Key events
52 mins: Liverpool win a corner on the left, from which they win a corner on the right, which is cleared.
49 mins: Liverpool should have scored a fourth! Gakpo runs in from the left, passes back to Mac Allister and ghosts into the area while nobody’s looking except the Argentinian, who plays him in, eight yards out. But Gakpo doesn’t go for goal, instead trying to tee up a non-existent teammate for a tap-in.
47 mins: Brennan Johnson is played into space down the right, but he only had that space because he was five yards offside.
46 mins: Peeeeeep! The players are back out, except for James Maddison and Archie Gray. Dejan Kulusevski and Pape Sarr are on.
This is the 120th time that Liverpool have been two or more goals to the good at half-time of a Premier League game at Anfield. They have won 117 of the previous 119 and drawn the other two.
I failed to report in the moments after Liverpool’s third goal that Gakpo was booked for pulling off his kit to reveal a Kaka-style “I belong to Jesus” vest top.
On the subject of that game, Samuel Dodson emails: “Man City scoring in the first couple of minutes is the worst thing that could have happened to that match as a spectacle. However, judging by the empty seats in the city half of Wembley, it seems most of the City supporters have also realised that the Liverpool Spurs game is where it’s at today. Four goals already and if it continues like this it could end up being 7-2 by the end of play.” FA Cup semi-finals are the most rubbish of all fixtures for fans: tickets are really expensive, and either your team loses and you’ve had a miserable time, or your team wins and you need to shell out for even more for the final. It’s a lose/lose situation.
In other news, Nottingham Forest are losing 1-0 to Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final, and Taha Hashim is watching that one:
Half time: Liverpool 3-1 Tottenham
45+4 mins: Bergvall dummies a pass zinged into him, cleverly allowing the ball to run straight into touch. And that’s the end of half one.
45+3 mins: Spurs win a free-kick, from which Bergvall eventually chips a cross into touch.
45+1 mins: Into stoppage time. We’ll have about four minutes of it.
43 mins: Spurs go close to a second! Johnson runs down the right and crosses low; Tel looks set to tap in but Konate slides in to poke the ball away from him. He then clips the Spurs player’s ankles, but VAR deems the contact accidental and unavoidable.
41 mins: Liverpool think they’ve played the ball through for Mo Salah to run onto from the halfway line, but to their enormous frustration the referee blows his whistle because Brennan Johnson was offside a bit earlier.
39 mins: Mac Allister spins in the centre circle, and then tries to find Luis Diaz and fails. If he’d looked to his left, Gakpo was in an absolutely indecent amount of space, with absolutely nobody in front of him.
37 mins: Gary Neville describes Tottenham as “the absolute perfect opponent for Liverpool”. They have already got assists for two Liverpool goals. “Surely there can’t be any doubt that Spurs need a managerial change,” writes Gareth Beale. “Even if they win the Europa League, can you imagine how a team playing this way would fare in the Champions League?” There is no doubt that change is coming. It is clear in the way Ange Postecoglou talks, in the way the team plays, in everything about the way this group carries themselves.
GOAL! Liverpool 3-1 Tottenham (Gakpo, 34 mins)
Once it eventually stops rolling around, Liverpool go and score another. It’s not a good corner, but Bergvall at the near post doesn’t so much clear it as flick it on. Gakpo runs onto it, dances away from a couple of half-hearted challenges and shoots low on the turn, across Vicario and in at the far post!
33 mins: Mac Allister struggles for a while to get the ball to stay still so he can take a corner. Elliot Wilson discerned “echoes of Jimmy Connnors at the US Open 1991 vs Haarhuis in the way Slot celebrated goal number two”. I’m going to have to take his word for it.
31 mins: In the end it’s played short to Alexander-Arnold, who blazes a shot over the bar.
30 mins: Liverpool win a free-kick, maybe 35 yards out. Mac Allister, Szoboszlai and Alexander-Arnold discuss their options.
29 mins: Solanke’s flicked header loops towards the bar, and might have been dropping under it, so Alisson turns it over. Solanke is again the target with the corner, but doesn’t win the header.
