Manchester United v Liverpool: a rivalry for once detached from the title race Two clubs’ reduced circumstances fray golden thread of shared influence stretching back over three eras of England’s top tier Rio Ferdinand Manchester United Luis Suárez Liverpool English football has always enjoyed defying the usual laws of logic, science and any other kind of cold-blooded reasoning you might care to chuck its way. In the case of Manchester United versus Liverpool, the most high-profile grudge match of the Premier League years, the main achievement is a reversal of the usual rules of entropy. This is an almost-derby that has in the past 20 years become more fevered, more tribally malevolent even as football itself has broadened out into a more atomised global affair, less obviously concerned with events at the next motorway interchange. And, like all the best grudge matches, it has often seemed to operate in isolation from form and league position, powered by its own unstinting malevolent energies. In spite of which, when United and Liverpool kick off once again at Old Trafford on Sunday afternoon there will be a slight sense of shifting landscapes beyond the usual sound and fury. More so than at any time since 1971 this fixture takes place without United or Liverpool either entering it as champions or retaining any significant interest in the title race, a fraying of a golden thread of shared influence that stretches back through 43 years and at least three distinct eras in the rapacious development of English football’s top tier. The closest equivalent to the current state of slightly reduced joint circumstances – United are third, Liverpool ninth – was the 1980-81 season when both finished well off the pace. Even then, when they played in the league at Old Trafford in December, Liverpool were top of the First Division. Before that it is necessary to go back to 1970-71 to find a similar moment of shared retrenchment. That season Liverpool were fifth and United 10th when they met at Old Trafford and Frank O’Farrell’s team – with George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton still playing – were three seasons away from relegation. There is a neat division to the shared dominance of United and Liverpool over the past half-century, during which they shared 29 of 50 league titles from 1964-2014. The baton passed from one to the other in the early 1990s as Liverpool’s light faded and a new star began to rise in the east (of the M62 corridor). The genuine tribalism, the viciousness that now surrounds this fixture, is a relatively new thing. Matt Busby’s United did not identify Liverpool as a particularly bitter rival. Busby himself caught the tram to Anfield every morning for five cherished years as a Liverpool player and once wrote of his old club: “Liverpool deserved their success because they treated everyone on the staff as a human being should be treated, with kindness, consideration and understanding.” Not a lot about knocking anyone off their perch there. For United the real bogeymen of the Busby and post-Busby years were Leeds United, their opponents during some brutal encounters. And during Liverpool’s golden years of the 70s and 80s the big derby match was Everton, and the more meaningful cup finals and league title deciders were often a two-hander with Arsenal. In 1971 Liverpool even answered the call when Old Trafford was closed as a punishment for hooliganism and Anfield became United’s home ground for two matches. The palpable sense of hostility solidified during the Sir Alex Ferguson years, stoked in part by Ferguson himself, a manager who ran a title-winning team for two decades on a relentlessly oppositional us-and-them approach. At least once Ferguson even summoned up the construction of the Manchester process that has been given formal structure in recent times by the regulationhyperbole of the professional football media not to mention the hate-funnel that is the internet, conduit for the reflexive free-floating bile that has become, for some, football’s everyday currency. What is undeniable is that this fixture has produced some wonderfully engaging matches in that time. For a while the midfield contest between Roy Keane and the young Steven Gerrard was equal to the more fabled Keane rivalry with Patrick Vieira. The presence of genuine homegrown players in both teams helped too: witness the enduring chemistry between Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher around the lighted TV dais. As did the tendency to throw up some unlikely heroes. Danny Murphy scored the winner three times against United. John Arne Riise scored that goal. Unlikely red cards (Luke Chadwick? Michael Owen?) became a recurrent theme even as in the background, behind the bluster, diffuse and irresistible change was afoot. Like it or not, English football’s quietly listing giants have something in common here too. The relative plateauing-out of both clubs, two decades apart, followed a similar process: extreme, bountiful continuity, followed by abrupt and bungled change, married to the rise of new money elsewhere. United’s eclipse of Liverpool during the confusions of the post-Dalglish, post-boot room era was powered by a perfect storm: a managerial genius given time to bed in, expanding matchday revenues, a TV-rights boom and a global marketing strategy that would eventually attract the Glazer family, and which still represents a decisive monetising of the club’s heritage. If United have been challenged in recent years by the rise of well-spent carbon wealth elsewhere, Liverpool’s problem has been that they never really got their own chance to cash in on the good times. Hamstrung by a restricted stadium and a falling-away at exactly the moment the money trucks came crashing through the hangar doors, Liverpool’s golden years translated into little more than an enduring global name. United may be suffering now from a slight retreat from the front rank but it is a cushioned fall, one that has taken place once the rope ladder has already been pulled up, the rules re-set, the vast stadium already in place, the Singaporean noodle partners already on board. Graeme Souness tried to stave off generational decline by fielding David Speedie for half a season and selling Peter Beardsley: United can afford to prop things up by paying Radamel Falcao £3.7m, to date, in return for 283 minutes of playing time and a single goal. Similarly it seems clear both have different routes back to the top. United have effectively become something else already, a bolt-on, big budget rejig on the Real Madrid model. There was some initial unease at the idea of United spending their way back towards the Champions League in such scatter-gun style but this is simply the way of things now. Louis van Gaal also seems the perfect manager for the job: a genuine modern great, whose name alone commands respect from players, fans and directors, but also someone whose slightly egomaniacal notions of plucking out and grooming young talent chime nicely with the club’s sense of itself. It is working too, after a fashion. Five wins on the trot have regeared United as something close to a title-challenging team. With three fine strikers and a residue of high-value midfield talent they will win a high proportion of their home games from here. Injured defenders will reappear. A Champions League return looks likely. For Liverpool the model is less clear. Until a larger stadium, or a no-strings benefactor, can be found, the way forward is efficiencies and playing smart. Liverpool have had their Gareth Bale Season, driven into the top four by a single world-class player too good right now to be allowed to stay. But Brendan Rodgers, or a version of something like Brendan Rodgers, still looks the right idea, the kind of manager whose plan is to recruit ambitiously (although with more guile than currently), work innovatively (just please not too innovatively) and attempt to outflank the wealthier members of that cramped elite tier. For now the Champions League has gone while a return next season looks an outside bet. In the meantime they will always have United and a rivalry that with each passing year has a sense of rather pointed nostalgia about it.• This article was corrected on 13 December 2014 to reflect the two clubs’ current positions guardian/Ronay
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 11:30:00 +0000
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