Inside the Liverpool and Manchester United rivalry: Mutual respect and 20-title record still drives hostility

There was still over an hour and a half until kick-off when the Manchester United bus carrying Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and his players crept past the Hotel TIA and towards the hundreds of Liverpool fans lining either side of the Anfield Road. A few lusty chants of “Oh Manchester is full of ----” filled the air and a handful of eggs were thrown at the blacked-out windows of the coach before it snaked round and slowly disappeared into the players’ entrance.

It was certainly a far cry from the greeting given to Manchester City before the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final at Anfield in April 2018, when their coach was so badly damaged they had to source a replacement for the journey home, let alone some of the scenes that provided a violent, volcanic backdrop to meetings between the sides in the 80s.

“Welcome to Man United fans” read the signs outside the entrances to gates N, P and Q at the Anfield Road end but, while no United supporter would ever feel welcome or entirely at ease in this part of the world on match day, it was hard, certainly outside the stadium and away from the confines of the terraces that would soon be trading familiar insults, to detect a particularly unpleasant, simmering edge to proceedings.

In some ways, the sustained anger and animosity directed the way of the Glazers and Ed Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, from inside Old Trafford against Norwich City the weekend before felt more impassioned and informative than some of the abuse fleetingly hurled the way of Liverpool fans on Sunday. United, after all, have much bigger problems to worry about than what the mother of all Merseyside parties may look like come May (or likely much sooner).

Then, again, perhaps this marks the last vestiges of relative calm before another storm ensues and arguably the most famous rivalry in English football takes another, more volatile turn. “Twenty times, twenty times, Man United,” sang the away supporters but what happens if Liverpool win a nineteenth title this season, finally get that 30-year monkey off their back and then draw level with United’s championship haul the following year? Liverpool fans have been so fixated on ending their hoodoo, and not tempting fate after one too many false dawns their United counterparts have revelled in mocking, to truly gloat about the mess that lot down the East Lancs are making of things but maybe that time is coming. And perhaps that is when patience would really begin to snap at United.

“I don’t think United’s drop off has been relished enough at this end,” says Andy Heaton, a long-standing Liverpool season ticket holder and a regular contributor to The Anfield Wrap fanzine and podcast, as he cradles his pint in a side room at the TIA before kick-off.

On the upstairs patio outside, local singer-songwriter, Jamie Webster, belts out the tunes to a huge throng of Liverpool fans down below. There is, Heaton says, a “weird, latent fear” about the game because Liverpool are expected to trample all over United but if there is tension, it is being masked well. And news has not even filtered through yet that Marcus Rashford, United’s leading goalscorer, is out with a double stress fracture in his back. “I don’t know whether it’s because this thing, this run we’re on at the moment is all consuming and there has been this fear this season of getting burned,” Heaton adds. “No one is saying those words. I don’t even want to mention the league title. But if Liverpool go a couple of goals up against United, it’d be interesting to see if the damn bursts and the chant comes out…”

In the Anfield press room, it is instructive to hear the opinions on United and Liverpool’s modern day rivalry from someone who played during the eighties when the hatred arguably ran deepest. Jim Beglin’s first game for Liverpool against United was in the 1985 FA Cup semi-final at Goodison Park, a thundering, no-holds barred assault on the senses that yielded an unforgettable 2-2 draw and a replay at Maine Road that United clinched 2-1. Off the pitch, it was mayhem. One fan who was involved in his fair share of hooliganism told Telegraph Sport it was the worst violence he had encountered at a football match. Golf balls embedded with nails were hurled in the stands. Warring factions wielding stanley knives clashed before and after the game. Nobody was safe. Beglin got his own taste, quite literally, of the hatred.

“I can remember the ball running out of play after two or three minutes and on the Bullens Road side back then the terracing would run below the level of the pitch so the heads of supporters would be at the height of the metal fences,” the former Liverpool defender recalled. “There was a little wall that supported the fence so I bent down to pick the ball up to take the throw in and all the United fans on that side spat in my face. And immediately it hit me then that this rivalry was on another scale entirely.

“Even though I’d been briefed about what to expect, it was, ‘Oh my god’. That fired me up that day. My regard for what happened wasn’t great. I muttered something but what can you do? You’re not going to win. You’re just going to end up with more of it. That was my introduction to the rivalry between Liverpool and United.”

Back in Beglin’s playing days, the rivalry felt much more local. Walking down Skerries Road, Alroy Road and the like on Sunday was to appreciate how cosmopolitan the fixture has become - Dutch, Scandinavian, American and Japanese voices amid the Scouse and Mancunian accents. Yet despite the sport’s wider gentrification, the half-and-half scarf culture and other changes, Beglin believes the hatred still simmers beneath the surface, ready to spill over given the chance but that the quality of policing, CCTV, banning orders, the zero tolerance policies adopted by many clubs towards troublemakers and other safety measures have worked.

“Listen, I think the same thing would probably happen today - people think it’s gone away, it hasn’t - but I think the police are just very good at controlling and containing things,” Beglin, now a media pundit, said. “We don’t want to see that but I think it would still happen if the police didn’t have control of it.”

It might not be quite the same but Beglin is adamant passions can run very high among overseas United and Liverpool fans, too.

“I work for Premier League Productions and do the world feed and I can remember being told a story once about how it all kicked off in a bar in Mauritius between local United and Liverpool fans,” he said. “So even those further afield or around the globe who really invest in their support of either club know the true history of what goes on and play their part in that.”

Perhaps, but it was interesting to listen to one United fan present on Sunday who felt comfortable enough to bring his two daughters to Anfield for the first time. They may have kept their heads down and mouths shut on the long walk back to the car after the game but, having attended United games at Anfield regularly during the nineties, he doubts very much that he would have brought his daughters to those matches had he been a father at that time.