26 mins: Like Trent Alexander-Arnold last week, Mac Allister has scored his first left-footed Premier League goal, and it was a hell of a hit. Spurs had the ball on their left flank, near the corner flag, but instead of putting his foot through it Tel passed it into his own penalty area, to a red shirt.
GOAL! Liverpool 2-1 Tottenham (Mac Allister, 23 mins)
Tottenham fail to clear the ball when they had the chance, and a couple of seconds later Mac Allister smashes one into the roof of the net from the edge of the D!
20 mins: The ball’s in the net again, and the flag is up again! This time Salah is definitely offside, but Liverpool have worked out that if they force Spurs to concede possession in their defensive third they can then slice and dice the defence pretty reliably.
GOAL! Liverpool 1-1 Tottenham (Luis Diaz, 17 mins)
The goal is given! Kevin Danso’s shoulder played Szoboszlai onside, a matter of a couple of inches.
17 mins: VAR is checking whether Szoboszlai was offside when Salah played the ball. It looks terribly close. That sent him to the byline, from where he pulled back to Luis Diaz, who turned in.
16 mins: Liverpool have the ball in the net, but the linesman has his flag up!
14 mins: This is the 10th time Liverpool have conceded the first goal in the Premier League this season. They have lost one (and won three) of those games.
GOAL! Liverpool 0-1 Tottenham (Solanke, 12 mins)
And from nowhere, Tottenham take the lead! They win a corner, send it into the mixer, and Solanke from the edge of the six-yard box sends an excellent header back across goal and into the corner.
10 mins: Close! Vicario comes for the corner and pushes the ball to the edge of the area, from where it’s worked straight back to Gakpo. With his back to goal he takes two touches to flick the ball up, followed by an overhead effort. It would have been quite the goal, but only if the goal had shifted about six yards to its right.
9 mins: Van Dijk pings a beauty of a pass into Gakpo, running into the left side of the penalty area. He does well to bring it down and, under pressure, conjure some kind of shot. Vicario catches but takes a backward step into touch.
7 mins: Gravenberch sets Salah free with an early pass out of defence. He looks up and sees Luis Diaz in the middle, but by the time he sends in a low cross Diaz has made a new run in a different direction – had he just kept going in a straight line he might have had a tap-in.
5 mins: Some nice work from Tel and Maddison on the left, but when the Frenchman finally sends in his cross Brennan Johnson is offside.
3 mins: A shot! The ball is worked wide to Salah, who passes infield to Mac Allister and runs onto the backheeled return. It’s a classic Salah shooting chance, begging to be curled into the far corner, but it goes well over the bar.
2 mins: Kevin Danso brings down Luis Diaz. A bit far out for a shot, you’d have thought.
1 min: Peeeeeeep! Liverpool get the ball rolling.
The players are out. You’ll Never Walk Alone is sung.
Reading reports of previous triumphs one thing stands out: the matches that decided them were often rubbish. “Saturday’s game, not surprisingly perhaps, was an anticlimax bordering on formality,” read our report in 1966. “The sense of anticlimax was understandable. Thankfully Shankly gave a better performance than his team did,” we wrote in 1973. “Liverpool retained the League championship on Saturday as a matter of routine, their goalless draw with West Ham being so devoid of passion that even Anfield’s rejoicing was somewhat mechanical,” wrote David Lacey in 1977. Will this be a game for the ages, or a mere footnote? Let’s find out!
The players are in the tunnel. “We’re going to win the league!” sings the Kop.
Ange Postecoglou confirms that Rodrigo Bentancur’s absence is due to the fact “we felt he’d benefit from a weekend off”, with the Europa League the club’s real focus now.
Coming through unscathed is very important, but just as important is we have to perform well today. We’re going to have to play a really good level to make sure we give a good account of ourselves.
Some players do need some protection and others need some gametime. We’ve done that for the last two or three weeks. A lot of our guys have missed a lot of football this year, it’s about making sure they stay healthy.
