[Lord Snooty]

Liverpool v Huddersfield Town
The Premier League
Friday April 26th - 20:00 ko
at Anfield

Huddersfield Town travel to Anfield to play Liverpool on Friday night looking to avoid further embarrassment in this disastrous season. If Liverpool score early, the heaviest defeat of the season at Man City (1-6) could be under threat. Or even the scoreline at Man City's other ground in the 80's (1-10). But then again, Town could take inspiration from closer to home, just down the A62 at Bellend Road on Good Friday when the miracle of the worst away record in the entire Football League (Wigan Athletic) going to the home of the team with the best home record in the Championship (Leeds Urinals) and coming away with a fine victory, despite being down to 10 men from the 14th minute. Football miracles do happen, but a Town win in this match would eclipse even that.
Indeed, a Town victory in this match would even eclipse the Town miracles at the back end of last season, the draws at the Etihad and Stamford Bridge. Although they were vital to Town, the opposition at the Etihad were on the beach, so to speak, and Chelsea, despite wanting to qualify for the Champions League, weren't at their best. Liverpool are fighting for their first title since 1990. It's the longest period in their history between winning league titles and any dropped points here could possibly end their chances of winning it this time. So there's absolutely no chance whatsoever of us getting anything but a damn jolly good spanking in this one. In fact, there's more chance of Ronnie O'Sullivan getting beaten by an amateur in the first round at the Crucible.

A lot will depend on what kind of line up Jan Siewert picks for us. I expect he will pick a team of defenders, similar to the game down at Spurs when we managed to keep them down to 4 goals. We did have two attackers in that line up in Elias Kachunga and Karlan Grant, but we do have more defensive options available. So a 8-2-0 formation could be the way to go with Tommy Smith, Florent Hadergjonaj, Jon Gorenc Stanković, Christopher Schindler, Zanka, Terence Kongolo, Erik Durm and Chris Löwe in the back line and Jonathan Hogg and Juninho Bacuna in front of them. Park that bus!  
Myself, I'd rather see a team full of attackers, but I'm not gonna get that.

A brief history of Liverpool: Founded in 1892 when Everton walked out of Anfield to go play at Goodison Park, leaving the owner, John Houlding, with an empty stadium. So he started a new club of his own. They had instant success. Entered into the Football League 2nd division in 1893, winning it in the first season, by 1901 they had their first League title, which they repeated in 1906. Got to the Cup Final in 1914 but lost 0-1 to Burnley.
The next two league titles came just prior to ours in 1922 and 1923, but that was it until after WWII. The next trophy win was their 5th league title in 1947. Reached the Cup Final again in 1950, getting beaten this time by Arsenal. They suffered their one and only relegation in 1953/54 when they finished bottom of the 1st division (Town finished 3rd that year) and they were stuck down in the 2nd division until 1962.
By this time though, they had stolen Bill Shankly away from us and he was about to do with Liverpool what some think could've happened to Town had the directors had a little more ambition. We'll never know. Shankly got the Reds up and won their 6th league title in 1964. The following year they won the FA Cup for the first time, Roger Hunt and Ian St John (who Shankly had wanted to sign for Town) scored in a 2-1 win over Leeds Utd. They won the league again in 1966, but lost their first European final, getting beat in the Cup Winners Cup final by Borussia Dortmund. More league titles came, another FA Cup and a first European title, the UEFA Cup beating Borussia Mönchengladbach 3-2 on aggregate, Kevin Keegan (2) and Larry Lloyd scoring as the Reds took a 3-0 1st leg lead.

Shankly then shocked the football world by announcing his retirement. He was replaced by Bob Paisley and the trophies and titles just kept coming. They won the European Cup (now known as the Champions League) for the first time in 1977, future Town coach Terry McDermott opened the scoring and defenders Tommy Smith (who died last week) and Phil Neal added goals to give them a 3-1 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach. They retained it in the next campaign, Kenny Dalglish scoring the only goal of the game against Club Brugge.
Paisley retired in 1983. In his time in charge Liverpool won 21 trophies, including three European Cups, a UEFA Cup, six League titles and three consecutive League Cups. He was replaced by Joe Fagan and they won the league, the League Cup and another European Cup in his first season. That's living alright. That 1984 title was their third in a row, thus becoming only the third club to do the hattrick of titles, behind earlier achievements of Huddersfield Town in the 1920s and Arsenal in the 1930s.  
They reached the European Cup Final again in the next season. It was played at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels........

