When Liverpool fans last celebrated the title at Anfield, it was regarded as a pretty run-of-the-mill occasion; after all, eight titles in 12 years can create a sense of expectation.
“It felt as if that was something we achieved every single year, so I think we took it for granted,” club statistician Ged Rea tells FourFourTwo.
"The best part of the campaign was always the final game of the season, or when the trophy was presented, ‘we are the champions’ blasting away on the PA system, the players running around the outside of the pitch with the trophy.”
'Trust me, we’ve dreamt about it often'
Such scenes are ones that Liverpool supporters who were too young or not born in 1990 have only been able to dream about for the past 35 years. And trust me, we’ve dreamt about it often.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have witnessed Liverpool Football Club win every single trophy possible, from Cardiff to Qatar and London to Madrid. I’ve also attended the final game of the season twice with the possibility of the title being won.
Of course, it’s an extremely privileged position to be in, having seen your team win every trophy possible and yet yearn for the one that you truly need in order to heal the wounds of near-misses of the past, of which there have been plenty.
Growing up in the nineties, every summer we were still tipped to win the league. And every May, we saw Man United take a step closer to achieving Alex Ferguson’s aim of knocking us off our perch.
Despite some half-title attempts, Liverpool never actually finished in the top two from 1991 to 2002.
Several players arrived as the fabled missing piece of the jigsaw before being put back in the box again.
Gerard Houllier’s side followed up their 2001 Cup treble with the Reds’ then-best Premier League points total, but never kicked on from there.
It wasn’t until Rafa Benitez’s class of 2008/09 we endured a true title heartbreak, Federico Macheda haunting our dreams, finishing second despite just two defeats.
Eleven draws were what cost Benitez’s side, which is arguably the best team not to win the Premier League, featuring a spine of Pepe Reina, Sami Hyypia, Jamie Carragher, Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres.
Quite simply, that team should have won the league and we all knew it.
But the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
And the ride to what would have been an unexpected title in 2013/14 was like riding the Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the first time.
Brendan Rodgers’ Luis Suarez-inspired side had sat around fourth and fifth in the league up until March, when they put together a run of 11 league wins in a row, the 10th of which being the emotional 3-2 win over Man City that saw Steven Gerrard’s passionate ‘this does not slip’ speech on the pitch post-match.
It was 25 years since Hillsborough and Gerrard’s last chance of the title. The stars were aligned. And then that moment happened against Chelsea and City went on to win the league by two points.
It seemed that everyone involved with Liverpool Football Club was shell-shocked - players, fans and staff - for at least the year that followed.
It haunted us then and if we’re honest it still haunts us to this day. Every away following singing their version of the Gerrard song served as a reminder of the disbelief at what had happened.
To this day I can't get my head around Gerrard, ranked at No.2 in FourFourTwo's list of the best Premier League midfielders of all time, not winning a Premier League title, nobody has deserved it more for the years he carried the club.
And then, it finally happened.
A record-breaking season, winning the title with the most games remaining, racking up the biggest ever lead at the top of the Premier League (25 points at one stage), 18 consecutive wins, 99 points.
We knew we would be champions from January.
The date of the parade was in the calendar months in advance.
To then have the events of 2020, finally ending a 30-year wait for the title only to be denied the moments of celebration we’d watched on endless videos and heard stories from Reds who were lucky enough to live during the dominant ‘70s and ‘80s.
That 30-year release of emotion was an anticlimax; it was bittersweet and it can never be replicated - I'd be in my seventies if we'd been forced to wait another three decades!
I'd be in my seventies if we'd been forced to wait another three decades!
One of the greatest ever Liverpool sides, led by a man who understood the club and its supporters so intimately as Jurgen Klopp, never got the opportunity to celebrate with supporters their greatest success.
An emotional Klopp embraced the history of the club, dedicating the victory to the legendary managers that preceded him and saying that the last 20 years were built on Gerrard’s legs.
We can only imagine the scenes that would have accompanied Klopp dancing and celebrating with 50,000 fans at Anfield.
We saw them in Madrid and at Wembley, but never in the club's famous home.
A parade with 500,000 people, despite losing the 2022 Champions League final, went some way to healing the wounds.
So while the three-decade title drought was over, the wait for one thing we all wanted - to see our side win what Bill Shankly declared as “our bread and butter” - continued.
Klopp dancing around the Anfield pitch with the trophy, a parade around the city that most had pencilled in their calendars long before due to Liverpool’s huge lead at the top.
It was all wiped out. Patience was taught in the pandemic and fans have had to wait another five years on top of the 30-year drought.
I’d seen my club win the league, but I also hadn’t. I hadn’t lived it, felt it, or breathed it. Only now, by winning the title with supporters at Anfield can those memories be put in the past.
It was an expectant and celebratory Anfield as Liverpool arrived, with Arne Slot, a typically understated and fairly unemotional character, admitting the scenes as the team bus arrived moved even him.
"The only moment I was emotional today was when we arrived at the stadium – to see what it meant for the fans, what it meant for these people,” said Slot, who broke character to join in with a quick little jig to Allez Allez Allez post-match.
The only moment I was emotional today was when we arrived at the stadium – to see what it meant for the fans, what it meant for these people
Arne Slot
“I think everybody who was inside that bus felt that if the fans are with us, like they are, then it's impossible for us to lose this game of football.”
It was destiny that Liverpool should get the opportunity to win the title on their terms, at Anfield, in front of their people.
Asked about Shankly’s quote about winning the league being the bread and butter, Slot showed he understood the assignment: “What I noticed from the first day I came in was that winning the league would be the most special trophy we could win. I think I felt that throughout the whole season.”
Liverpool did the business on the pitch, Mo Salah notching his 33rd goal of the campaign and Alexis Mac Allister running the show in midfield - the Argentine providing a goal worthy of winning the title.
It was in the stands, though, that was most mesmerising.
The Anfield crowd, decked out in red at Virgil van Dijk’s request, brought out the full songbook, bringing back songs of the seventies and eighties to celebrate and appreciate their heroes.
‘Ee aye addio, we won the league,’ chanted The Kop, providing the sounds to match the visuals and the moments that those like me had only previously heard when watching old VHS tapes of a title-winning era when Liverpool dominated.
Once the full-time whistle had gone and the initial euphoria had somewhat settled, the players began to sit and just watch in awe at the red sea all around them in the stands.
The Kop, in turn, serenaded each player individually with their own chant.
From Salah and Alisson to Wataru Endo and Joe Gomez. Every player took in the moment of individual acclaim.
A moment then, for players from 2020 who are no longer at Anfield, watching from around the world, it must also have been a bittersweet moment for them, almost in the way it was for supporters five years ago.
For nine players from that 2020 squad, this was the party they and the fans had lost, winning their second title at Liverpool.
This was everything we were denied in 2020. And we get to do it all again in a month when the trophy is presented on May 25th.