“Could the brevity of the old reports of previous Liverpool triumphs be due to the fact that, in those days, they were appearing in the Manchester Guardian?” wonders David Stanton. I think it was much more to do with the paper being edited by people who thought sport was not really the kind of thing proper journalists should be interested in. Though it could be argued (not by me, of course) that not a lot has changed there …
Arne Slot has a chat:
What is required from the players is they have to work really hard. If you’re not intense, if you’re not ready for them, Tottenham can hurt you a lot. And the fans can play a big part as well, because the louder they are, the more energy the players have.
There’s a job to do for us. We have to be ready for Tottenham. Everybody knows what it’s about. We know we need one point from the five games we play. But we know the responsibility we have. The fans are here to see a team that tries to do everything they can to get the point.
History was made in 1964: it was the first time the reporter responsible for informing Guardian readers of a Liverpool title victory got a byline. Eric Todd celebrated by quoting Thomas Gray’s The Progress of Poesy, an ode in Pindaric form. They had secured the trophy with a 5-0 thrashing of Arsenal. Here’s a bit of Todd’s missive:
Having already exhausted most of the available superlatives on the team, Mr W Shankly, its manager, and the Kop, I can think of no more fitting a preface to my last dispatch from Anfield than a statement by Mr Shankly shortly after Liverpool had won promotion. “We are not merely going to be sitting on the First Division fence,” he said. They finished a useful eighth last term and, after a modest start, they dropped several broad hints that they intended winning something this season.
Yet Saturday’s proceedings were less satisfying than had been expected or hoped for. For one thing, there were fewer than 50,000 spectators – some of them had queued all night, and others for seven hours. For another, Liverpool made rather more mistakes than usual, and finally Arsenal did little to allay the general suspicion that they were there just to be sacrificed. The atmosphere was charged with tension and emotion, so that perhaps it would be unfair to be hypercritical. The indisputable fact remains, however, that Liverpool did what they set out to do. They are worthy champions, and Arsenal, who have enjoyed a good share of the game’s honours over the years, paid them generous tribute.
When it was all over and while the corks were being drawn below stairs, the Liverpool players did a lap of honour. As they reached the Kop, they slowed down – I swear some of them bowed – a deserved tribute to a section of the local population which, if it did but know it, “rode sublime upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy”. If the Kop thinks that too fancy, no matter. ‘Ee, ay, alley-oh, Liverpool are the champs.’
“If ever there was a time to break out the old ‘Lads, it’s Spurs’ line, this must be it,” writes Matt Dony. “Despite being an eternally pessimistic football fan, I have grudgingly accepted that Liverpool are going to win the league. And if they can’t get a point against this Spurs team, then something is very wrong. As someone who knows a thing or two about wine, what do recommend for tonight?”
I don’t think it matters, so long as it is cold, bubbly, and emptied over one’s own head before consumption.
After 1982 and 1988 I believe this would be the third time that Liverpool have won the league by getting a result against Tottenham. London clubs seem to have been their opposition for most of their coronations, with Chelsea, Arsenal and QPR also having a go.
In 1947 Liverpool were not playing when they were confirmed as champions: Stoke went to Sheffield United knowing victory would see them win the league, and they flubbed it. They have never come as close, before or since. I think the Guardian’s report really captured the essence and import of the game.
Liverpool have won the Football League championship for the fifth time. Stoke City had to win on Sheffield United’s ground on Saturday to overhaul Liverpool, and instead lost 1-2. Pickering, a 38-year-old former English international and the club’s captain, came back to the Sheffield United side for his only First Division game of the season in place of Hagan, who is injured; he scored the first goal after three minutes, and after Stoke had equalised before half-time he paved the way for the deciding goal, shot by Rickett in the second half. Altogether Sheffield were without three leading players owing to injury.
Back to Liverpool’s title coronations of yore. In 1923 they cantered to the championship with sufficient ease that by the time it was actually confirmed nobody was very interested, and most of the Guardian’s football coverage was devoted to other issues.
