LIVERPOOL v ARSENAL "fings ain't wot they used to be"

An away fixture at Anfield in the second half of the 1990/91 season, and having recorded a 3-0 victory at Highbury earlier that season, The Arsenal went up to Liverpool and grabbed a 0-1 victory. This was a telling result in deciding the destination of the League Championship. The Arsenal took back the title finishing 7 points ahead of Liverpool having lost only 1 game while conceding a paltry 18 goals.

Manchester City finished 5^th, Manchester United 6^th, Sp*rs 10^th and Chelsea 11^th; this was the English first division. The bombast of the inaugural 1992/93 Premier League was just over the horizon.

Times change and Liverpool v Arsenal is no longer the clash of title challengers, it is a competition of the once mighty; two of England’s greatest clubs who have seen a decline in fortunes, for differing reasons, but a decline never the less.

The football landscape has changed over the two decades since that day in March 1991 when an Arsenal victory brought home the hard reality to Liverpool that perhaps there period of dominance was coming to an end. That great club has now gone without a league title for 22 years. Arsenal have spent 8 years away from the pinnacle of English football and our challenge for that honour has been marginal at best.

So today’s game is another game of football, a game to hopefully be won and enjoyed. It’s not the fixture it once was and it may never be a fixture of that significance again; the arrival of the billionaire benefactor has changed things and ‘greatness’ seems to be just an antiquated phrase, its now more a bout 'richness'.