused to move to Chelsea when he did. They dont have a player who can sell shirts. They had Torres and Gerrard until now. I've seen a few Coutinho and Sterling shirts around but neither of them can appeal to the audience as much as Torres and Gerrard did. I'll give you an example: we had a public screening here of the United vs Liverpool 3-0 game in December and for every 50 Liverpool shirts I saw, 30-35 had Gerrard's name on them and the others were blank. There were only a handful of Suarez's shirts and 1 each of a Sterling and a Coutinho shirt.
The target audience and market around here is teenagers to 30 year olds with the 30 year old themselves being the ones who started watching the Premier League as teenagers 12-15 years ago. These people need some swagger to be associated with a club for them feel like supporting it; United, Arsenal, Chelsea and more recently, City can provide it some form or the other. Liverpool until could provide it in the form of Gerrard as 'Captain Fantastic' and the 'loyal one club man'. Can they provide it now? I dont think so.