Fagan retired and Dalglish took over as player/manager.  During his time in charge, they won another three League titles and two FA Cups, one of which was against Everton. They beat their city rivals in the 1989 final 3-2 with goals from John Aldridge and two from Ian Rush. This final came however after a semi final against Nottingham Forest at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield.........

They lost the league title that season on the final day when they lost 1-2 to Arsenal at home. They won it though in the following season, their 18th league title and to date, their last. That's a long time for them to go without winning the league. They have won other stuff since, three FA Cups, four League Cups, one UEFA Cup. But most remarkably, one Champions League.
That was of course, a famous night in Istanbul in 2005. It looked very much like they had cocked up big style when goals from Paolo Maldini in the first minute and a couple from Hernán Crespo gave AC Milan a 3-0 half time lead. They weren't about to surrender though and within 15 minutes of the 2nd half, Liverpool had fought back and equalised at 3-3, through goals from Steven Gerrard, Vladimír Šmicer and Xabi Alonso. It went to penalties and the Reds won it 3-2 to win their 5th European Cup/Champions League title.

Head to Head



Town lead in the overall head to head with 30 wins to Liverpool's 29, with 17 draws.

The last time we beat Liverpool was a long, long time ago. So long ago that even I wasn't born. It was in 1959, Liverpool were by now an established 2nd division club, having been relegated six years earlier. That was a 1-0 home win with a Les Massie goal, but the season before was more noteworthy. Town had future internationals Denis Law, Ray Wilson, Bill McGarry and even a future England test batsman Ken Taylor in the line up. And most importantly, Bill Shankly was the manager. We were mid table at the time and a crowd of 15,934 had gathered in the old Leeds Road stadium, most of whom went home happy as Town ran out easy winners by an emphatic score of 5-0. Goals came from a couple by Derek Hawksworth (a recent signing from Sheffield Utd), Massie (who went on to score 100 goals in his Town career), and one each for Yorkshire CCC's Taylor and future World Cup winner Wilson.
So impressed with our performance that day, the Liverpool directors came back for Shankly the following season to manage at Anfield.

As we all know, the fortunes of both clubs went off in opposing directions afterwards and so meetings of Town and Liverpool have been rare since then. Before that, as the total of Town victories mentioned above suggests, we had the upper hand back in the day, most notably a Town 8-0 victory at Leeds Road in 1934.

Most recently, they won 1-0 at the John Smith's Stadium in October. They were dead lucky then though. They got every decision going in their favour....again! They were one up from a neatly taken goal by Mo Salah when a shot came in from Town and James Milner blocked it with his arm. The referee said no penalty! Then Alex Pritchard equalised, only for the liner to stick his flag up when it was clearly not offside.

No penalty  

The four games in our last visit to the top tier of English football ended with 3 wins for Liverpool and a goalless draw. The image of the programme at the head of this section is for the first one. Town headed there top of the first division, having beaten Blackpool and Southampton in our first two matches of the season. We came back down to earth with a bump, getting thumped 0-4.



Club Connections: There have been a few over the years, but the most obvious one is the already mentioned Bill Shankly. Born in Glenbuck, East Ayrshire in 1913, he grew up in the small coal mining community, one of five brothers who all went on to be professional footballers. When he left school, he worked down the pit for two years before in 1932 he was taken on at Carlisle United. He had one season there before Preston North End signed him up. He helped them to promotion to the First Division after a couple of years and then in 1938 achieved the pinnacle of his career when Preston won the FA Cup at Wembley, beating the mighty Huddersfield Town 1-0 (it was never a penalty!). A few weeks before this, also at Wembley, he made his Scottish international debut against England.
The war interrupted his playing career just at his prime and he joined the RAF. By the time hostilities had ended, he was 33 years old. He stayed on at Preston, becoming club captain, until 1949 when he took up coaching and then his first managerial role when he returned to Brunton Park to manage Carlisle. After there, he had spells in charge of Grimsby and Workington before in 1955 he got the job coaching Huddersfield Town's reserves. That became first team coach and manager when Andy Beattie resigned soon after. He stayed at Town until 1959, bringing through the young players mentioned above, Law, Wilson and Massie.
He was approached by the Liverpool chairman and asked how would he like to join the best club in the country, to which he replied: "Why, is Matt Busby packing up?" Of course he went there and became a football legend, let alone a Liverpool legend. He has his own dedicated gates at Anfield and became a media personality often coming out with some of the best quotes on Match of the Day.
At Liverpool he won them promotion from division 2 and then three first division titles, two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup.