Saturday brought a settlement of some of the Football League problems that have been perplexing us ever since certain clubs singled themselves out for championships, relegation, or promotion. Liverpool earned only one point in their home match with Huddersfield, but that was sufficient to assure them of the championship and to make them the first to secure the trophy twice in succession since the League was extended.
Huddersfield’s draw at Liverpool, where the champions scored their goal near the end, gave the Yorkshire club a chance to finish second, as Sunderland, who were well beaten at Burnley, have fallen off since all prospect of their overhauling Liverpool disappeared.
Some of the scenes outside Anfield this afternoon as fans waited for, and welcomed, the team coach:
I present the Guardian’s coverage of Liverpool winning the league title in 1922, in full:
The championship of the Football League was settled in favour of Liverpool yesterday when they alone of the clubs in the running for the honour won their game. They had Burnley as opponents, and in a hard game beat them by two goals to one. Burnley drew level in the second half, but could not prevent Liverpool from scoring again.
Consider yourselves informed.
This is how we reported Liverpool’s title success in 1906. Given how little we had to say about their win in 1901, and how little we would have to say about their win in 1922, it’s really quite extensive reportage. Interesting that the first paragraph is given over to explaining why winning the league isn’t anything like as impressive as winning the FA Cup.
Liverpool have had a great League course, and they have strong claims to be considered the best team in the country. Of course winning the Association Cup is justly regarded as the highest of all football honours, and the best proof of supremacy among the teams of the country. The Cup competition provides a brief trial, for which each club needs to send its best team, and each team can prepare itself and collect all its strength. The League struggle is largely a test of club resources, it is liable to various interferences, and there is in it, of course, immense scope for the occurrence of accidents. In its later stage, when the international matches enlist the chief champions and the middle teams, without either fear or hope, begin to take things easily, the competition becomes a little unreal.
The Liverpool team has, however, shown exceptionally fine quality in the League series this season. Whether it has played better football than Newcastle or Aston Villa or Bolton Wanderers have when at their best is doubtful, but there is no doubt that it has given a greater number of fine displays than any other side. It has ended by showing itself a team of true fighters, and by resisting resolute challenges with splendid endurance and pluck. Manchester City, by a noble spurt, actually overtook Liverpool a few weeks ago, but Manchester, and not Liverpool, collapsed at their critical moment. When it is remembered that Liverpool lost five of their first eight matches in the early weeks of the season, when form is always topsy-turvy, no one can doubt that they are thoroughly deserving champions.
The teams!
Here’s the all-important team news. Liverpool have picked their 11 most-picked players in league games this season – everyone who has started more than 16 games is starting this one:
Liverpool: Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Konate, Van Dijk, Robertson, Gravenberch, Mac Allister, Salah, Szoboszlai, Gakpo, Diaz. Subs: Kelleher, Endo, Nunez, Chiesa, Jones, Elliott, Jota, Tsimikas, Quansah.
Tottenham Hotspur: Vicario, Spence, Danso, Davies, Udogie, Bergvall, Gray, Maddison, Johnson, Solanke, Tel. Subs: Kinsky, Bissouma, Richarlison, Romero, Kulusevski, Porro, Odobert, Sarr, Van de Ven.
Referee: Thomas Bramall.
At the risk of being presumptuous, I’ve been spending my early afternoon reading Guardian reporting of previous Liverpool title successes. It is fair to say we have covered some better than others. Here, for example, is the full and unexpurgated text of our report on the club’s very first, published on 30 April 1901:
In a football match at West Bromwich yesterday Liverpool defeated West Bromwich Albion by one goal to nil. This victory secured to Liverpool the championship of the English Association Football League.
Yes, that was it. The sport section wasn’t particularly big at the time, though there was space for a very long report on a golf tournament. Anyway, more to come.
Hello world!
Anfield, Sunday 27 April 2025, 4pm BST
Anfield, Sunday 27 April 2025, 6.30pm BST?
A full and fan-packed Anfield has not celebrated a league title since 1990. Is today the day?
