[Lord Snooty]

Huddersfield Town v Liverpool
The Premier League
Tuesday January 30th - 20:00 ko
at the John Smith's Stadium

Huddersfield Town welcome Liverpool to the John Smith's Stadium on Tuesday evening for another live televised match, this time on BT Sport. Town will be looking to get back into the top half of the table with a win in this match, however with West Ham and Palace playing each other, we will have to settle for 11th. We'll be looking also to inflict Liverpool's third defeat in a row after their brilliant win over champions in waiting Man City, they've slumped to an unexpected defeat at Swansea and another one on Saturday night in the Cup at home to the Baggies.
Town will make plenty of changes to the starting XI from the draw with Birmingham. Home favourites Aaron Mooy, Jonas Lössl and Christopher Schindler will definitely return, but of the rest of the squad, who knows? Do we stick up top with Saturday's languid looking goal scorer Steve Mounié or bring in the more energetic Laurent Depoitre? Does skipper Tommy Smith come back in even though Florent Hadergjonaj had a really good game and set up Mounié for his goal with a pin point cross the likes of which we haven't seen since the opening day down at the Palace? And new signing Alex Pritchard? After receiving pelters for his performance at Stoke, is he a shoe in for a start?
Whichever XI David Wagner goes for, we must get 100% behind each and every one of them. This is not a free hit match. This is, not a must win game, but it is a mustn't lose game. We have to get back to making the John Smith's Stadium our fortress. We must get the opposition intimidated again, like those Man Utd players who play in front of 70,000 crowds were. Bring it on, Town. Bring it on!

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 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 to Arsenal, which I covered in the recent Arsenal match thread. 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 27, 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 3-0 at theirs in October with goals from Daniel Sturridge, Roberto Firmino and Georginio Wijnaldum, coming after a goalless first half in which Jonas Lössl saved a wrongly awarded penalty, taken by stand up comedian Mo Salah.

There was the Shankly Trophy match last year that the Reds won 2-0 and before that there was an FA Cup game at the MacAlpine Stadium that they also won 2-0. 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 4-0.



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.
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 was a sub for Liverpool in that 1999 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 and was crap!
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 was last season. Let's hear it for the Hero of Hillsborough, Danny Ward.

So what's happening down at Anfield?  Managed nowadays by Jürgen Klopp, the younger brother of Klippety. He spent most of his playing career at Mainz 05, where he first met and became friends with ar Dave. 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 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

Notable players in their squad:- Virgil van Dijk, is probably the most well known of their squad, mainly due to the size of his enormous transfer fee. Liverpool payed Southampton a whopping seventy five million pounds for him at the start of this month, most of which he repaid instantly by scoring the winner against Everton in the Cup, earning the club £7,500 for their progression to Round 4.
He is of course a seasoned international player, having gained 16 caps for the Netherlands......hold on, 16 caps and he's worth £75m! That's only 13 more than our Terence Kongolo.
He started his professional career in the Dutch top league, the Eredivisie, at Groningen, playing with them for a couple of season's before he transferred to Celtic for £2.6m in the summer of 2013. He spent two and a bit years there, winning the League twice (obviously) and the League Cup, before his big move to the Premier League with Southampton, making the move because of Celtic's lack of progression in the Champions League. An obvious career move to make for somebody with Champions League ambitions!  
It took him a while to realise that this south coast club was only nearer to Europe geographically and so, despite the Saints fans making him their Player of the Season, he sulked saying he wanted to move to a bigger club. Therefore when Liverpool came sniffing in the summer transfer window, the toys were thrown out of the pram and he hardly played for Southampton, missing both the games against us. But as we know now, he did get his move and now he is destined to win that Champions League medal after all.

"Thought you said we was in Europe, bruv!"

Recent form: Town are 14th in the Premier League with 24 points, Liverpool are 4th with 47 points.

Last 6 matches:

Town 0-0 Burnley
Leicester 3-0 Town
Bolton 1-2 Town (FA Cup 3) (van La Parra, Williams)
Town 1-4 West Ham (Lolley)
Stoke 0-2 Town
Town 1-1 Birmingham (FA Cup 4) (Mounie)


Liverpool 2-1 Leicester (Salah 2)
Burnley 1-2 Liverpool (Mané, Klavan)
Liverpool 2-1 Everton (FA Cup 3) (Milner pen, van Dijk)
Liverpool 4-3 Manchester City (Oxlade-Chamberlain, Firmino, Mané, Salah)
Swansea 1-0 Liverpool
Liverpool 2-3 West Brom (FA Cup 4) (Firmino, Salah)


Liverpool's line up for their last league match at Swansea:

1  Loris Karius - 24 year old German goalkeeper.
12 Joe Gomez - 20 year old ex Charlton defender.
32 Joël Matip - German born defender, plays for Cameroon.
4 Virgil van Dijk - His dad reckons he's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
26 Andrew Robertson - Ex Queen's Park, Dundee Utd and Hull City defender.
23 Emre Can - Can he play for Germany? Yes he can.
5 Georginio Wijnaldum - Shares a parent with Rajiv van La Parra.
11 Mohamed Salah - Rejected by Chelsea, Liverpool paid £40m for him in the summer from Roma.
21 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain - Cost £35m from Arsenal in the summer.
19 Sadio Mané - Cost £34m from Southampton.
9 Roberto Firmino - Brazilian striker, only cost £29m.

Substitutes
7 James Milner Ex Leeds, worst ever player to pull on an England shirt.
17 Ragnar Klavan - 32 year old defender with over a hundred caps for Estonia.
20 Adam Lallana - Ex Southampton, Bournemouth and Tellytubbies winger.
22 Simon Mignolet - Belgian goalkeeper, ex Sunderland.
28 Danny Ings - Been injured so much he's only played 15 times in 3 years.
29 Dominic Solanke - Striker from Chelsea's academy.
66 Trent Alexander-Arnold - Only player in the squad to come through their own academy.

ALL TOGETHER NOW!

[Lord Snooty]

Kongolo and Williams both doubtful for this one.

[Lord Snooty]

Lallana out for them.

[Lord Snooty]

Mrs Kongolo's lad passed fit for tomorrow now. Williams still unlikely.

[theo_luddite]

I reckon you must get a lot of quiet time at work to put these together Snoots. That or you've mastered some bit of wizard programming that scours t'interweb to put it together for you. Another top job that m'lud. I'm going to see how many traffic jams I can get stuck in between Coventry and Leeds Road, or thereabouts on Tuesday evening. If we can keep the ball on the pitch and have a go we might get something out of this. We'll probably concede in the first 15 mins of the second half regardless, we just do.

[Lord Snooty]

A lot of quiet time before work actually, theo.

[Amelia Chaffinch]

He has to make me get up and get me out by 6.15. Then he has a long while to kill before he goes himself.

[Lord Snooty]

No Sturridge for the Kloppites. He's jumped ship and joined the Baggies.

[jjamez]

Think tonight will be embarrassing

[Lord Snooty]

Kevin Friend is the ref tonight. Same as was at Anfield.