Party like it's 1990! Liverpool set to finally get their hands on Premier League trophy

The stage is set for Liverpool – quite literally.

Nearly four weeks after their first league title in 30 years was secured, the Reds will finally get their hands on the Premier League trophy on Wednesday, following their final home game of the season against Chelsea.

It promises to be a momentous occasion, despite the fact there will be no supporters inside Anfield to witness it live. 

Skipper Jordan Henderson and his team-mates will gather on a specially-built podium in the centre of the Kop, surrounded by fan banners. There will be a light show, while the presentation party will include not only Richard Masters, the chief executive of the Premier League, but Liverpool legend Sir Kenny Dalglish too.

Dalglish’s presence is especially fitting, given he was the last manager to guide the Reds to a league championship.

The Scot actually played on the night Liverpool last lifted the old First Division trophy, making the last of his 515 appearances for the club as a second-half substitute for Jan Molby in the 1-0 win over Derby on May 1, 1990. 

“He stole my thunder that night!” remembers Gary Gillespie, the former Reds defender. “I actually scored the winner, but all anyone talked about afterwards was Kenny’s late cameo.”

Molby laughs as he recalls the moment he looked over to the bench to see his manager stripped and ready to come on. 

“I’d had a collision with [Derby midfielder] Geraint Williams early in the game,” he tells Goal. “Kenny was asking me if I needed to come off but I was saying no. My nose was broken and bleeding, but I was fine. I was playing well.

“Next thing, I look over and my number’s up!”

Dalglish was 39, and had not played competitively in more than 20 months. He had, according to Ian Rush, “not been doing too well in five-a-side matches” at Melwood, and so had taken some stick from his players when naming himself in the squad. When the team was revealed to the crowd half-an-hour before kick-off, the No.14 was announced as a trialist.

The fans, though, loved it.

“The crowd wanted me on, and anyone would have wanted to be out there,” Dalglish told reporters. There was, according to The Times’ report on the game, “a carnival atmosphere”, with Dalglish producing “a handful of breathtaking touches of quality” despite being “puffing and red-faced” soon after his arrival. 

Anfield hailed its champions after the final whistle, the title having been secured the previous weekend thanks to a win over QPR. Little did they know, however, that it would be three decades before they could do so again.

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“If you’d told any of us that in 1990, we’d never have believed it,” says Gillespie, now a co-commentator for LFCTV, Liverpool’s in-house channel. “We thought the success would carry on, but it didn’t.”

Gillespie admits he does not remember the celebrations which followed the club’s 18th league championship, which says plenty about the regularity of Liverpool’s success at that time.

“Looking back, I think we probably all wish we'd made more of every league title we won,” he says. "I think we got a little bit blasé, a little bit nonchalant about it.

"We were expected to win it every year, and when you're expected to win it then perhaps you don't see it as as much of an achievement. It's hard to explain, but you didn't feel that same excitement and enthusiasm.”

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The attitude was perhaps summed up best by long-serving first-team coach Ronnie Moran, who would dish out the medals to the players after each success. 

“There were no airs and graces with Ronnie!” laughs Gillespie. “He’d chuck them to you and say ‘see you in pre-season’! It was drummed into us at Liverpool that the next year was always the most important.”

The Reds’ dominance of English football had been absolute. Between 1973 and 1990, they won 11 league titles, four League Cups and four FA Cups, as well as four European Cups for good measure. 

But Dalglish departed suddenly midway through the 1990-91 campaign, and by the time the Premier League began a year later, Liverpool had fallen behind Manchester United. Their great rivals would win 13 of the next 20 titles, with their manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, famously speaking of “knocking Liverpool off their f*cking perch”.

Now, though, the tables have turned again. Jurgen Klopp has put the Reds back on top, his side having delivered one of the most remarkable campaigns in top-flight history. They have won 30 of their 36 games, clinching the title with a record seven games to spare.

“They’ve been magnificent,” says Gillespie. “They’ve created their own history and done fantastically well.

“The belief is back at the club. I was questioned a lot at the beginning of the season about whether they would fall away having come so close last year. The last two or three occasions when Liverpool finished second or came close, they couldn’t sustain it. 

“But the people who were asking that obviously didn’t understand how good this squad is and how good this manager is. If they can keep this squad and this manager, then they will be challenging for the next two or three years, for certain. They’ll be up there, no question about it, because they are that good.”

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Gillespie will be commentating on tonight’s game – albeit from LFCTV’s city centre studio rather than Anfield itself – and says it will be emotional watching Klopp and his side follow in the footsteps of the great Liverpool teams of the past.

“Nothing can take away from this achievement,” he says. “I think everyone appreciates and understands that it won’t be the same kind of feeling and atmosphere, due to Covid-19, and that’s a shame because this team deserved that celebration for what they’ve done over the last year.

“You can’t praise them highly enough. Much is made of the fact that we were the last team to win it, but it’s all about them now. It’s about them creating their own history and put us to bed a little bit! 

“Of course it’s nice to have been part of the last title-winning team, but to be honest I just want success for the football club. This team deserves all the accolades it gets, and hopefully there are more to come, because if they are to put themselves right alongside the legendary teams in the club’s history, then that’s what they need to do – keep on winning.  

“But from an ex-player’s point of view, that’s the nice thing; you can see they have the capability to go on and be winners again.

“They’ll celebrate it well tonight, fans or no fans. I certainly hope they do, anyway. I just wish we had done it more when we had the chance!”