“I’m not sure I would have done,” said Richard, who preferred not to disclose his surname. His daughters Freya and Emily are 14 and 15 respectively. “I think it could have put them off going - some of the things that happened, the way people behaved inside and outside the game, it could have put them off,” he added. “They thought that was just another away game.

“I was parked 15 minutes away and walked back no trouble. We kept quiet walking back to the car because I didn’t want anyone to get a sense we were United fans - we weren’t completely open and chatting. But we walked through loads of Liverpool fans who were walking almost into the United fans on the Anfield Road side as we left.

“Part of me wonders whether the consequences of what’s happened with banning orders and policing has taken a different effect on people who no longer want all the other stuff that comes with the rivalry. But there’s definitely an intense rivalry in the stands - there’s still a dislike there, there’s no real love lost. It doesn’t seem to boil over as much on and off the pitch but it’s still fiercely competitive.”

At one stage in the first half, Michael Carrick, the former United midfielder and one of Solskjaer’s assistants, appeared to react angrily to something said to him from a Liverpool fan in the crowd although, in truth, United’s biggest concerns were on the pitch. Without Rashford, United were toothless, their limitations obvious.

Fred did his best to atone for the absence of Scott McTominay and Paul Pogba but the gulf in quality between the teams was marked. Solskjaer was never going to lavish praise on Liverpool but the United manager was reaching, desperately, when he started talking about his opponent’s “long balls” in a game his side were lucky to still be in by the end. Having watched their side spurn a plethora of golden chances to wrap up the game, Liverpool’s unease was understandable. There remained the threat of United nicking an equaliser so when Mohamed Salah scored Liverpool’s second in the dying embers of the game the outpouring of relief and euphoria was palpable. And then it happened. The previously forbidden chant.

“We’re gonna win the league, we’re gonna win the league.” And they were still singing it in the TIA hours after the game had finished. “The genie’s out of the bottle now and it can’t go back in,” Heaton said afterwards. “It felt like a watershed moment in the season.”

Beglin is interested to see, in rivalry terms, what happens with United if Liverpool do lift the title and then go on to match United's record of 20 championships.

“United fans will hate the thought of Liverpool overtaking their 20 titles,” he said. “That would be a mega blow. Already Liverpool can throw their six European Cups at them but United can throw the number of leagues they’ve won back. If that was to change …”

A tipping point for United fans? “Ole Gunnar Solskjaer - is it happening too slowly from his view point now?” Beglin asks. “Would the tolerance levels still be there if you’re looking across to Liverpool and they’re back on their perch? Of course, it ups the pressure and maybe the impatience will kick in. I’m not wishing for that at all but it’s all related.”

It is something of an oddity that the two most successful and storied clubs in English football history have seldom been fighting, nip and tuck, at the very top together. Not since the mid-1960s, when Bill Shankly’s Liverpool surrendered their title to United in 1965, won it back the following year and then lost it to his friend Matt Busby’s side again in 1967, have they really gone toe to toe. While one dominated the landscape, the other was good for a cup or two, and could be relied upon to give their rival a bloody nose on the occasions they met, but not a lot more. It became a classic case of winning the battles but not the wars. Perhaps that is where Solskjaer’s United are returning, albeit without any guarantee of actually winning any of the battles either.

For all their dominance, Liverpool actually only won two of 20 league meetings between the teams in the 80s, when the continuing rise of hooliganism, entrenched social problems and what Liverpool fans felt was the media’s fascination-cum-obsession about when United might end their long title drought (sound familiar?) combined to fuel the hatred. Ron Atkinson, United’s Liverpool born manager before Sir Alex Ferguson arrived, was deeply unpopular on Merseyside and some of the uglier elements of the rivalry had taken hold. Liverpool supporters would taunt their United counterparts about the Munich air disaster. United, in turn, threw the Heysel stadium disaster back at Liverpool. Certain hostilities between the cities may have existed long before then, dating back to the Industrial Revolution when the Manchester Ship Canal opened, which allowed ships to sail directly to Manchester and bypass Liverpool with adverse consequences for the port city. But there was little, in earlier decades, of the visceral hatred and violence between the clubs that mushroomed in the late 70s and into the 80s, and lingered, occasionally exploding thereafter.

Ferguson’s famous remark about “knocking Liverpool off their ------ perch” got under the skin. “The perch comment still stings,” Heaton says. “And the fact we’re still talking about it 20, 25 years on, whatever it is, shows that.”

In recent years, a rivalry of sorts has developed between Liverpool and City, the current back-to-back Premier League champions Jurgen Klopp’s side seem about to usurp, although if you speak to those of a Liverpool persuasion they struggle to class it as such.

“The City-Liverpool rivalry is one-sided,” Heaton said. “There’s almost a disdain for City. It’s like the cheeky kid who’s just won a couple of grand on the lottery. No one’s arsed. There will always be the edge with United that there will never be with City because of the heritage and shared history between the clubs. There’s this kind of resentment that United and Liverpool have these historically massive fanbases and trade on that - we don’t need the oil money pumping in, they just need to get it right in the way they’re run. I’m not talking about the lads who were on the Kippax by the way. But it just feels like they’re trying to manufacture something that’s dead hollow. There’s a genuine grittiness when it comes down to United and Liverpool but with that comes a mutual respect.”

Richard believes the majority of United fans would still prefer to see City win the title than Liverpool given the history, a feeling no doubt reinforced after Sunday. “I still think if you gave United fans the choice most would say they’d prefer City to win the league than Liverpool,” he said.

20-19, after all, is a little too close for comfort.