Shankly at Leeds Road

Ian Ross, Town manager in the 1990s, played 48 times for Liverpool in the 1960/70s. He died in February this year, aged 72.

Terry McDermott is a Reds legend who scored in their first European Cup Final win, one of over a hundred goals for them. He came to Town as assistant to manager Lee Clark.

Joey Jones won the European Cup with Liverpool before turning out 68 times for Town towards the back end of his career in the 1980s.

Colin Russell played once in a Liverpool first team before Mick Buxton signed him for us. His goals helped us win promotion from the 3rd division in 1982/83.

Jon Newby came off the bench to play for Liverpool in the 1999/00 FA cup match at the MacAlpine. That was one of only 4 appearances for the Reds. He came to us a couple of years later, but never scored in 14 appearances and got sent out on loan to York City, and didn't score for them either.

Steve Harkness, Nathan Eccleston and Martin Kelly have all been on loan from Liverpool in recent years but the best loanee of them all of course came to us in our Play Off winning season. Let's hear it for the Hero of Hillsborough, Danny Ward saves.

So what's happening down at Anfield?  Still managed nowadays by Jürgen Klopp, the former Borussia Dortmund manager. He spent most of his playing career at Mainz 05, where he first met and became friends with a young lad called David Wagner. He started as a striker but later in his career he became a defender, making a total of 325 appearances for them, scoring 52 goals.
Having had an eleven year playing career at Mainz, he then took on the manager's role in 2001. In his time in the hot seat he led them to promotion to the Bundesliga, then the UEFA Cup for the first time, but then again relegation. After failing to get them promoted again, Klopp resigned in 2008.
He wasn't out of work for long though, landing the Borussia Dortmund job almost straight away. Success soon followed. Two successive Bundesliga titles in 2011 and 2012. This was followed by progression all the way to the final of the Champions League in 2013, losing narrowly to fellow Germans, Bayern Munich by two goals to one.
They continued to qualify for the Champions League in the next couple of seasons, losing out to Real Madrid in the quarter finals and then Juventus in the last 16. Klopp announced his resignation and then in October 2015 he was appointed as successor to Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool. They reached the League Cup final in 2016, losing to Man City, then got to the final of the Europa League and lost to Sevilla.
So to sum up Klopp's managerial career so far, since winning the Bundesliga, he has won sod all, but has come very close on a few occasions, which for this modern day Liverpool is just about good enough. More importantly, his guiding the Reds to the dizzy heights of a 4th place finish in the Premier League last season qualified them for the Champions League, which is counted as success for a manager of an English Football Club these days.

Klopp holding the trophy for finishing 4th in the Premier League

Recent form: Town are 20th in the Premier League with 14 points. Liverpool are back down to 2nd again after Man City won the derby on Wednesday night. The Reds have 88 points.

Last 6 matches:

Town 0-2 Bournemouth
West Ham 4-3 Town (Bacuna, Grant 2)
Crystal Palace 2-0 Town
Town 1-4 Leicester (Mooy pen)
Tottenham 4-0 Town
Town 1-2 Watford (Grant)


Liverpool 2-1 Tottenham Hotspur (Firmino, Alderweireld og)
Southampton 1-3 Liverpool (Keita, Salah, Henderson)
Liverpool 2-0 Porto (CL) (Keita, Firmino)
Liverpool 2-0 Chelsea (Mané, Salah)
Porto 1-4 Liverpool (CL) (Mané, Salah, Firmino, van Dijk)
Cardiff City 0-2 Liverpool (Wijnaldum, Milner pen)